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He lay there for centuries, until he was part of the mattress himself, decayed.
Another death, another failure, another body to mourn.
He heard a rasp. His body now acting without his will. And then his arm rose and fell, the one splayed across Nia. He lay still, his eyes blown wide, as if it were some illusion and moving would dispel it. And then his arm rose and fell again, and this time he sat up.
She was breathing.
She was breathing.
Fire burned through his veins.
She was breathing.
He pressed a finger to her neck, and there between sleeping nerves and arteries a faint beat.
"Mirabilis." Marvelous.
He didn't know what to do then. So he ran downstairs and into the tavern. Several people shrieked at the appearance of a ghastly man coated in blood. He didn't care.
The room quieted, much too his advantage when he called out and his voice rang.
"Est enim meduco? En meduco placet."
Whispers followed. Some of surprise and remark, some of disgust, and some blissful ones of people rippling his message across the room.
And then a man stood up, heavily bearded and walked towards him, jerking his head in question. Acelius said nothing, but ran up the stairs, hoping he would follow. From the heavy set thud of feet on the boards, he knew he was.
He led him inside the room and gestured to Nia, her chest still slowly rising and falling like a newborn learning how to breathe.
"What hit her?" asked the man crouching next to her, gingerly unfolding the fabric wrapped around her abdomen. She shuddered.
"A dagger. She was stabbed. She bled a lot," explained Acelius, racing past words hoping to reach the end of the sentence where he could stop talking and just watch.
The man grunted and settled in on his haunches and set Acelius out to find a needle and thread.
He ran back downstairs and shouted again. "Needle and thread! Does anyone have a needle and thread?"
Ana rose up at that and raced upwards, feeling the urgency of his needs. He followed her as she disappeared in one of the rooms and came back holding a slight needle and a spool of thread. "Noelle's," she explained, but didn't hand it over to his waiting hands. "Will she be okay?" she asked.
"She might if you had any sense and handed me the needle and thread," he replied coldly. She frowned in offence but handed them up.
And then the next second he was back in the quiet room, handing the objects to the bearded man who set to work. The world outside was completely dark, and the man kept fixing his glasses as if placing them at an angle would somehow make him see better. Acelius walked to the fire and stoked it, until it grew brighter and filled the room with light.
"Will she be okay?" he asked, inwardly wincing as he realized that he had asked the same question he'd just chided Ana for.
And then all at once, his own wounds caught up to him (not all of the blood on his shirt was Nia's) as the rush of adrenaline rushed out of his limbs. He didn't what the meduco answered, because by then he had already crumpled to the floor.
YOU ARE READING
unraveled
Fantasy"I've seen rats with better attention spans than you," she said onto his face. And then the boy was there pulling her onto her feet and off of him. "But have you seen them with such beautiful faces?" he asked, standing up, brushing off th...
