Chapter Thirty-Five
Austin
Austin took a breath for the first time in two weeks on one of the medical slabs in the laboratory.
It was deep and filled his lungs with dusty oxygen.
But dragons above, didn’t it feel good to breathe again.
He blinked his eyes rapidly, letting his head lull to the side.
It was his turn to be laid out on the metal table while Hyacinth sat on a stool beside him.
She was focused like a laser beam on his fingers.
Austin managed to lift his head to see her painting his fingernails.
“You like the color?” she croaked, peaking up from her artwork. “Havershum showed me how to use the small brushes. I’m not Melody but…I can do flowers. I’m really good at flowers.”
Austin smiled weakly, shifting his hand to see his nails.
Everything was stiff. Well, I did kind of get burned at the stake.
He stared at five fingers with green lacquer as a background.
Little pink, blue, and purple flowers were dotted across them like a field of wildflowers.
She is good. He flopped his cheek against the side of the slab, letting her return to his fingers.
“I love the color.” Was all he could manage after spending, what was probably a week and four days, in the regeneration chamber. He could taste the liquid on his tongue from where it’d grown back. Newts tongue had a specific flavor. Not a fan, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.
“Good.” She swallowed hard. Her eyes didn’t meet his in the slightest. In fact, she hunched further, like she was doing her best to focus on anything but his hopeful face.
“Hyacinth...” he croaked.
“I’m quite upset with you, you know,” she whimpered, dotting his fingers. The pout plastered to her lips quivered harshly.
“Why?” He laughed only to cough and wince at the pain that shot up from his insides.
Regeneration was not ideal for anything minor because it was a long process.
It grew back body parts as they were, so he was still the Austin he remembered, he could feel the crackle of magic under his body.
He’d still be recovering for a few more days, until it soaked all the way in.
However, he was well enough to be stitched back together and reignited, or whatever term Sebastian used to restart the heart.
“You weren’t awake when I awoke,” she murmured as she wheeled her stool away from the slab.
He watched her bring her paint pallet and brushes to another worktable.
She cleaned off her fingers, then tried to hide her dabbing her eyes with the back of her hands.
Austin took it easy sitting up on the slab.
He didn’t want to smear the paint, but more so, he didn’t want to scare her.
She trembled a little as she wheeled herself back to his side.
There was a vial of clear liquid in her hands. Austin motioned for it, but she held it to her chest.
“Why would you let him take you?” she grumbled, finally glaring at him. I miss those purple gems.
“Because that’s my purpose.” He motioned for the squonk tears again.
Hyacinth scoffed, rolling both her eyes and her head slightly.
He could see she was still stiff like him.
He wasn’t sure how damaged she got, but as she was only sporting a new hand, he imagined she was kept in a tank with him.
“But I thought you said we were ignoring purposes? Huh? I thought, you said, you didn’t want to be burdened by why you were made? ” She scowled harder.
Which means Lord Rosemont was on double duty for a long time. He’s probably exhausted.
“No, I didn’t want you to be burdened by that,” he sighed, the weight of his lungs surprising him for once.
“Well…” Her eyes floated away from him as she pouted. When she jerked her gaze back to him, her eyes glowed but there weren’t any more tears. “I don’t want you burdened with it either. So, you shouldn’t have thrown yourself at him like that.”
“Hyacinth,” was the only word he managed to say as he worried about just breathing in and out.
“No! Don’t Hyacinth me all sweet and loving, I’m quite upset with you Austin because…I thought…” she trailed off and she didn’t have to finish it.
He thought the same thing.
Austin thought he had lost her.
“I know.” He licked his lips.
Hyacinth climbed to her feet. She jutted the vial into his hands with a huff. “I need you to put drops in my eyes because I can’t do it. And I very much would like to cry right now!’
Austin chuckled weakly as he uncapped the dropper from the vial.
Then with a tender palm to the back of her head, he brought her flush against the worktable, between his knees.
Her body sank into the touch, already lying her head back into his palm.
He let loose two drops into each eye and watched her eyes flutter rapidly.
But as she laid there in his hand, he stopped to study her again.
Her left palm reached up to brush aside tears that dripped off her chin.
He stared at the distinctly different hand sewn onto her wrist. Having noticed it immediately upon waking, but only then able to see it clearly.
Her nails were natural, not press ons, and they weren’t painted.
Plus, the fingers were a little longer, a little thinner than her others.
Yet, it didn’t take away from how breathtakingly perfect she was.
The springy curl of snow-white hair that dangled by her face stood out from her nest of auburn waves.
Her round face was still sweeter than any flower, her lips still full.
There was still a giant scar just below her collar, where her heart was ripped apart then a new one sewn in.
And he loved every inch of her. Her lilac eyes flashed open and she stole his breath away. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she reached up to cup his arm with her hands.
“My flower,” he blurted out, taking both her cheeks in his hands and stroking them with the pads of his thumbs.
“I’m upset at you,” she whined through the tears, a smile still cracking her face in face. “Because just as I was feeling like a person, you went and got yourself burned at the stake.”
He let out a startled laugh. “You do?”
She bounced on her toes excitedly. “I do! I feel like a person. Like this is me. I am Hyacinth, I am a person and not just a floating soul trapped in a body—” She stopped in the middle with a yelp as he scooped her up into his arms. She threw hers around him and wrapped her legs around his waist. Continuing in his ears, she sighed dreamily, “And there’s no Hyacinth without Austin. ”
“Oh, my flower, that’s not true.” He tightened his grasp around her, despite how lethargic his body was or how sluggish his reactions were. She was here. In his arms. Safe.
“My reason for being is to make you happy.” He could hear the smile in her voice but he audibly groaned. It ripped a weak giggle from her, but it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. Austin squeezed the next few words out of her. “There is no me without you, Austin.”
He nuzzled his face into her collarbone. “And there is no me without you, Hyacinth.”
“Well, clearly…” she huffed, pulling back to stare into his face. He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “I pulled you out of that fire. Do you know how much that hurt? I lost my hand!”
Hyacinth wiggled her new digits for added effect.
Austin’s head fell back in a laugh. A good one, from deep in his aching belly.
It stung his lungs and made him flinch. But it was the best feeling in a long time as she grinned, pleased with herself.
His flower snuggled down into his chest as he laughed, gasped for air, then laughed a little more.
And when he laid back down on that slab of metal, staring up at the ceiling in the laboratory, he thought to himself, This is what love feels like.
The moment he could get enough air in his lungs to say it—to profess to her the way a fairytale prince would to his princess, he was going to tell her.
For now, however, I’ll take just lying here with her in my arms.
Safe.
And sound…for now. Austin happened to glance to the side, slinking at the edge of the room, a hollow-eyed woman turned into shadows.
A woman who looked eerily similar to Hyacinth.
Austin hugged her close to his chest. They lay there, dozing in and out.
He swung like a pendulum between limbo and fully alert.
Every time he woke up, was to a tingle in his body at some part.
When he perked up suddenly, he’d catch the ghost skittering out of view.
Like a roach to the light, she’d linger nearby then race away the second he spotted her.
“Austin?” Hyacinth murmured from his chest, finally sitting up in his lap on the table.
“We should get out of here,” he sighed, glaring at the last corner the ghost disappeared behind. “Sleep in a real bed.”
Hyacinth nodded sleepily, climbing down with the help of her wings.
Austin followed her, legs wobbly at first. But after a little leaning on the tables as he walked past, he was upright.
Then the stairs loomed in front of him, and he almost crawled up them.
He took the stairs one at a time, stopping to take a breath between each one.
He was dizzy, and considered staying in the lab, but he wanted to be where others could hear. Especially if Sabine returned again.
“You saw her, didn’t you?” Hyacinth asked from halfway up the steps, leaning cooly against the railing.
Austin grimaced, stopping to stare up at his beautiful flower.
She smiled sympathetically at him, her hair down but out of her face.
Unlike the drenched rat of a ghost that ran her fingernails along the underside of the stairs.
He could hear their incessant clicking as she followed them up to the top.
He managed to grind the words out of his teeth, “I won’t let her hurt you. ”
“I’m not scared of her hurting me,” she muttered.