CHAPTER FOUR #3
I didn’t hesitate. Preparing myself for the worst, I bit down. As always, the first taste was pure perfection. It changed faster this time—going bitter and acidic, turning thick and gritty. It was like eating vomit. Clotted, chunky, grainy vomit that kept switching from hot to cold.
I chewed hard and fast, drumming my heels on my floor, fisting my free hand, swearing viciously in my head.
And then it was gone. Swallowed. Finished. All that was left was the core.
I sagged back in my chair, sweating and shaking and on the verge of puking.
People gathered around my chair but I didn’t open my eyes, too focused on attempting to keep down what I’d somehow eaten.
“Good girl,” said Khalida, taking the apple core from my hand. “You did it.”
Later, I’d be proud of that. Right now, my sole concern was that I could still at any moment start hurling.
“Here,” said Khalida. “Drink.”
Opening my eyes, I saw that she held a water pouch. With a shaky hand, I gratefully took it and sipped at the liquid. It was blessedly cool and fresh. “Thank you.”
She squeezed my shoulder. “I know from personal experience that you feel like a sack of crap right now, but once you feel better—”
“If she feels better,” Soule cut in.
I frowned. “What?”
Khalida winced. “Eating the apple was only the first part of it. Now your body needs to digest the ichor. Assuming it can.”
Unease pricked at me. “How will I know if it has?”
She scratched her neck. “Well, um, you won’t—”
There was a loud bang as someone nearby toppled off their chair and knocked over their bucket. I saw his pale face, his eyes wide open and unseeing.
“—die,” Khalida finished. “You won’t die.”
I exhaled heavily and mumbled, “Great.”
The urge to vomit didn’t pass as the hours went by, but it swiftly became the least of my problems. I turned feverish first, my skin all hot and sticky. The chills soon took over, making my teeth chatter and my body shiver almost violently.
Throbbing aches invaded my joints. Vicious cramps twisted my stomach. My skin became so hypersensitive that just the faint feel of sweat on my flesh felt like claws were raking over it.
A pounding headache crept up on me soon after. It felt like someone was burying an ax in my skull over and over. The pain was so bad that it took my breath away and made me feel sicker than I already did.
Aside from the water I was allowed to sip, no one gave me anything to help with the pain or nausea or anything else—only those who quit got help. I had to simply sit on the godsdamn chair right there in the courtyard as I silently prayed to Hellyne for it to quickly pass.
Except it didn’t.
It dragged on and on.
I was distantly aware of Khalida, Quillen, Jelani, and some others murmuring more words of encouragement to me. None held my attention—I was in my own private hell.
A hell that soon became so much worse.
It was like I mentally fell. Dropped into a memory. I stood in my old home, staring down at my parents with gut-rolling sadness. Both were dead, their skin gray and papery-thin, their bodies covered in warts and boils and patches of decay caused by the plague that stole their lives.
Then they were in the pit with the other corpses. Fire erupted around them, consuming their bodies, forcing the stench of burned flesh up my nose and down into my lungs. The fire faded … and then the whole scene went poof. Disappeared in a cloud of smoke and reformed into another scene.
Suddenly, I was running through Reaper’s Pines, something huge and bestial chasing me. The setting altered fast, becoming a maze, but I was still being pursued, the metallic taste of fear on my tongue. I could hear snarls and growls and bull-like snorts coming from behind me.
I crashed into something solid. No, into someone. Minos. It was Minos.
He slammed me against a wall and then sank his teeth into my throat. He drank and drank and … and then it wasn’t Minos anymore. I was no longer crowded against a wall either.
I was outside, my arms tied to posts, and something devilish was all but inhaling my blood while a whip lashed my back over and over. Knives stabbed me. Swords sliced at me. My nails were plucked off. Teeth ripped into my legs. Something hooked into my back, sliced deep, and lifted me.
The pain was like nothing I’d ever felt. It was agony. It was unbearable. It was—
It was gone.
I was back in the courtyard.
Crouching in front of me, Khalida gave me a soft smile. “You’re doing good. Here, drink more water.”
I took a huge gulp … and then it wasn’t water. It was something else, and it felt like things were crawling in my mouth. I spat them out. Spiders. Worms. Beetles.
Oh God, oh God.
I glared at Khalida, who was now no longer Khalida. Atticus was standing over me, and he was smirking. Grinding my teeth, I whipped up my leg—
“Fuck,” a voice burst out, and it was like I surfaced from underwater.
Blinking, I shook my head, breathing hard. Jelani was staggering away from me, cupping his crotch and groaning. I looked at Khalida, who was snickering at the sight of him.
“Is this real?” I asked her, my voice croaky.
“Yeah,” she replied. “And you just kicked him right in the balls.”
Not quite as feverish now, I swiped at my face with a shaking hand. “Is it over? Tell me it’s over.” But then my skin began to heat again. Not just heat, though. It tingled. Prickled. Became super-sensitive in a purely sexual way.
Worse, an ache built in my core. My nipples throbbed and tightened. My breasts started to hurt. “Oh, shit,” I rasped.
Khalida winced. “It’s horrible, I know. Just breathe, it will pass.”
Oh, I was breathing. Hard. Fast. Unevenly.
I inwardly moaned, so needy and achy and hot. Like I’d been balanced on the edge of an orgasm for hours. Like I’d die if I didn’t explode sometime soon.
I gripped the edges of my chair, unable to trust that my hands wouldn’t wander. It didn’t matter that I had an audience. I wouldn’t care; wouldn’t feel any shame. Not when the itch to come beat in my blood like a drum.
Closing my eyes, I dropped my head, letting my chin rest on my chest. I tried steadying my breathing, concentrating on the flow of air moving in and out of my lungs.
Minutes went by. Or maybe hours—I wasn’t sure. Then, abruptly, every bit of pleasure in my body zipped straight to my abdomen.
And became sheer agony.
A scream got trapped in my throat as I shot forward in my seat and hung my head between my legs. It felt like someone was tearing my insides apart—severing my intestines, bursting my organs, overstretching my flesh, snapping bones, cutting through veins.
Darkness blurred the edges of my vision. I was going to pass out. Nobody could possibly stay conscious through this. Nobody.
“Fight it, Anara,” Khalida urged, a pinch of urgency in her voice. “If you sink into unconsciousness, you won’t wake up. You’ll die.”
Right then, I didn’t particularly care. I just wanted the pain to stop. It was so all-consuming, so blazingly intense.
“You’ve come this far, don’t let go now.”
But then the agony would be over. This whole thing would be over. I needed that. Couldn’t take any more of this Xalbia shit. Couldn’t—
It stopped.
I lifted my eyelids cautiously, half-expecting the pain to return. It didn’t. I very carefully sat upright, my breathing still all over the place.
“You did it,” said Khalida, a grin in her voice.
I looked up at her. “It’s done?” I asked, dreading her answer would be in the negative.
She nodded. “It’s done.”
Thank the gods for that.
Words of praise came from the people surrounding me, but I was honestly too spooked to be affected one way or the other.
I looked around, seeing many candidates still visibly in pain. Two lay unmoving on the ground while some others stood off to the side with their heads bowed.
My eyes incidentally connected with Talon’s. A glimmer of something briefly cracked his vacant gaze, but it was gone too quickly for me to read.
“I’ll bet you’re glad that you took my advice not to eat anything,” Khalida hedged.
I slid my attention back to her. “Couldn’t be gladder.”
Forty days of abject misery, Vesper had said. Still, I hadn’t quite expected this level of fuckery. Something told me that the first day wasn’t even going to be the worst. Fear slinked through me, because I wasn’t so sure if—despite my determination to not quit—I’d actually manage to keep going.
Hell.