Chapter Fifteen #2
Hyacinth clamped a hand over her side, poking a finger in the little hole but it didn’t stop the air from abandoning her.
Panic surged in her veins. Her torso hit the carpet with a thump.
Shadows crept in. The house was engulfed in darkness as the candles in the hall went out with a hiss.
Fingers, wet and clammy wrapped around her ankles.
Hyacinth swallowed over her tongue, unable to scream for help.
Please.
Please someone see me.
Please, I can’t move. My body isn’t mine anymore.
Please…please…please.
She flung her eyes open as she felt cool air brush over her damp face.
A bundle of inky black darted from the shadows under the stairs.
Red eyes flashed and all she saw were teeth.
A mouth full of razors and swirling madness as a beast leapt over her head.
There was a thump, and the candles roared back to life.
“Hyacinth? Hyacinth! Fuck, fuck-shit-fuck—Austin! AUSTIN!”
The last thing she remembered was the way the world shook and the look on Melody’s face as she held Hyacinth in her arms.
“Hyacinth?” Austin’s tender voice lifted her out of a depth she wasn’t sure she could climb out of on her own.
Her limbs were weak. Dizzy— that’s the word—the sensation was dizzy.
Hyacinth blinked her heavy eyelids open till she could see him leaning over her.
His lips curled up into a warm smile. “There are those pretty eyes.”
“Austin?” The sound of his name was like air escaping a crypt. It hissed out of her already dehydrated husk for lungs. Hyacinth was lying on her back, a pillow under her head, and a blanket over her body.
“You punctured your lung. I stitched it back up.” He plopped a glimmering, silver needle onto a little metal plate next to her head. Hyacinth turned her head to look at it only to have his palm scoop up her cheek. He brought her gaze back to his face. “How are you feeling?”
“Scared,” she confessed.
“Understandable,” he wheezed with a nervous laugh. “I once took a pair of garden sheers to the lungs. Lord Rosemont had to make me new ones because they were just too detached. Scared the snot out of me.”
“The snot out of you?” Hyacinth furrowed her brows. Being scared can expel snot? No one warned me that could happen!
“I’d say it was a joke, but I did blow a snot wad or two around that time—er, sorry.
That’s really gross. You don’t want to hear about my nose mucus—er, now I’m making it worse.
” Austin shook his head, letting go of her cheek.
Wait, no. As he twisted from her, her hand jumped out as a knee-jerk reaction.
She grabbed onto his sleeve and clung to it desperately.
Austin stopped to study her face over his shoulder.
Then he steadily returned to her side, his hand back to her cheek.
“Hyacinth, you don’t have to be scared. I’m here. ”
“I think something is wrong with me,” she croaked.
Her eyes burned and both her palms slapped to her face.
She pressed the meat of her palm into her dry eyes.
A mere second later, cold hands plucked her hands from her face and cupped them down near her stomach.
The panicked crack of her voice made her tone jump all over the place as she spoke.
Words tumbling one after the other. All confessing to Austin who made her feel safe, “My eyes itch so bad, like they’re always dry and hot and angry.
And I keep seeing this woman in things. She’s got angry eyes and she’s broken.
She keeps trying to grab me. And-and-and… ”
She hiccupped, as her eyes tried to produce tears but couldn’t.
Body trembling, she leaned into his touch.
Austin nodded softly. His voice was steady, deep in his chest as it rumbled out of him.
A soothing sound that made her lungs unclench, “I can help with the eyes. Then we can work on the woman part.”
Austin ducked beside the table. Hyacinth heard him rummaging and couldn’t help the snort that exploded out of her.
He peeked up over the lip of the medical slab she was on.
Hyacinth glanced at him and giggled harder even though she felt like cracked glass.
“Melody said you all are like chipmunks. Always hoarding stuff in little holes.”
His face bloomed into a wide smile as he chuckled, “She’s right.”
“What are you hoarding?” Hyacinth asked as he returned to riffling through something beneath her.
“Tools, mostly. Supplies. Parts for projects. I collect things we don’t have a need for but are too good to pass up.
Like that werewolf pelt! I didn’t know we’d need one but then you needed a teddy bear and I was so glad I saved it!
” Austin’s explanation filled the air with warmth.
Her trembling eased and for a moment she forgot about the woman in the mirror.
She forgot the panic from not being able to breathe.
All she could hear was him laugh hard as he stood up with a tiny vial of clear liquid. “See!”
“Eyedrops?”
“Better, these are tears of the squonk.” He pulled out a little dropper from a drawer attached to the table. Hyacinth raised both brows. Austin collected some in the glass tube and brought it to her eye. “Relax for me, I promise it won’t hurt.”
Hyacinth opened her eyes and let him hold her lids open.
She stared at the dew drop forming over her eye.
Then it let loose and instant relief flooded her moments after her eyelids screwed shut involuntarily.
While her eyes felt violated, the bliss that came from the liquid canceled it out.
Hyacinth eagerly shifted to give him her other eye.
Austin hummed in appreciation and held the dropper over her.
When she finally opened both eyes, she could breathe easily again.
“Better than eyedrops.” But then tears began to well in her eyes and he grimaced, “Though, you’ll be crying for a bit.”
“What’s a squonk?” she blurted out, trying to swipe away the hot tears that trickled out her eyes.
Austin scooped up behind her shoulders and helped her sit up.
He dropped back down to rummage, putting up a finger that she’d come to accept meant ‘give me a moment’.
Hyacinth twisted to sit on the slab more comfortably.
Her legs dangled over the side happily while tears poured down her face.
He returned with a cloth only to freeze. Hyacinth stared at him in bewilderment.
Austin blinked. Hyacinth blinked. Austin’s gaze dropped from her face to her chest and Hyacinth followed him.
She honestly expected something else to be sticking out of her.
Instead, she found her stitching much calmer than it had been before, and her breasts.
While her nipples ached a little in the cold, she wasn’t uncomfortable.
Hyacinth inspected her naked body, trying to find what made him freeze.
She even glanced over her shoulder. Nothing.
She returned her attention to his face; eyebrows knitted in confusion.
He scrambled, clearing his throat as he did so, to pull the sheet from where it was bunched on the slab to her torso. “Sorry! So sorry! I shouldn’t stare—you’re just naked.”