Chapter 16
“Mother, I want you to try this,” I say, holding out the other piece of lemon candy.
Kieran and I went back and forth for a while on who was going to have the last piece. I wanted him to have it so he could have something sweet, but he said the lady made it for me and only me.
“What is it? Where did you get it?” she asks.
“It’s candy and I got it from him. It’s so delicious.” I place the candy in her hand. “Go on… try it.”
Mother looks at it for several seconds before hesitantly putting it in her mouth.
“Oh, this is delicious,” she whispers, her eyes going wide.
“The next time I meet with him I’m going to bring the ingredients so he can have the lady make more,” I say, wiggling my eyebrows.
My mother thinks the candy is just as delicious as I thought it was, I tell Kieran.
I figured you were going to give it to her and not keep it for yourself. He chuckles. I’m glad you both like it though.
Tell her thank you again. It definitely brightened up both of our days. Though, my day was already brightened just by seeing you, I mumble.
I look away from my mother as my cheeks heat up.
Adeline, he says huskily.
I shouldn’t have said that in front of my mother.
Kieran growls and I take a deep breath, slowly letting it out before I look back at my mother.
“Are you alright?” Mother asks.
I nod, not trusting my voice. Does she suspect what Kieran and I were talking about? How could I have been so naive to say that in front of my mother?
“Are you running a fever?” Mother asks as she walks closer to me. Before I can say anything, she places the back of her hand on my forehead. “You don’t feel hot. Did one of your wounds get infected?”
I shake my head. “No, they haven’t.”
“Let me look at the one on your thigh,” she demands.
Sighing, I pull my dress up and look away, not wanting to see the cut on my thigh. While I haven’t been diligent about putting the salve on it, I have looked at it every once in a while to make sure that it was doing okay.
“When was the last time you looked at it?” Mother asks. “When was the last time you put the salve on it?”
“Last week,” I mumble, wincing.
I haven’t been paying attention to it now that I’m slowly starting to do things again and meeting Kieran.. But I still know it’s there because of the pain I’m in whenever I walk.
It’ll take forever to heal if I continue to neglect it and push myself, but I want to see Kieran. I want to get better as soon as possible so I can forget about everything that happened to me and move on.
Lie.
I’m never going to forget about what happened, but maybe if I try hard enough I won’t think about it as often.
“Adeline Duvall,” Mother scolds me. “You need to pay better attention to your wounds.”
“It’s doing fine,” I say without thinking.
“Adeline, look at it,” she demands.
Clenching my jaw, I look down at the cut.
Shit.
“Oh,” I whisper. “I didn’t realize it was—”
“That’s exactly right. You didn’t realize because you weren’t paying attention to it and making sure that you were healing properly. Last week when?”
“I don’t remember,” I say, closing my eyes to get the horrible sight away from me.
But it’s already engraved in my mind. Red. Swollen. Almost puffy.
My cut is infected.
“Adeline, you need to take better care of yourself. If you don’t then what are you going to do later down the road?” she asks. “You need to think about the future. What if it gets so infected that you have to have part of your thigh cut out and you won’t be able to walk normally? What then?”
“I didn’t think about that.” I look up at her, tears glistening in my eyes.
“You need to start thinking about it. Does your mate know?”
I shake my head. “If I didn’t know then he doesn’t know. And I want to keep it that way. I don’t want him to worry more about me and not focus on what’s important.”
But I hear his words ring through my head. He is going to worry about me no matter what. Maybe I should tell him so if he ever finds out it’s not like I kept it from him.
“Let me call the doctor so he can come look at it and assess what we need to do about it,” Mother says as she walks to the door.
I pull my dress down and stand up, grabbing her arm. “No, don’t do that. It will only raise alarm to everyone in town and may even alert the prince. He might demand I go back to the palace with him since I’m not healing well here.”
It is also going to alert the Fae that something is wrong with me and I don’t want Kieran to hear it from someone else. If he is going to hear it… it needs to be from me.
Mother searches my face.
“Please,” I practically beg her. “I’ll put the salve on it every morning and night. I’ll wash it every day and make sure that it’s healing.”
“And if it doesn’t after a couple of days, then I am going to call the doctor. I don’t care if you don’t want anyone to find out. I don’t want you to lose your leg.” She gives me a pointed look.
“Understood.”
I let go of Mother’s arm and walk to the door. Opening it, I’m graced with the sight of Henry leaning up against the wall, looking utterly bored.
“Do you want me to give you a piece of paper and pen so you can draw or write?” I ask, wincing when I step on my bad leg.
Knowing it’s infected makes it hurt a lot more than it did before.
“I told you not to walk so much earlier,” he grumbles. “Did you listen to me? No.”
“Can you pick up some more salve from Kieran?” I ask, whispering his name.
Henry’s eyebrows raise. “What’s wrong?”
“I ran out last week and thought everything was okay, but it’s not.” I rub the back of my neck and don’t look at Henry.
“What’s wrong?” he asks again.
“One of my wounds is infected. I just need you to get it from him after I ask if he can get some more for me.”
Let’s just hope he can get it ready soon so I don’t have to suffer any longer… from my mother’s wrath but also from the pain.
“Contact him and I’ll go there when I go home for the night and will bring it in the morning,” he says. “Can you last that long without it?”
I nod. “Yes, I can. Thank you.”
I turn around and walk back into the house, straight toward the bathroom. Pulling my dress up, I tie it and sit down on a bucket, right in front of the tub of water.
Kieran? I call.
He needs to know before I start cleaning it, in case he can feel my pain.
What’s wrong? Some people said they saw you wincing when you were talking to Henry, he replies.
Of course they already told him something was wrong with me.
I have an infected wound. Henry will be over tonight around sun fall. Do you think you can have some salve ready for him? I ran out last week.
Sweets. How did that happen? he asks.
I thought everything was better when I ran out of the salve. It all looked good and so I didn’t check any of it since the last time. Mother asked to see it and realized it was starting to get infected, I mumble.
Was meeting me what aggravated it? he asks.
Probably not. I didn’t want to look at it and remember everything that happened, so even though it looked good, I didn’t take care of it by washing it and making sure nothing got on it. It was all my doing and none of yours.
Oh, Sweets.
I look up at the ceiling and fan my eyes, trying to stop myself from crying.
I’m going to be okay.
I hope.
I can’t help but shake the feeling that it’s only going to get worse and something terrible is going to happen to my leg. What if Avira placed some type of spell on my cuts to make sure they never heal and get infected?
No.
She wouldn’t have done that. But she definitely could have. That would be one way she would be able to torture me when she can’t get close to me.
I can’t think that way though. Nothing good is going to come from thinking that way.
How bad is the infection? Kieran asks.
Red, swollen, and almost puffy, I mutter.
Is there pus?
I look down at the cut but quickly look away. How am I going to clean this when I don’t even want to look at it?
I don’t know, I manage to say. I can’t bring myself to look at it for too long.
You are going to have to when you clean it. Just start breathing evenly before and focus on your breathing as you look at it. I’ll be here the whole time so you can talk to me to keep calm or I can talk to you. You just let me know what you want to do.
I don’t know.
“Is everything okay?” Mother asks as she peeks into the bathroom.
“I’m trying to look at my cut and clean it but I can’t,” I whine.
“Do you want me to help you?” She walks into the bathroom and kneels down in front of me.
“He wants me to look at it and clean it,” I whisper.
Everything is getting too much and I don’t know what to do.
“How about I tell you what it looks like in detail and you can tell him?” Mother suggests. “And then I can clean it for you. Once you are ready to look at it and clean it, I will be here for you and I know he will be as well. But you don’t need to push yourself too hard.”
“Okay.”
Mother tells me exactly what it looks like and I relay the message to Kieran, letting him know I wasn’t able to do it and my mother is helping.
“I want you to bite down on this while I clean it,” Mother says as she hands me a washcloth. “Bite down as hard as you want.”