Chapter Fifteen - Evie
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Evie
BY THE THIRD day, I stopped pretending I was going to eat.
But Mara kept bringing trays anyway. At first, she’d tried to tempt me with soft cheeses, honeyed fruit, and warm bread with butter.
Then she stripped it down when that failed to plain broth, crusty bread, and water in gold-rimmed cups.
As if simplicity might make my body less offended by the idea of swallowing.
It didn’t.
Everything turned my stomach now. The smell of food. The sight of it. Even the thought of chewing made something inside me recoil.
That morning, Mara stepped through the veil with another tray balanced in both hands, and the faint scent of the meaty broth reached me before she did.
My body reacted before my mind could, and I threw the blanket back and stumbled for the basin, barely making it before I dropped to my knees and retched.
At first, nothing came, only violent, empty heaving that wrung through me so hard it made my ribs ache.
Then a small amount of bitter liquid burned its way up my throat, thin and hot and cruel.
My eyes watered, and my hands slipped against the marble edge.
By the time it stopped, I was shaking so badly I could barely hold myself upright.
Behind me, I heard the tray rattle as it was set on the table.
“Evie,” Mara said, her voice splintering on my name.
I kept one hand braced on the basin, and the other pressed hard to my stomach, breathing through my mouth, waiting to see if another wave was coming.
“Please,” she whispered.
“Take it out.”
There was a pause. “You need to eat.”
I let out a laugh that sounded more like a choke. “I know. Just, please, Mara. Take it out. The smell…”
The room was quiet except for the soft clink of dishes as she gathered the tray again.
I stayed there after she left, too exhausted to move. The silk hem of my dress had twisted around my legs. Damp strands of hair clung to my face and throat. But I didn’t care.
Everything hurt. My ribs. My head. The empty ache in my stomach. Even breathing felt like work now.
When I finally pushed myself upright, it took longer than it should have. The room leaned sickly for a moment before settling again, and I stood very still until my body decided not to humiliate me a second time.
The bed might as well have been a field away. By the time I crawled back into it, I was trembling so hard the mattress shivered with me. I dragged the blanket over myself and lay flat, one arm over my eyes, afraid to move.
Sleep had become the only mercy left. When I was asleep, I wasn’t nauseated. When I was asleep, I wasn’t weak. I was just… nowhere.
I don’t know how long I was out when the next voice reached me. It was male, low, and unfamiliar.
My eyes opened to slits. A man with wings stood near the foot of the bed in silhouette, and my heart kicked so hard it hurt because I thought, absurdly, impossibly, that I was back with Luc. I honestly thought I wasn’t in that room anymore. It was just him, coming toward me through the dark.
Then the figure shifted, and reality slammed back into place. Definitely not Luc.
This guy was dressed in pale gold, his robes severe and practical rather than beautiful. No softness to him, but no darkness either. He had the face of someone built for order and injury, for clean edges and bloodless precision. He wasn’t beautiful in the way heaven preferred beauty. He was useful.
Mara hovered near the doorway with her hands clenched in front of her.
“She cannot keep anything down,” she was saying. “It’s been days. She sleeps and vomits and won’t eat.”
“I heard you,” he said.
His tone wasn’t cruel, exactly. It was just flat, like he was used to dealing with a very different kind of problem.
I tried to sit up, and the room lurched so sharply I had to clamp a hand over my mouth.
His attention snapped to me. “Don’t move so quickly.”
I made a sound that might have been a laugh if my throat hadn’t felt stripped raw.
He came to the bedside and took my wrist. His fingers were cool and clinical. He wasn’t touching me like a person, or even really as a woman. He was assessing. He was looking for recognizable failure.
His brow furrowed almost immediately. “You are very weak.”
No shit.
“I’m thriving,” I croaked.
He ignored that. His other hand hovered at my throat, then just above my sternum, not touching, but it was like he was listening to something inside me. Silver light passed thinly between his fingers, not like The First Light’s presence, but narrow and deliberate, like he was measuring.
His expression changed. It wasn’t alarm. It was… confusion.
“There is no wound,” he said.
Mara stared at him. “She’s been vomiting for three days.”
“I can see that.”
“Then help her.”
The irritation that crossed his face was brief, but there. “I am trying to understand what requires help.”
That silenced her for all of half a second. “She can’t even keep water down.”
He looked at me again, then moved his hand lower, hesitating above my stomach. His frown deepened, not because he’d found something, but because he hadn’t.
“No fever,” he murmured. “No rot. No venom. No tear in the flesh. No corruption in the organs that I can sense.” He looked back at Mara. “The body is under strain, but I don’t see the source.”
I closed my eyes. Of course, he didn’t. Because no one here got sick. He had no idea what was wrong with me.
He was used to broken bodies, I could tell, but the familiar kind like the damage training left behind—split skin, bruised muscles and cracked bones. He was used to obvious cause and repair, not this. Not a body turning traitor from the inside out for reasons no one in this place could figure out.
“So what do we do?” Mara asked.
He stepped back from the bed. “Rest. Small amounts of water. Bread or plain broth if she can tolerate it.”
Mara blinked at him. “That’s all?”
His mouth tightened. “That is what I have.”
Something ugly and tired twisted through me. I didn’t have the energy to hate him properly. He was just another shiny thing in a place full of them, baffled by a mortal body behaving like a mortal body.
He left without another word. But Mara stayed a little longer, standing near the bed like she thought sheer worry might force me back toward health.
“You look graver every time I come in,” she said quietly.
I didn’t answer because I did. I could feel it myself. My limbs were heavy and hollow at the same time. My stomach hurt with emptiness, but the idea of eating felt impossible. Even the room seemed farther away, like I was floating just beneath myself, too tired to climb back in.
She came closer and adjusted the blanket near my shoulder.
“I’ll bring water later,” she whispered.
I nodded, too tired to speak, and let my eyes close. I slept. Or passed out. I couldn’t tell anymore.
When I woke next, the light had shifted to the false hush this place wore all the time. My mouth tasted like old acid. My stomach ached with a dull, gnawing emptiness that no longer felt like hunger, just exhaustion.
I blinked, and then someone was near the table.
I knew before I fully focused. Because the room changed for Him.
It came with pressure and warmth, and that stupid, thick gilded stillness that entered whenever He was near.
His presence spread through the room like syrup through water, slow and golden and inescapable.
I pushed myself upright too quickly and nearly gagged.
He turned at once. His gaze dropped first to the untouched tray still sitting where Mara had left it hours ago. Then to the basin. Then back to me. Something in His face shifted. It was suspicion, but concern, and somehow that made it worse.
“Mara told Me you were unwell,” He said
My throat moved against nothing. “And?”
“And I came.”
A laugh scraped out of me as brittle as old glass. “How merciful.”
Usually He would’ve smiled at that. Some soft, maddening little curve of the mouth as though my defiance amused Him. This time He only looked at me.
“You are fading,” He said quietly.
The words landed too hard. Because He wasn’t mocking me.
He crossed the room and lifted the cup from the tray. Water shone against the gold rim. Every muscle in my body locked. He saw the fear at once.
“You think I mean to poison you,” He said.
I said nothing. His gaze held mine for a long moment. Then something almost weary passed through His expression.
“If I wished to harm you,” He said, “I would not need a cup.”
That was true, so miserably true.
He held the water between both hands. There was no spectacle to it. No flare of theatrical power. But gold moved over the surface of the water in thin ripples of light, sinking slowly beneath it until the whole cup seemed lit from somewhere deeper within it.
I stared despite myself.
Then He came to the bed and held it out. “Drink.”
I looked from the cup to His face. “Why?”
“Because you need it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” He said. “It is not.”
My hand shook when I tried to push myself up farther. I hated that He saw my weakness. I hated that He saw everything.
He moved then, slowly enough to give me time to recoil if I wanted, and slid one hand behind my shoulders.
I went rigid. My sick and starved body almost betrayed me again.
The warmth at my back, the careful way He lifted me, the terrible steadiness of Him, it hit something half-delirious in me, and for that flicker of a moment, it felt too much like being held by Luc, too much like safety.
It vanished as soon as it came, leaving shame in its wake so sharp it made my eyes sting.
This was not Luc. This was not safety. This was the warden of a golden prison, and I was still trapped in it. But I was so sick. So tired. And the cup was right there.
“If this is a trick,” I whispered, “I swear to god—”
His brows lifted almost imperceptibly at that.
Then, softly, “Which one?”
I stared at Him.
Under any other circumstance, I might’ve laughed. As it was, the faintest sound escaped me, half-hysterical and half-broken. “I hate You,” I said.