Chapter Fifteen - Evie #3
I chewed slowly, and then swallowed and waited. My stomach tightened once as if it was uncertain, and I held my breath. But there was nothing. No lurch. No acid rising. No sudden warning of a gag.
I looked down at the bread in my hand. Then I tore off another piece. And another. By the fourth bite, I wasn’t eating cautiously anymore. I was eating like someone who was ravenous and couldn’t believe her own body had finally asked for something other than suffering.
The bread was soft beneath the crust, almost melting the moment it touched my tongue. Every mouthful left behind that same impossible sweetness, not on my tongue exactly, but deeper, like it was settling somewhere inside me that had been empty much longer than a few days.
I didn’t stop until more than half of it was gone. Only then did I catch myself. I lowered it slowly back to the tray, breathing harder than I should have been, and wiped my fingers against the blanket.
This was a mistake. It had to be.
I leaned back against the pillows and waited for the punishment, for the wave of nausea. For the cramp in my stomach. For the frantic scramble back to the basin. But nothing happened.
I lay there with one hand pressed over my middle, stunned by the quiet, and then a rustle at the veil made me look up. Mara stepped inside, and the moment she saw me, her whole face changed.
“Oh,” she breathed.
I frowned. “What?”
She let the veil fall closed behind her and came farther into the room, her expression halfway between relief and disbelief.
“You look…” She shook her head, almost smiling. “You look so much better.”
I sat up a little straighter automatically. “I do?”
“Yes.” She came to the bedside and perched carefully on the edge, studying me. “Your skin. It’s not all gray anymore. You were starting to look…” She stopped herself, then tried again. “You look almost luminous.”
“That’s unsettling.”
“It’s true.”
Only then did her gaze shift past me to the tray. The empty water cup. The half-eaten bread. She went very still. When she looked back at me, something cautious had entered her face.
“Evie,” she said carefully, “did you eat… that bread?”
I glanced toward it. “Some of it.”
“And the water?”
“He…” I looked down at my hands. “He did something to it.”
Mara’s expression changed so subtly I almost missed it.
“I don’t know what He did,” I said quickly, because the look on her face made me want to defend myself for reasons I couldn’t explain.
“But I woke up hungry. Actually hungry. And I ate some of the bread, and it was…” I frowned, trying to find the right word and failing.
“God, Mara, it was so good. I’ve never tasted anything like it.
It was so sweet and soft and…” I shook my head. “I don’t even know how to describe it.”
Mara glanced at the bread again, then back at me. The color had gone strange in her face.
A cold little thread worked its way through my relief. “What’s wrong?”
She looked at me for a moment too long. Then, very softly, she said, “It’s manna.”
I blinked. “What?”
“The bread.” Her eyes flicked to the tray again, as if she still couldn’t quite believe it was there. “It’s manna. He makes it Himself. It’s…” She swallowed. “Special.”
I stared at her.
“No one but angels is ever given that bread,” she whispered.
Confusion pushed up through the last of my relief. “Why?”
Mara looked at me in a way I didn’t like at all. Too searching. Too uncertain.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
I glanced toward the half-eaten loaf. It looked so harmless sitting there on the tray, torn open by my own hand. Then I looked back at her.
“What do you think it means?”
Mara’s mouth parted, then closed again. When she finally answered, her voice was barely there.
“Again, I don’t know,” she said slowly, “but… maybe He’s trying a different approach to soften you up.”
I stared at her. “That’s fucking creepy as shit.”
“It is,” Mara whispered, nodding slowly.
I looked back at the half-eaten bread, and I couldn’t stop thinking about His hands around the cup and the way He’d said drink like it was the simplest thing in the world. And how good the bread had tasted. And even though I felt much better now, it all still made my skin crawl.
“I hate this place,” I muttered.
Mara’s mouth twitched faintly. “That, at least, sounds like you’re feeling like yourself.”
I snorted, then immediately regretted it when my stomach clenched. But the nausea still didn’t rise. Instead, something else did. It was warmth moving under my skin in a slow, golden thread, faint at first, then stronger, slipping through me with a steadiness I recognized instantly. And I froze.
Mara saw it in my face. “What?”
I sat up straighter as the warmth spread down my arms. My fingertips tingled.
“Oh,” I whispered.
“Evie?”
I looked at the wall. I could feel the secret passage behind it now without even touching it, like the bread had fed something beyond my body, something older and waiting.
Mara followed my gaze, and her eyes widened. “Can you do it?” she asked.
I slid off the bed. My legs were shaky, but they held. Gold flickered beneath my skin.
And for the first time since this illness started, I smiled.
“Maybe,” I said, staring at the wall. “Let’s find out.”