Page 121 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
“If they make you happy, I will.”
They curled up together on the chairs, sitting in silence as the minutes ticked by, each bringing her a little closer to the moment when Dimitri would return.
Wake up, wake up, wake up.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Stitches and Softness
Dimitri was running in the dark, corridors narrowing around him, the path growing longer and longer. Somewhere in the distance, a woman was screaming.
Mother.
He couldn’t get to her. He couldn’t reach her. A door barred his passage, wrapped in chains. He would never get through.
And then another voice, hers, but somehow not. Sucked of every iota of warmth he’d always known it for and impaled with ice.
He’s a monster, he’s a monster.
“Wake up.”
A sound like sunlight, shredding through the dark, clawing him back to consciousness.
But there was a pain in his limbs, a burning in his arm, across his entire torso. It wedged him into the nightmare.
No, no, don’t go back there.
“Please.” Another pressure, soft and desperate, melting just a fraction of the pain. A hot sensation on his hand, a pearl of emotion. A plea he could not ignore.
The darkness swirled around him, and he bolted up in bed.
Adeline was beside him, her hand gripping his, resting her head against the mattress. She woke in an instant, eyes wide and fearful.
“I didn’t mean to—” he started.
She leapt from her seat and threw her arms around him, clinging onto his good shoulder as tightly as she dared. He felt her chest shudder against his, felt something like a sob escape her. When she inched back, she pressed her forehead to his, eyes tightly shut.
“You’re awake,” she breathed, as if this were the greatest truth she knew.
“How long—”
“Almost three days,” she said. “Eternity. You scared me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you all right?”
He wanted to say yes. He wanted to be brave, to shoulder her pain, to put her at ease, but he couldn’t. His voice choked on a word. “No,” he said, and burst into sobs.
Adeline was crying too, asking what to do, offering to fetch him something, anything. He couldn’t even tell her not to, could barely clutch at her, couldn’t find the strength to tell her that she was enough, because she should have been because he wanted her to be.
“You’re all right,” she insisted. “You’re going to be fine. You’re fine, I promise. I can get you something for the pain, I can—”
“Fix me,” he said, his force a garbled mess. “I know that you said you couldn’t before, but that was before, and I need to be fixed. I need to… I can’t keep—”
“Don’t—”
“What if, the next time, Idolose an arm? What if I lose the good one? What if I’m forced to live the rest of my life like some kind of—”
“Dim—”
