Page 71 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
She screamed into her pillow.
Somehow, sleep through sheer exhaustion came to her. She wasn’t sure how long she cried for, or how many times she woke, or who kept bringing her water to replenish herself in the night. She knew she dreamed… awful, dark, wretched things… but she forgot them every time she was yanked awake.
Faint, bluish light was trickling through her curtains when she woke for the final time, Mrs Minton shaking her shoulder. She was in a night dress, her brown-grey hair braided, shadows etched into her skin. “It’s over,” she told her. “He’s back to himself now. Sleeping. Upstairs.”
“Is he hurt?”
“Not too badly. Come on.”
She pulled on a shawl, grateful that Mrs Minton didn’t suggest dressing, and followed her up the stairs and into Dimitri’s room. He lay on the bed, pale and still, scratched but not bleeding badly. A tray of things had already been left out for her.
“Do you need anything?” Mrs Minton asked.
Adeline shook her head.Just for him to wake.
Mrs Minton nodded and started to slink away.
“Mrs Minton—” Adeline started.
“Yes?”
“I saw the scars on Hughes’ neck,” she rushed, before she could lose her nerve. “Did Dimitri—”
Mrs Minton stiffened. “No,” she said. “The monster did. Or the villain that cursed him. Or his…” She shook her head. “It was the first transformation. The one we didn’t know was coming. Hughes leapt between him and his mother. It was a miracle he survived, but it wouldn’t have been Dimitri that killed him. That boy, for all his temper, couldn’t hurt a fly. Some boys like to torture insects. Dimitri—the Young Lord—used to bring me worms the gardeners had injured and ask me to put them back together.”
Adeline’s gut twisted at the thought, and the awful, bitter injustice of the world. She gritted her teeth, nodding at Mrs Minton, and turned back to Dimitri as the door closed softly behind her.
Adeline stripped back the covers and set to work. She cleaned every wound, tended every lesion. She mopped the blood from his skin and the dried blood from his fingernails, all the while remembering how this body had twisted and bent the night before.
She understood now why the curse had granted him fast healing as a side effect.
Because otherwise he’d be dead.
There was no way to endure this, otherwise. The pain would have destroyed him.
And during the rest of the month, his body was still fighting a slower version of this awful battle, struggling between two forms.
And he had been like this since he was twelve.
Saints and stars, Dimitri, how have you survived? How have you gone through this so many times?
Because he had no choice. Because he was staring at a squalling infant in his arms, knowing the only alternative to pain was death.
Dimitri shuddered awake, eyes wide in an instant.
“Adeline—”
“I’m here.” She reached out to steady him, but he jerked away from her, an action that sliced against her chest.
“You were there,” he said stonily. “Last night.”
“Yes.”
“I told you not to come!”
“I… I’m sorry.”
“Why did you do it?”
