Page 72 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
“I heard you screaming, and I… I couldn’t stay away.”
He turned his back to her and slid off the bed, shaking, whether through pain or anger, she couldn’t tell. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t want… I didn’t want you to see me like that.”
Adeline swallowed. “I don’t understand why you want to push me away! Why you wouldn’t tell me—”
“Because you’ll leave anyway. Everyone leaves. No one has ever seen that and… and stayed. They can’t look at me the same afterwards.”
Adeline crept around the bed and knelt beside him, trying to catch his gaze. “Look at me,” she said. “Look at me! Look at me looking at you. I’m still here. I’m not easily startled. I’m not going anywhere.” She grabbed hold of his face, clutching his cheeks harder as he tried to shirk away, tears blossoming in his eyes. “The only thing that scared me last night was seeing you suffer. But you don’t get to suffer alone, not any more. That’s not how this works.”
Dimitri let out a quiet sound, halfway to a whimper, and buried himself in her chest.
“You’re not alone any more,” she said, holding him close to her, “and neither am I.” She balled her fingers into his clothes, not giving him an inch of space, tying him to her, and her to him.You’re safe, you’re safe. I’m safe. We have each other.“I hated watching that. Every moment. It was awful. I couldn’t believe… I didn’t think anyone could survive that, and you go through it alone…”
“I don’t have a choice,” he sobbed. “I never had a choice…”
Neither did I,she thought bitterly, remembering the moment whenhercurse had landed, holding Edie in her arms, staring at her mother’s body, when her whole life had unravelled and been remade in an instant. “I felt like I would have done anything to make it stop.”
He held onto her, tighter. “I’m sorry.”
“What areyouapologising for?”
“For upsetting you.”
“Theworldupsets me,” she said, and pulled back, just a fraction, to look him in the eyes. “But not you, Dimitri. Never you.”
She kissed his cheeks fearfully, and he clutched onto her, harder. “You really won’t leave?”
Adeline was mindful of lying, of making promises that could not be kept, but at that moment, it did not feel like one. “I won’t,” she told him. “I will stay with you.”
Dimitri breathed hard against her, shuddering with the weight of it. “For how long?”
She held his face in her hands. “I will stay with you forever.”
Chapter Eighteen: The Festival
I will stay with you forever.
Those words thumped around Dimitri’s room for the rest of the day, and all through the night. He wished she’d written them, like a contract he could hold her to, or maybe he wanted to paper the walls with them.
I will stay with you.
Forever.
He was careful of believing in them too much, but Adeline so rarely made grand promises, or said anything she didn’t mean. Maybe he could let himself hope, just for once.
He remembered little else but her that day. He did not dwell on pain or discomfort, just basked in her presence. She left at one point to get dressed, and came back with breakfast. They dined together on his bed, and she scarcely left his side for the rest of the day, staying with him long after supper until she was the one almost falling asleep.
“You should go,” he told her.
“Do you want me to go?”
Dimitri, who had been sleeping on and off throughout the day, was not yet tired.
“No,” he said. “But—”
