“You won’t use it to bring life into this place?” She was already thinking of ways to kill Calavia depending on her answer.
The girl smiled again, brighter than before. “I only seek to protect myself and my thralls, human. You’re welcome to stay here and become one of them if you so choose. My price is low, considering, and if you have learned anything about the mist, prices are often more than any willing being is wanting to pay. Do you want to see your home again?”
“I...” do. But the word went unspoken. Aldora looked down at her hands, the broken nails on her fingers, the cuts healing on her skin. “I’m not sure.” When she thought of home, she thought of apples, not her family or her mother’s farm, and especially not Thetras, not anymore. Apples: red and juicy and tangible, fresh and sweet with juices making her hands sticky. Like Vedikus’s seed drying on her inner thighs. “I’m not sure.”
“You’ll never see it if you become nothing.”
Aldora’s gaze snapped back to Calavia, pulling out another wax vial from her rags. “Neither one of us want to become nothing.”
“No,” she agreed, twitching. “And there is nothing else you want?”
“Not from you.”
“Not even my blood?”
“I have plenty. You’re not the first human brought to me, nor will you be the last.” Calavia crawled to sit directly before Aldora’s legs, looking up at her with excited eyes, the vial clutched to her chest.
Aldora swallowed, looking down at the girl, anxious but excited, wanting to reflect the same look back at the hag. Part of her wanted to turn on her heel and wake up Vedikus so he could take the decision from her hands. It made her feel like a coward, knowing she wanted to crawl to him like Calavia had crawled to her. She wanted his hand in her hair as he looked down at her. There were no apples in the picture, just him and her, and if anything was between her hands or her thighs, it was him.
Vedikus would not leave here without curing me.Calavia reached out and played with the folds of Aldora’s shift.
Aldora looked back at the exit.
A hand tugged her skirt. “This is a transaction between women. My price will not change even if you brought him here.”
“He could kill you,” Aldora muttered.
A laugh. “He could try, but are you really selfish enough to deny all the beings that will come after you for help?”
There had been another sacrifice after hers. “No,” she said. Whoever it was could end up here.
“Then let this be over.”
Calavia lifted and cinched up the excess cloth fluttering around Aldora’s legs. She stared at the girl and watched quietly as her bare legs were revealed. The vial was uncapped and the waxen rim ran up her leg, catching some of what continued to trickle out of her. It disappeared within Calavia’s shirt a moment later.
Aldora walked back to the pool room with the cure firmly in her hand, uncertain about what she had just done.
