She hurriedly shuffled through the pages of the book that had come with the oracle deck. I observed the cards I’d pulled— the first was a picture of a dark-haired woman leading a white unicorn through a stone gate. The second was an image of a black unicorn and a white unicorn running together against twilight. The third was the depiction of two unicorns floating along a magical surface, their horns glowing and forms mirroring each other.
As she read the contents, she let out anem-hmsound and said, “It’s just as I thought. In the past, you were willing to listen to your heart. You followed your intuition and did what you thought was best at the time.”
Yeah, I sure fucking did.Following my intuition was what had led to all of… this. I didn’t trust myself anymore to make the right choice.
“Now, in the present, you’re struggling to face your shadow side,” Odette went on. “You’re willing to embrace the light side of you, but not the dark. You’re not going to progress further unless you learn to accept yourself as you are, and be comfortable with the choices you made.”
These cards were pissing me off. It’s like they were rubbing it in my face that I hadn’t mastered shadow manipulation yet, and at this point, it didn’t feel like I ever would. I didn’twantto accept my dark side. Why couldn’t everything be good, instead of being so horrible all the time?
“The last card…” Odette tapped her chin. “If you’re going to succeed, you need to depend on your friends, because you won’t be able to do this alone. This card indicates that you need to sit back and rest, and rely on the help of other people in order to achieve your goal. Relaxation, restoration, and partnership with other people is how you’ll find the support you need to succeed.”
I’d hardly been so frustrated about my destiny. “But how am I supposed to do that?” I complained. “Everything is depending on me. I’m the Worldweaver. I’m supposed to save the fae, no one else can. I can’t just sit back andrelaxwaiting for someone else to come save me.”
“That’s what the cards tell me,” Odette said.
“Well those cards are wrong,” I shot at her. “We should do it again, because I need better advice than— oh, fucking hell!”
The line on my infusion pump had broken off right where it attached to the syringe. The split tubing soaked my clothes and the chair I was sitting on. Odette jumped up, giving a squeak.
I panicked for a few seconds. This had never happened to me before, so I didn’t know what to do. I snapped back to attention when I realized thousands of dollars of medication was leaking out all over my clothes and onto the floor. I immediately turned the pump off, while Odette rushed to get a towel to sop up the ruined plasma.
I removed the syringe from the pump and found that the tip of the syringe had somehow broken during the infusion process, shattering the tubing. I wouldn’t be able to use the rest of the medication in that syringe, which had almost been full.
Not only that, but since the tubing was ruined, I needed to put new needles in, too, so now I had to poke myselfeighttimes instead of four. Freaking fantastic.
Odette nervously watched me as I connected a new line of tubing to my secondary syringe. I took the old needles out, and swore as I put new ones in. I was running out of space on my body where I could put these things. I avoided bruises from old infusions and slipped the second syringe back into the pump, only to find that when I turned it on, the pump didn’t do anything.
Anger festered within my gut. “Great. My pump’s not working,” I said. I shook it a little, but it refused to operate.
“We should get Miroslava,” Odette said anxiously.
“No, I don’t want to bother her. I can handle this myself,” I insisted. I didn’t put new needles in for nothing. “I’ll just manually infuse it.”
“Are you sure?” Odette nervously played with her hands.
“Yeah, it’ll be fine.” With effort, I used my hands to push the end of the syringe down, so it flooded the medicine into my system. I watched as the plasma within the syringe was emptied into my body, from one-hundred milliliters, to ninety, to eighty, in moments.
This wasgreat. It was way faster than using my pump. I could get this whole syringe done in ten minutes, compared to an hour with the pump. Why didn’t I do this all the time?
It only took a couple of minutes for me to realize why thiswasn’ta great idea. My heart rate jumped so it was beating against my chest, and a line of sweat broke across my forehead. My body felt hot, and I took deep breaths to try and cool myself down. Was I having a heart attack? Because it felt like it. My thoughts became long and drawn out, my mind groggy, like I was drunk. I felt the world bend and dip underneath my seat, like I was about to pass out.
I stopped pushing the medicine in and waited for the side effects to abide, but they only got worse.
Oh, shit. It felt like I was going to die.Was Igoing to die? I was probably overreacting.
But I must’ve looked bad, because Odette paled as her eyes wandered up my form.
“I’m getting help!” Odette scurried out. I laid back on the couch and tried not to roll off of it. The room was spinning and I couldn’t keep my head up right now if I tried.
Miroslava’s disapproving gaze was all I needed to know I fucked up. She removed my needles with flat lips, checking my vital signs.
“Emma, there’s a reason your medication is supposed to be infusedslowly. It can cause dangerous side effects if it’s injected too quickly into your system,” Miroslava scolded.
“I sure as hell figured that out,” I slurred. My tongue was thick and dry in my mouth.
Odette poked her head back in as Ethan hurried inside. My husband might as well have been a fucking alien. I barely recognized him. Man, this shit was really fucking with my brain.
He knelt by my side and took my hand. “Will she be all right?” he asked.
