Page 32 of She Who Was Once the Sea

I’d killed someone truly wonderful. And with his death, I’d sealed my fate. Although I wasn’t even sure if I still wanted to break the curse. As it stood, I didn’t think I wanted to live with this guilt for longer than absolutely necessary.

I lay down on the tile floor beside him, watching his chest rise and fall in shallow, shaking breaths. I’d seen enough death to know it wouldn’t be long now.

His lips, once so pink and full, were pale and listless, moving ever so slightly, as if he were whispering silent pleas to the empty air.

I wrapped an arm around his torso and let my head rest on his chest, closing my eyes and listening to his heartbeat as it slowed.

If only there were a way to put blood back into a body.

My eyes flew open.

I didn’t know if it would work, but before I had time to second-guess myself, I lifted my wrist to my mouth and ripped open the vein there with my teeth. Blood poured from me like a fountain.

If I could be sated by drinking blood, maybe he could be saved in the same way.

With a desperate prayer to a god I no longer believed in, I held my dripping arm over him. I used my free hand to pull his lips open fully, so that my blood filled his mouth. It pooled there slowly until it began to pour out the sides, and I realized that I didn’t know how to make him swallow.

But some of the blood must have found its way down his throat anyway, because he suddenly sat bolt upright, coughing desperately and spraying blood across the room, including onto the shirt he’d so carefully removed.

I jumped backwards, crawling away from him.

When the coughing finally subsided, he turned to look at me, eyes wild, face covered in blood. He gasped, inhaling air like a man who’d nearly drowned.

And then, he fell backwards once more, landing hard on the tile.

After a few painfully silent seconds, I crawled over to him tentatively, the cut in my own wrist nearly completely sealed, so I left only a small trail of blood.

He was breathing again, this time the slow and even breaths of sleep instead of the agonizing breaths that precede death.

He was alive.

With a sigh of relief, I let myself lie down beside him once more, this time curling into a ball a few feet away. I didn’t feel like I was worthy of touching him, but I still reached out one hand and let it rest on his chest, worried that if I couldn’t feel his breathing, it would stop entirely.

And that’s how I fell asleep, covered in blood, and knowing I’d saved a life.

Chapter 15 - Garrett

My head was being split in two. That’s all I could think as bright, unrelenting sunlight poured into the room.

I must have forgotten to close the blinds the night before.

Squinting, I moved my head around, trying to find an angle where I could fall back to sleep without having to get up to close them now.

That’s when I noticed that the surface beneath me was not the soft down of my Fratelli-issued mattress, but something cold and hard.

Like the floor. Had I passed out?

Slowly, I began to take stock of my body. I hurt all over but nowhere hurt nearly as much as my neck. When I lifted my fingers to gently probe the area, I winced. It felt like pressing down on a fresh bruise.

And that’s when I remembered, and my eyes flew open.

I shot up from the floor so quickly that the blood in my body rushed to my head, and I almost passed out again. Frantically, I searched the room, eyes darting from wall to wall until they landed on an armchair in the corner.

She was there, arms wrapped tightly around curled legs, chin resting atop her knees. Her eyes were sunken and rimmed with red, and she stared at me with guarded desperation.

We stayed like that for a long time, neither one of us speaking, me holding onto my neck while the sound of my heavy breathing filled the room.

"You’re okay?" Her voice was raw when she finally spoke, like she’d spent the night screaming.