The Dream Keeper's Dragon

3.22 I'm Sorry

Through a creeping white haze, Aurelie saw Shaelyn's chest heave with great effort to inhale a whistling breath. Her arms were slumped at her sides, just like Aurelie's.

The numbness started in her toes and crept up her calves. Now, if she didn't look down to find her body still there, she would have thought it disappeared. She felt paralyzed, too weak to even lift a finger.

Aurelie had called for the guards but with the extended forces that Valice needed around her, very few of them roamed within the castle walls.

Spit rolled up her mouth faster than she could swallow it. A lurch of vomit rocked her forward. Unable to cling to the chair for support with her weakened arms, she tumbled down head first onto the floor and landed next to the slimy, green liquid that had just come from her stomach.

Death loomed, or it felt like it did, but Aurelie felt no fear. Deep in her gut, she knew that she would live. The scales had not broken through her flesh, and the numbness grew worse by the second, creeping up her shoulders so that she could no longer move her neck, but she was sure still.

"You wasted your life," she whispered to Shaelyn in a dry voice. She heard a hoarse exhale, but no words followed. Her poison must have absorbed faster, for she knew Shaelyn wanted to say something. Aurelie took a deep throaty breath, "Your memory will be weaved into history as that of a jealous traitor. People will deface your grave, and spit upon it for generations to come, and that's if I want you remembered." Her head spun on the verge of losing consciousness, but she fought against the darkness that crawled over her eyes to say her say. "I hope there is an afterlife so that the seed of what you did today keeps growing—and sucking down on your conscience as its sun and water. If my child dies, I'll seek you there."

The door opened, slamming against the wall, and swinging back to the sender. "I'm too late," a familiar voice called. Aurelie placed a face to the voice, heart-shaped and dark, but her mind wandered around the letter K and refused to press further in its exhaustion.

"Aurelie," the woman said, suddenly beside her, "can you hear me? Aurelie, it is Karah." Time and sound seemed muddled. She blinked and found herself in the hall held up by strong arms that were followed by a herd of jumbled footsteps.

There were voices mumbling and hands touching her face, then her ankles. Blurred figures moved in and out of sight. A sudden loud cry made her raise her neck to see the source. But when she did, the white curtains of the infirmary surrounded her in an empty corner by the window.

A striking pain tore through her stomach as if someone had thrown a thorny ball inside her and it knocked from one side to the other unable to come to a stop. She cried out and the curtains opened almost instantly.

Vera peeked in and called for someone. Her eyes moved down Aurelie's legs and widened. The curtains swung closed again as she left.

Aurelie's thighs felt moistened by thick liquid. She would look if she could only lift her neck. Her skin itched where the liquid gathered and began to dry. An empty pain in her chest arose with the realization of what was happening, but the lightning strike that suddenly burst through her pelvis dulled it, forcing all focus to itself.

Agony crept up her stomach and spread to the bone.

Vomit rose in her throat again with vigorous force, and Aurelie with little time to react, turned her head to the side as he stomach contracted, pushing out the poison. The slimy bile poured down her neck, heating her for a moment, and then slowed, moving at a slug-like pace and leaving behind a sticky coat from her neck, all the way to the back of her shoulder.

Vera came in pulling Karah by the arm, and carrying towels. Aurelie met Karah's gaze for a second and a thick blackness spread from the corners of her eyes. You said you'd come when I needed you. You lied.