Luminosity (Book One)

Chapter 13: Newborn

The pain was nonsensical. For the first moment of consciousness, my brain examined the sensation and rejected it as obviously preposterous: it was not the sort of thing that happened. There could not be that much agony all in one instant. My nerves were obviously sending defective reports which could be safely ignored.

But the fire was more persistent than that, and apart from the first split second, I was very aware of what was happening.

It was everywhere - there was no refuge, no cool place to focus my attention and escape. My eyes were cooking in their own fluids, my blood was boiling in my veins, my skin was baking and browning and turning to ash, my bones were dissolving in acid, my lungs were turning every shallow breath I compulsively swallowed into superheated plasma, my organs were twisting and roiling in a bath of magma.

I tried to jerk my body away. It was purely a reflex action - there was no "away" - but I was in no condition to fight the impulse. Dimly, I recognized that I hadn't moved. My muscles worked. Even in their screaming, melting contribution to my anguish, they would tense and release when commanded. I could twitch my fingers, but not flail myself across the room in a vain attempt to escape the burn.

Edward.

He was holding me, as he'd promised - keeping me still. He'd been right after all - the coolness might as well have not been there. There were no bands of reduced scorching where his arms wrapped around my body. But I knew he was with me.

The pain didn't diminish at all. It would have more than consumed the brainpower I'd had available - before. But the change was well underway, and there was more room in my head...

There was just a little corner of space left, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I could use to think.

"Time," I demanded, biting out one syllable before clamping my jaw shut again, and hoping he knew what it meant.

"You slept through the first thirty hours and fifteen minutes," he whispered in my ear at once. I focused every bit of attention I could on his voice. I wasn't sure if I was hallucinating or not when I thought I could hear more nuance to it - were my ears already improved? They were part of the conflagration with everything else. Ear-shaped furnaces on either side of my head. They could pick up sound anyway - and his voice was tense, miserable, but committed. He hated that I was in pain. That I was awake to hear what he said. But hewould stay. "It's a quarter after four in the morning. Thursday. It should all be over at ten p.m. tomorrow if you're on time - you might be faster with all the venom in your system." He spoke through gritted teeth.

Tomorrow. Over tomorrow.

But not yet.

I burned.

It took almost a full hour after my awakening before I truly wanted to die.

This desire was almost as alien as the pain had been. (Now the pain was familiar, which meant only that I could individually dread each of the thousands of minutes that remained of my torment.) I had never previously wanted death, my flippant remarks to Edward about what he'd do if I begged to die notwithstanding.

But nothing was worth this. I couldn't do anything in a millenium that would be worth another hour, even if it would then end. I couldn't do anything with the rest of eternity that would be worth the dozens that actually remained.

At five o'clock in the morning on Thursday, I hoped with every fiber of my wracked and broiling being that he had lied when he'd said he wouldn't kill me, even if I begged.

I begged.

Choking on the words, hating the air that I formed into pleas, I asked to be killed.

"No," said Edward, sounding like he was in as much pain as I. Impossible. "Bella, no. It will be over soon. Tomorrow."