CHAPTER THIRTY — One More Wrong ..
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"I am sorry," Daphne sighed, tapping with a single finger coated in medical cream over the cut across Coriolanus upper and bottom lip. Though it's only been two days since the unfortunate incident resulting in two unanticipated casualties, his cut had already begun to heal into a scar, something she couldn't say however about her own guilt, not the other bruises the altercation had left on his body.
He had long since suspected she blamed herself for what had happened out there, but this was the first time they actually had the time to sit down together and talk about it. Daphne had decided to word out an apology as the beginning of this conversation — it was an apology Coriolanus did not need. He, quite like her, had had time to think through what had happened and he concluded many things, amongst which most significant stood his realization that he wasn't upset with Daphne. He doubted he could ever really be upset with her.
"I'm not," he reassured her, speaking quietly in an attempt to not move his lips much and thus not disturb her from her work. After all, it was exactly for her tender touch and that enjoyable sting of pain it left under his cut that he sat in that chair before her own every night and every morning. He imagined that since she's the one who will be kissing his lips, it's up to her to decide if she wants that cut's scar to be faint or more pronounced, because he for one did not care much about it — had it been up to him, Coriolanus wouldn't have deemed this medicine necessary.
"Well, I shouldn't have said it anyway," Daphne affirmed in return, so clearly fighting back a yawn. She hasn't been sleeping much and though the night they spent on the bumpy road getting them to the Northern province Cress has taken over to establish the new mining site was justifiably one without rest, the previous one, first spent in the tent she was given amidst their improvised camp, was one that proved stress has once again taken an iron grip over her mind. In anticipation, remembering far too well how things went while she had worked on the poison, her body ached for the many more sleepless nights to come. "I shouldn't have asked you to kill her," she continued, lowering her hand from his face and thus dropping her gaze too.
"I didn't kill her for you." Coriolanus didn't waste a second with doubting his instincts, but instead followed them such that his hand found hers to hold. "I killed her for us. She'd seen too much and we could always do without liabilities left loose in the world," he spoke his stone cold reasoning, surprised to discover it wouldn't chill him in the slightest to hear himself regard deaths with such nonchalance. "Wrong as it may sound," he appreciated next, averting his gaze until he had their hands within sight, not her eyes, "and this may surprise you yet, I wanted her dead too."
"Trust me, I feel horrible about that part too," she sighed, not planning on letting go of Coriolanus' hand even as she sat up from her chair and walked that single step which separated them over. "You didn't deserve being doubted like that," Daphne didn't hesitate admitting, much as she didn't hesitate making herself comfortable in his lap, even if to do so she had to shift a couple of times in a motion excruciatingly close to how he knew she looked while riding on top of him.
Clearly, given that once their chests were flushed together Daphne leant forward and wrapped her arms around him in a warm embrace, she didn't mean to make his mind wonder to such places, so Coriolanus tightened his jaw and employed each fragment of self control he still had in him to merely stay still. Just as clearly it became to him then, when her head rested beneath his shoulder and she hid her face in their embrace while her hands clung to his uniform, that Daphne didn't care much for the possibility of them being walked in on, a possibility ever higher since they were in a campaign tent, after all.
He wasn't supposed to be there, but they both agreed that was exactly where he should have been, so Coriolanus accepted the risk and wrapped his arm around Daphne too, giving her the warmth he didn't have to be some genius to guess she needed. In that vulnerable moment, he found himself thinking — She's such a soft thing in my arms.
She often joked that he held her as if he was handling precious porcelain, but just then, Coriolanus realized it was more fitting to say that he held her as if he were the wind and she was a dandelion with whose puff he had fallen in love with.
After claiming a rather short moment of serenity in the position where she felt the safest, Daphne lifted her head again and leant back so she could look Coriolanus in the eyes. "Can I make it up to you in any way?" she asked, such genuine worry clinging to her words and arching her eyebrows upward that Coriolanus couldn't help but smile.
"You could," he trailed his hands down to her waist in a caress with tenderness to which her eyes reacted the loudest. "But there is one problem," he stilled his hands and tilted his head ever so slightly to the side so his gaze may slip from her eyes, to her lips and down to her collarbones only to raise back again on the same path unfelt. "I'm not mad at you."
"Disappointed then?" She assumed.
"I understand preparing for the worst is in your nature and that may well be the only thing ensuring the New World's success, but dear," Coriolanus lifted only one hand to cup the side of her face, "I'm not mad and I am not disappointed. I understand you completely."
The heavy sigh she released, the weight of her head as she trusted him to hold it for her, the slowness of her blinks, they were all fragments of an ode to love and he knew she felt then as he had felt for so very long — lucky to have him.
"If it helps you in any way, you should know that had I been in your shoes, I would have probably been much worse," he confessed, rejoicing at seeing her smile in return, at long last. "Stress and exhaustion makes us all insufferable at least once."
"I was insufferable, wasn't I?" Daphne scrunched her nose and closed her eyes, embarrassed now to think back at that day.
"Nothing I can't deal with," Coriolanus shrugged, raising his chin in boastful fashion. "You could probably kill me and I would still love you too much to haunt you."
"Haunting me sounds pretty romantic though," a sheepish nuance appeared within her smile before she looked back over her shoulder. "But you shouldn't worry —"
"Too little audience to kill me," he said at the same time with her, their voices harmonizing in such a way that Daphne was immediately compelled to lean forward in a fit of giggles she simply had to subdue in any way possible. "I remember when you told me that like it was yesterday," he boasted, even as he risked utter shamelessness in doing so. "Perks of a perfect memory extend themselves outside the Academy, I suppose, because I get to remember all the small moments like when you sat next to my hospital bed, an autumnal forest come to life." Bringing that memory to the forefront of his mind surprised Coriolanus with a vivid vision of a sharing characteristic he had to underline out loud, sad as it may be to discover it as a fact, "You were tired back then too."
Daphne sighed, and though initially she seemed to have chosen her answer to be a prolonged silence, eventually she made her murmur heard, "Sleep is for people who have time."
"I think I found how you can make it up to me after all," Coriolanus responded. Without any sort of hesitation he corrected his posture and adjusted his grip around Daphne to attempt something which he wouldn't have been capable of pulling off had it not been for the change of lifestyle — he got up from the chair whilst holding her, action which had obviously earned her yelp.
Though he wasn't that much taller than her, it was still undesirable in her mind to fall off, so her instinct, before even assessing that he was holding her well enough that falling was pretty much impossible, took over and had Daphne wrap herself around him tight enough that Coriolanus chuckled.
"Having fun?" she playfully slapped the back of his head for that chuckle, though they both knew such sweet sounds were positively still awakening shivers in her chest, the first step into getting heat to warm her cheeks.
Having perfect access to do so, Coriolanus left a short peck on her shoulder as he walked them back to her iron framed bed, just about big enough for one person. He set her down, laying her on her back. Though he hadn't aimed to hover above her for that long, Coriolanus couldn't help himself in lingering — it was a need not a mere want to stay there a little longer and brush her hair back, arranging how her auburn locks fell upon the pristine white pillow beneath her head.
Before he even knew it, Daphne's hands have slid from the back of his neck down to his chest, grasping his shirt and tugging him closer. He had to quickly flatten his palm on the pillow besides her hair to stop himself from being dragged further in by this land siren who he would in fact allow himself to be devoured by at any moment, even if it was the last thing he would live to do.
His unwillingness to climb in bed with her puzzled Daphne on that fine line that would tamper into the land of frustration should he resist their shared urges any further. "Snow lands on top," she reminded him with a hint of urgency, tugging once again in hope that he may just give in already — there was no better way than this for them to start their day after all, or so she liked to believe that this would qualify to be how a perfect day should go.
"Not today," Coriolanus smiled. He would have given her a quick kiss before pushing himself off the bed, but he knew better than to underestimate how hypnotizing the sensation of her lips on his could get — he ought to remain focused.
Daphne groaned, propping herself up on her elbows, "Then what on earth did you mean by making it up to you?"
"You would have made it up to me once you've gotten a proper sleep," he shrugged, walking over to the chairs they left in the middle of the tent, to drag one closer to her bed.
"Cor—"
"No," he raised his hand in the air, pointing back at her without looking. "Don't bother denying it. I already know you haven't slept well last night, dear."
"No, you don't understand," Daphne insisted, though her exhaustion spoke for itself, stopping her from actually getting up. "Coryo, it's not that I don't want to sleep, it's simply that I can't. There is simply too much on my mind...," she trailed off, seeing as Coriolanus had placed the chair besides her bed and sat down. "What are you doing?"
"I'm going to watch while you struggle to fall asleep, like a creep," he retorted with a blunt edge to his tone. After crossing his arms over his chest, he rolled his eyes and humored a smile back to his lips though, "I'll help you fall asleep, of course."
"Help me fall asleep?" Daphne repeated, her disbelief coming out as a gentle mockery making her raise one eyebrow. "That's cute, but I am pretty sure lullabies only work on little children and I hate to break it to you, but they never worked in my case, love."
"How about a little bit of trust here, hmm?" Coriolanus reached his hand out and dropped it on her shoulder, giving a soft push, "Just lay back and let me do the rest."
"Sorry," Daphne looked down at his hand, then back at him with a hardly innocent glint of superiority shinning through her smile, "ordering me around only works if you're in bed with me, dummy."
Tempting, the whole of Coriolanus' mind agreed on that echoing thought. It was indeed very tempting to just get in that bed and forge a different means to tire her out, but that was not the sort of sleep he wished to lure her into, so with an iron grip on his senses, he kept himself unmoved before her masterful attempts at persuading him to give her what she wants.
Seeing as her persuasive nature fell short for once, Daphne rolled her eyes and, telling herself that she was merely answering the ache in her arms spreading from her elbows to her shoulders, she laid back in bed, resting her head on the pillow. "Now what?" She inquired, unashamed to wear her pout.
Coriolanus wanted to believe that with a bit of patience from both of them, he could turn that frown around and witness as her features would relax at long last, pulling her body and mind into a much needed rest. "Close your eyes," he guided her. Though she had at first narrowed her gaze on him, suspicious of what exactly he was planning to do to help her fall asleep, Daphne played along eventually, closing her eyes. Only then, Coriolanus lifted his hand to her hair and started brushing through, soft and slow.
Daphne was about to ask if that was it — if his plan was a sensation, which though pleasant and indeed luring through a sense of relaxation spreading in a shiver across her skin like that of a gentle midsummer breeze, was still but a small flicker next to the blaze which were her thoughts, enraged into a wildfire by her worry. She was being burned alive from within and his touch, a welcomed chill, remained insufficient.
Then, just as she came to terms that she will remain still and play along for at least a few minutes before giving Coriolanus the bad news that this won't be working, he spoke, "Tout homme digne de ce nom a dans le coeur un Serpent jaune."
"The Serpent's Tooth," Daphne whispered, a smile already taking a glowing dominance over her lips as she recognized exactly the poem being recited for her. Goodness, she hadn't even realized how much she missed Baudelaire and his poetry, how much she missed the gentleness of French too, until that very moment, when the suaveness caught the voice which she adored and came paired with a soft caress.
Coriolanus hushed her by continuing his reciting, "Installé comme sur un trône, qui, s'il dit: Je veux, répond: Non!"
At first, Daphne had the lucidity to humor the arising thoughts of wonder as to how he could recite poetry from memory the way she had so many times before, but then again, the answer to her curiosity was within the inquiry itself — him and his perfect memory have always clung to each and every word she spoke, and such a realization was nothing less than a testament to the purest form of love, the sort that she had for so very long desires. In that moment, knowing not once had he dismissed her with her strange hobbies and obsessions, Daphne felt loved and safe and fulfilled, more so than ever before. From such a state it was near impossible for her not to find herself swept in a deep slumber, where she dreamt of their future garden, a greenhouse with benches where they would still choose to lay down together next to their cherry tree and where she would lay her head in his lap and feel his touch as gentle as a falling petal's kiss.
Within her dream, time had lost its meaning, so when a tremor dismantled her little heaven and Daphne opened her eyes to the slightly darker tent, she hadn't a clue if she had slept hours or days, only that the chair behind Coriolanus was gone and he was trying to hide behind a smile the concern already too fragrant in his eyes. "What happened?" Daphne muttered before he could greet her in any way whatsoever, forcing herself to sit up already.
He hesitated. Though for her time had passed arguably too fast, for him the day had gone by dreadfully slow while supervising the activity at the new mine and actively avoiding Sejanus and his makeshift infirmary. Standing before Daphne, having to wake her up and also be the bearer of bad news left Coriolanus experiencing a wave of embarrassment, even though nothing from what had happened at the mining site was his fault.
"Coryo," Daphne called, as all his hesitation did for her was further aid her in fully removing sleepiness from her senses. "What happened?"
"There's been an accident," he admitted, offering Daphne his hand in anticipation to her wanting to stand up immediately.
"What sort of accident?" Daphne accepted his help to sit up, trying her best to not allow the fear that had just made her heart drop be mirrored in her voice.
"A pipe burst."
Coriolanus wouldn't have woken me up only for a burst pipe, Daphne reasoned, straightening herself up. "How many were wounded?"
He shouldn't have been surprised that she would guess so fast that there was more to this emergency than that, but still, he hoped he could have laid it on her gentler. "Just one. He got severe burns while fixing the pipe," he nodded. "But—"
"Show me."
Though she had fallen asleep in the first hours of the morning, when they exited her tent Daphne was presented with a sight at the small military camp drenched into darkness — the sun had long since set over the horizon. Since all the Peacekeepers Daphne had engaged in this operation were still a long way from done with that day's work, the camp itself was eerily quiet, enough so that once the improvised infirmary was within sight, she could already hear the gut-wrenching wails of the man wounded by the accident.
She shouldn't have had to enter the infirmary to know that the worst case scenario had happened while she was asleep, but her disbelief and gram of hope pushed her forward to witness the gruesome scene inside.
"Make him shut up already," Cress barked an order at Sejanus, who was trying every single method he knew to treat the burns on the man who was brought in unexpectedly and in a hurry. Only when Coriolanus called upon Cress did the Major notice he had brought Daphne in on this, but before the military coordinator of the operation could present further insights on the situation, Sejanus ran from the side of his patient, towards Daphne.
"Daphne," he sighed relieved at the sight of her. "What the hell are they mining for out there? I've never seen burns like these before," he admitted, fighting the urge to nudge her to pay attention to him given as her eyes were glued on the man stripped naked on the hospital bed. "I can't treat him if I don't know what happened to him and Major Cress is telling me nothing because it's apparently 'classified' and that matters more than one man's life."
She sought the pile of clothes with her eyes next, finding it next to the bed, all soaked wet. Only after identifying the pile of clothes did Daphne finally acknowledge Sejanus' presence, but not by looking him in his eyes — she looked down at his hands instead, which though gloved, dripped with the same humidity before which she couldn't help her first reaction to step back and grasp onto Coriolanus' arm.
Sejanus stared down at his hands with a certain degree of confusion that drove Daphne to inhale sharply — she couldn't cower, she couldn't show weakness, not now. Over the cries of pain from the man on the hospital bed, she spoke, "Thank you for your service, Sejanus Plinth. We'll take it from here. Major Cress, please escort Sejanus out."
"Out?" Sejanus stood his ground, showing no signs of wanting to leave. "I'm the only medic here. The next available doctor is miles away from this province. What—?"
Daphne finally met his gaze, surprising him with the coldness of it, "If you value your life, you will do as you are told and you will leave, now."
Her threat wasn't allowed to exist as an option for long, because Major Cress interfered when Sejanus was about to object, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him out.
Left alone in that tent with the screaming man whose skin had been burnt by what she could only imagine was an obscene amount of radiation, Daphne hadn't even the luxury of blaming it once again on her humanely need for sleep, a shameful weakness that she too had to abide by — she realized however that without that rest Coriolanus coerced her into taking, she would have most likely handled this accident's ramifications of consequences far worse.
"How many people saw the accident happen?" She asked, trying her best to stop the worst case scenarios of what could happen should word get out about the accident from playing before her eyes.
"Hard to tell," Coriolanus responded, remaining by her side, though the sight of the wounded man disgusted him.
"This man is already dead, Coryo," Daphne sighed, turning her face away from the victim and seeking instead to watch for Coriolanus' reaction to what she was about to say, words she knew were carrying their burden of sin by just how heavy they felt lining up to traverse over her lips. "I don't mean it metaphorically. There is nothing we can do for him, but there is a lot he can ruin for us."
"What do we do?"
"I need him to disappear," she admitted, appreciative of his brief and calm response. Had he panicked even half as much as her, she knew she would have lost every ounce of hope that they could get out of this mess.
"But people did see him get injured," Coriolanus furrowed his eyebrows down, confused by her approach, though not yet dismissive of it. "They will notice him gone. Sejanus will be asking questions about this too."
"We'll deal with that when the time comes," she assured him fast, sharing in his unhappiness with the Plinth's presence there to begin with. "But right now, it's important that no one sees what they are mining for can do to a human." Daphne glanced back at the dying man. "If we let the radiation kill him, by the time he's gone, he'll look like some nightmare crawling out of Hell to torment us. If anyone sees that, no one will want to work in my mine anymore. People with questions can be pacified, but a people afraid is inconsolable. Panic spreads like a disease. And I can't... I don't have enough Uranium yet to allow that."
A single tear shriveled down her right cheek before she could even muster the awareness necessary to stop it or explain it. Its shine drew in Coriolanus' attention.
"Hey," he turned towards her, wiping the tear away and holding the side of her face so she could not be tempted to look at the screaming man again, but remain focused on him instead. "You said it yourself," he shook his head briefly, "he's already dead."
"It's just Murphy's Law," she breathed out, voice snuffed out and defeated. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong — Daphne didn't know how many more wrongs she could take head-on before her New World crumbled and buried her in its ruins. One more, Coriolanus seemed to silently beg her when he pulled her in his arms, thoughtlessly stealing a few more precious seconds for themselves, damned be even the horrifying setting of their embrace. Had they been in Hell, he would have still found strength amidst his suffering to wrap her in his safe arms and cover her in that blessed warmth only he could give.
One more trial by fire. One last push through these thorns.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE :
Ahhhh, yes, look at me being anxious today about a chapter I loved yesterday lmao
Happy New Year to all of you !!! So glad that this is the first book I update in the new year. Officially, the next chapter is the grand finale for this story. 😌✨️ Sooooo, what are your predictions for the end?
Before I close this off, here's some new moodboards I made: