61: Needing You

Dying is nothing like death, I should know. While death feels like nothing, dying is unbearably painful. My throat was the ground during the famine, a wasteland devoid of moisture.

"Wa...ter," I managed.

Something pressed against my lips and water splurged down my throat. But where the water went also went an unrelenting agony. It was either pain or death and your body will only always stray from death till it has no other choice. A throbbing ache encircled my scalp. I reached up to ease it in any way I could, but if anything it was tiresome just lifting an arm.

Something warm brushed the back of my ear and tugged my hair loose.

"Can you sit up?" Came his voice.

Even breathing was torture in itself.

"Hold on."

An arm or what felt like an arm, a very warm one circled my back, held me forward and lowered me not onto the bed, but sat me against something firm and snug. Little by little my hair came undone. With every loose strand was a burst of relief across my scalp, till the aches were alleviated altogether.

"Better?" His voice was as tender as cream.

I hummed in response.

A silence crawled by.

"I'm sorry I couldn't protect you."

"It," I was just finding my voice. "It wouldn't have changed a thing." I'd still have swallowed that seed. Which made me think, when you have someone so precious, do you live because you know they'd want you to or because you couldn't bare being apart from them? And if you chose death over them does that mean you never loved them in the first place? Or is there something much more important than love?

"You'll be alright, I promise you that."

"I want to trust you." And I had. "But let me trust myself enough to trust you."

"Do you hate me?" He said it as though it would be horrible if I did.

My eyes seared like an egg on a pan. I hissed. He shifted behind me, pulled the blanket higher.

"I don't think I can." I sunk into him.

I peeled my eyes back. Again it seared. But it was dark. As far as I could tell.

"How long have I been out?" I prepared for another attempt at sight.

"A few hours. The antidote worked like it should have."

My eyes burst open and the first thing I laid my eyes upon was the window.

"Where's the general?"

Philip bristled behind me. "The general?"

I forced myself to sit forward and dipped a foot to the frigid floor. His arm coiled around me and held me back.

"I have to go." I reached for the chair to hold me up but as soon as I stood my knees gave in. I never reached the floor though.

"Where are you going?" He badgered, his arm secured round my waist.

"I have to make sure they left safely." I attempted another step. But this time he practically carried me forward.

"Who?"

"The children."

We made our way over to the window. The tip of the red crescent moon touched the trees that belonged to Time. I clutched the window's edge and tugged with all my might till it came unstuck.

"Are you crazy you're sick!" His hand flew over mine. "You might breathe fire but for the past 12 hours you've been clutching that blanket for dear life."

I groaned and it was mostly from the residual pain and partly from his insufferableness. "You worry too much."

"I'm the one scolding you."

"'I'm the one scolding you.'"

"Did you just mock me?"

I sighed and headed towards the door with him carrying the half of me that my legs couldn't.

"If I take you to where you want to go will you promise to go back to bed?"

"Maybe."

He grumbled nothings under his breath. "Where?"

"The fields."

He cocked a brow. I nodded. He sighed. "Fine but wear something warm and, shoes."

I looked down at the night gown I had been changed into and my bare feet. He led me back to the bed, helped me into a jacket too big to be mine, my scarf and kneeled before me to lace my boots. I couldn't help but wonder if he'd done this before, help a girl with her shoes.

He stood and helped me to my feet. Clearing his throat he held me close with one arm. "You're gonna want to hold on."

I stretched my arms around him and held on as tight as my arms could bare. He raised his free hand and began a chant in the old language. Fisted his hand and released it to a pool of rippling space.

We stepped through and into the field.

"Now, do what you must and back to bed you go."

I searched the rows of sunflower and listened for a telltale sound. But it was a dark quiet night out here. We followed a path deeper into the fields. Until I found someone hanging against a pole. But when I looked closer and found that it was no man fear shackled me in place.

"It's just a," Philip said, his tone dropping at the end. "A scarecrow." He stepped into my line of sight and hugged me tight. "Just an ordinary scarecrow."

"Are you the Kreatian?"

I eased away from Philip to the new voice. Five feet away was a man. A real one this time.

"Yes," I replied, not missing the bewildered looks Philip sent me. "Are you with her?"

The stranger stepped closer and I thought maybe he wasn't as real as I thought he was.

"She sent me to inform you that she and the children have safely fled without notice and suspicion." He was as pale as a cloud and as hazy as one too. "By dawn the older servants will wake to find all the children gone."

"Will they be safe now? Won't the general seek them out?"

He shook his head. "Worry not for she only wants the best for them and that includes keeping them far out of the general's grasps."

"But, who is she?"

Philip grabbed my wrist, forcing my gaze to his. "Who are you talking to?"

"To the-" But the stranger was gone. "He was just here."

"Mo." He held my gaze. "It's just you and I, no one else," he enunciated each word as one would for a child, or a crazy person. "Now, are you done? Can we go back now?"

I shook my head. "Not yet."

We eventually ended up on a bench beneath an oak tree at the field's centre. Sitting side by side we spoke not a word.

I shuddered against the cold, my teeth beginning to chatter. Fisting my hands, I hugged my arms close. I exhaled in expectation of a warm flame but the only thing that leaves my lips is a frosty breath.

From the corner of my eye, I found Philip watching me. He slid closer, and oh so nonchalantly slid an arm around me and pulled me towards him, sharing his warmth.

"Damn you're cold," he muttered, more to himself than to me. "We should leave."

"I don't want to go back."

"Well you can't stay out here."

"I mean," I said, leaning into him, savoring the warmth and his presence, "I don't want to go back to Kreatier."

His grip tightened. "You don't mean that."

"You don't know how suffocated I am everyday." I laughed because my circumstances were ridiculously hopeless. "If I'm not an imposter among the rebels than I'm an imposter among the guards. If either of my identities are revealed I won't be able to save my family because who I really am never mattered in the first place. It's driving me, mad."

He didn't say a word. I wondered what he thought. And if it meant anything to him.

"Kreatier," I went on, "wants nothing to do with me anyway. If Lady Higgins helps me, what then? Do I just go back to the way things were, a farmer, an outcast?"

"Then stay," Philip said. "Be a guard."

"That's the problem. I'm starting to believe the things Cyr says. I'm straying further and further the longer I'm around him. And I believe it's wrong but it feels so right."

"I understand Mo, trust me I do," ever so gently he spoke. "But Ogalsia is part of the reason why your family was cursed. You can't stay here. It isn't safe."

"Then I'll leave. Or maybe I'll stay. But what does it matter to you?"

"Because I need you."

The only other time he looked so stern was the night I first met the head mage. Brimmimg with wrath and desperation, the perfect mixture for a madman. But damn all that, I needed him too.

"Do you love me?"

He rested his head on my shoulder. "I don't think I can't."

A/n: not much progress with the plot but, now we have a turning point I suppose, Mo doesn't want to return to Kreatier. Do you guys like these kinda chapters or r they too cheesy?? 🧀