AllFreeNovel
Share Us
An ill-defined succession of days surfaced in my awareness, unsorted by time or space, of being cared for, talked to, fed, and bathed. I took one breath that sounded inside the empty blackness that dwelled within my eyes…and felt my chest rise.
The fog evaporated.
The world zoomed in like great piece of cinematography on a 5K OLED screen.
Tree branches waved against a cloud-free blue sky. The murmuring sea seduced my ears. The fresh, heated smell of a sun-toasted beach, and the feel of beautifully soft bed linen beneath my bare legs and arms were, suddenly, real.
I sat up and smoothed my hand over the red-black-and-white Japanese-inspired quilt. The swirls of metalwork at the foot of the bed drew me to look past it, through the trees and dune grasses, to where sand sloped away to the glare of the beach.
Dry leaves rattled as they rolled between the trees, spurred on by a stray gust.
My vision wavered and rocked. I steadied myself.
Those memories returned, slightly enhanced, and I recalled the doctor visiting me, and meals being spooned and forked to my mouth, and the tinkle of bath water as I was sponged. Those were still jumbled, but they led me further into the past.
There had been a night of murder, betrayal, blood, and gunfire. It was vaguely there in my head but had faded and messed up. Maybe that was good.
Gingerly, I felt my chest where the dagger had thrust in, then I swung my legs over to the edge, and lowered myself to the ground. Was this real? This bed was almost on the beach. I doubted the existence of the ground, until my toes hit the warm sand.
Grit edged up through my toes, and I squirmed my feet deeper, marveling at the sensations.
The bed was in the shade and at the house’s rear, or the front entrance—depending on how you saw the house. The house lay behind me.
I was alive and on the island. Unless this was some strange dream in the afterlife?
I wore a strappy, soft-blue top and white linen shorts. I gathered up the cloth of the top and found a scar, below my breast, where the knife had cut me.
Wait… That night, it’d done far more than cut. The thing had stuck up from me, like a malevolent cross.
I should have died. Maybe I had.
I flexed my left leg where a bullet had struck and there, at last, was more than a faint scar. The muscle was tight, and I winced at a remaining ache. I took a step and found I had a limp. The limp made this real and strangely satisfying. I had survived.
The doctor had survived.
A man was stretched out on a towel on the beach, just below me, with a book over his face. My heart skittered and yet a small desolation set in. And Cassius? Could he be alive? Using the occasional tree as a prop, I shuffled and limped down the sand to the doctor.
He must have heard me coming, for he shifted aside the book, rolled over then leaped to his feet, with a smile spreading across his face. He opened his arms, and I fell into his embrace, sighing at the feel of him surrounding me.
“You,” I said.
“Me.” He stroked my hair. “And you, gorgeous princess. You’re properly awake, at last. You had us fretting.”
Us.I clung to thatus, though he might mean Inigo or any number of the staff.
The question waited, unsaid, for I was afraid to know the answer. I recalled Cassius on the floor, gasping for air, bloody and horribly silenced, after he tried to save us from whatever had happened.
I found my courage and my tongue, but I almost whimpered it into the doctor’s shoulder, “Cassius? Is he… He didn’t?”
“Well, he told me to say he died a brave death, but—”
He what? I tilted back my head, frowning. Which was when I heard a string of rapid, sand-muffled footsteps.
“Holy shit! You’re awake! Charityyyyyy!”
I turned in the doctor’s arms, grinning, and ready to curse Cassius for telling the doctor to lie, when he slammed into us both. I think he braked, at the last, thank fuck.
He grabbed my face and kissed me, then broke away, panting and laughing all at once.
