The Blood King's Love

Nine

The first time I wake up I notice three things.

One: I'm alive.

Two: I'm in a bed—or a cot—in a small room I don't recognize, surrounded by three maids looking down at me like a bug they just squashed.

Three: My entire body is in agonizing, excruciating pain.

The sensation hits me so suddenly I start to panic in response, breathing faster and faster with every second; I try to yell in pain, but my burning throat is closing up I can barely gasp. It feels like my bones are being stabbed with a million knives, and every fiber of every muscle was set on fire; I start to fidget, but my body is paralyzed with pain and I groan through gritted teeth; my vision is blurry as tears overflow my stinging eyes; my head is throbbing so bad I barely notice the maids rummaging around, grabbing my head, opening my mouth and forcing some liquid through it.

The second time I wake up, my head is throbbing again, and I cough up a little blood. Or. Not a little. A lot. But I can't move a single muscle without setting off a fire alarm in my body, so I can't sit up, so I throw up in my mouth and end up swallowing everything back down.

The third and fourth times are a mix of the first two.

The fifth time, one of the maids—or nurses, that seems more appropriate—helps me sit up and feeds me cup after cup of water. The sixth and seventh time I'm able to get up by myself without my spine wanting to snap in half. I vomited in the cup of water though.

The next time I remember seeing a boy my age with a spear on his back and a scar on his face looking down at me. He wet a towel and put it on my forehead.

Then the cycle started. Every time I opened my eyes I become more and more conscious of what was happening, and my body gradually became numb. I didn't dare make any sudden movements, or do anything that might get me in trouble. I drank and ate what I was given and never said a single word. Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not an idiot—I mean, yeah, I did purposely drink a deadly poison given to me by a notorious murderer because I wanted to feel like I had some sort of control over my life—but I know not to question the nurses treating me. Even though I'd like to. Like, why are you nursing me back to health when the Blood King literally gave me the poison so I could die? Because that doesn't really make sense. Just little questions like that, I'd really like the answer to.

A long while later I wake up to my old cell guard sitting on a stool next to me. He looked asleep, but as I begin to sit upright, he opens one eye.

I lay back down.

He closes his eye again.

After minutes of silence he gets up, grabs a bucket of water and brings it towards me. I take it as a cue to sit up, and he places a swift hand under my back to hold me still. He takes a handful of water in his palm, and I expect him to feed me with it, but instead he pours the water onto my face. It takes me by surprise and I flinch back.

"What are you doing?"

It's the first time I've spoken and my voice doesn't come out like I intended it to. Instead it's low and raspy, and the question comes out like a naïve whisper.

He pauses. Then he takes his hand off me and walks over to the cupboard, taking out a small mirror, lifting it up to my face.

Oh my god.

My face looks like one huge rash. My cheeks and nose are filled with what looks like bug bites or pimples, with pus coming out of them. My lips are swollen, as are my eyes, which are almost completely pink. I've clearly lost several pounds, and you can see the outlines of my cheekbones.

Oh my god.

Mortified, I push away the mirror and think back. The poison I had was a yellow-vein three-leaf. It's effect on the body shouldn't look like this. Yes, it's supposed to suck out all the nutrients in your blood and calcium in your bones and eventually slow circulation of blood to the heart in the span of a few hours, and yes, if not properly tended to in that amount of time you're supposed to die and yes, you're expected to feel excruciating pain—there was nothing about it causing any rashes. At least, not in the books I read back at home, and I read a lot of them. Several times. There's no way I could've been wrong about it. The picture is still clear as day in my mind.

The entire encounter with the King is still clear as day in my mind.

But wait. I didn't just eat the leaf. I drank it with a handful of water.

Ah.

"It wasn't water," I mutter to myself, so low I doubt the boy hears me.

If I could remember the taste I'd know exactly what it was, but I've read about liquids that disguise themselves as water but are damaging to the skin, and one could have a severe allergic reaction to it. Either that, or whoever put the leaf and the water together in the cup for me must've sneaked a small dose of something else.

I decide not to dwell on it, but in the back of my mind, it horrifies me. These people have everything at their disposal, to use whenever they want, even things that are supposedly extremely rare, like the yellow-vein. I can't even imagine how they got their hands on that. Everything feels so calculated. I feel like every step I take is a part of someone else's plan. Like I'm completely powerless and have no control whatsoever.

But I knew what the poison was, I think.

Then a little voice from the back of my mind speaks up:

Well wasn't the King expecting that? He laughed when you recognized it. Like he expected you to.

I shiver as I rewind the scene in my head.

He was expecting you to know. He knew your name. He knew something about your mom.

What does she have to do with anything?

But he didn't expect me to drink the poison.

Sure. But you're still alive now, right? That means he had people ready to tend to you. He's not done with you. Maybe he never intended to kill you. Just torture you.

And I'm crying.

Silently, tears flow out of my eyes like a waterfall. I feel the boy's eye's on me and for a split second I'm embarrassed, but I decide I don't care. It's all too much. Too much physical pain. Too much emotional pain. My whole world, every person I've ever known—destroyed and killed not too long ago. Now I'm being used as a play thing, something that's fun to push around and torture. I have every single fucking right to cry.

I take the bucket from his hands and dunk my head in the water. And yes, I'm sure—this is actually water.