Chapter 3

Aster

Her eyes fluttered open. Something had woken her up, but she didn’t know what. It was too painful to move, but she listened intently. Nothing. Not even a cricket chirping on her windowsill. It was almost as if the night held its breath, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her.

The room was dark, but a thin sliver of light shone in through the gaps in the curtains – enough to cast the room in a hazy blue glow. Despite the non-stop aching, throbbing, and stabbing she tried to push herself upright so she could get a better look around the room. Gasping loudly as sharp hammers of pain shot through her arms, she gave up and fell backwards.

“Stop,” a man whispered somewhere in the dark. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

Every muscle in her body tensed, sending shockwaves of pain up and own her nerves. “Who…who’s there?” she asked in a shaky voice. The man didn’t answer, but she heard him come towards her and could see his hulking shape as he stepped out of the shadows. “If you’re here to kill me, just do it…you’ll be doing me a favour.”

Suddenly, the room flooded with light, stinging her eyes, “I’m not here to kill you,” he said.

It was him. The impossibly handsome man she had seen in her dream. It was difficult to speak, because the pain and fear overwhelmed her. “I know you.”

“Yes. My name is Declan. Your father sent for me.”

“You,” she inhaled, “were,” *breathe* “in my,” *breathe* “dream.”

“Yes.”

A man she thought she had fabricated from a place of wishful thinking stood next to her bed, so it wasn’t just her imagination. Ordinarily, she’d have millions of questions, but as death crept ever closer, more and more strange things were happening to her, and she just accepted it, because that’s what you did. The tension in her muscles slowly eased, but she didn’t feel any better.

“You’re in pain. I can help.”

“How?” she just barely choked the words out. “Morphine…doesn’t…work.”

He shook his head. “Not morphine.”

The pain clouded everything. She could barely think or speak. All she wanted to do was die, but for some reason her body stubbornly refused to give up. “You…faith…healer?”

He smiled, and if she had anything resembling a working body, that smile might have turned her on. “Well, that would imply having faith, and I have none.” He crossed the room in the blink of an eye to stand next to her bed.

Aster was convinced her mind had played some kind of trick on her, or that she had passed out for a few seconds, because she had never seen anyone move that fast. “We can’t have a conversation if you can’t think straight,” he said, and unceremoniously plonked himself down on the side of her bed. “Don’t be afraid.”

Her heart beat too fast, and the whole world shimmered in and out of existence. She found herself wondering if he’d hand her the syringe the nurse had hidden in her bedside table, because she couldn’t do this anymore. Couldn’t go on living like this.

He regarded her for a moment, his head cocked, a gentle, reassuring smile still on his face, but she didn’t miss the worried frown that had formed between his eyes. “All right,” he said, and before she could stop him, he pushed his hands under her armpits and lifted her. She cried out as a million needles shot through her, and tears sprung to her eyes. She didn’t even know she could still cry. “Sorry,” he apologised, but to her he didn’t sound particularly remorseful.

Declan cupped her face between his hands, and she didn’t know if it was because she was so sick, or because he was actually doing something, but it felt as if her skin had caught on fire. She tried to pull away, but it didn’t take much for him to hold her in place, “Shhh,” he said, and with his thumbs wiped away tears she didn’t know she shed, leaving a trail of fire in his wake, “it will only last a second.”

He leaned forward, and pressed his lips against her forehead. This time, she really thought that she would die. Stars exploded in front of her eyes, and then the world went black. Her breath caught, and wouldn’t release, making her lungs feel like overinflated balloons. It felt like an eternity later when it all just suddenly stopped, and air exploded from her body.

She blinked and stared at him. For the first time in months, she didn’t hurt. She could breath with ease and move without blinding pain stabbing through her body. “What did you do?” she asked in wonder.

“I just took away the pain for a little while. It won’t last, and you’re still dying.”

She fell back against the pillows, relieved. If that was all he could do for her, it was okay -- at least she wouldn’t leave this world howling in pain. “How did you do it?” she asked. “Some kind of hypnosis?”

He shook his head. “No, not hypnosis. I don’t know how it works; I just know I can do it.”

“Interesting.”

“I suppose,” he smiled, looking both pleased and annoyed at the same time.

“So, now what? Can you…fix me?”

The smile fell away from his face, and he looked very serious. Green eyes clouded over, and a small frown creased an otherwise smooth brow. “I am not sure. I can’t…pinpoint what’s wrong with you.”

Aster snorted. “Yeah, you and two hundred doctors. No one can figure it out.”

Declan shifted, rocking the bed under her. “I can tell you that your organs are starting to shut down, and maybe I can fix that, but without finding the cause and drawing that out of you,” he shrugged, “we’ll just be delaying the inevitable.”

There wasn’t much hope anyway. Aster angrily wiped a tear of disappointment away. She caught the look on Declan’s face. “I’m not afraid of dying,” she said.

“No, I know. You just don’t want to, am I right?” He asked in a beautiful, smooth baritone. If she wasn't so sick, she was sure she could sit and listen to him talk all day.

He hit it the nail right on the head. “Yes, but I can’t keep going like this. If you can’t heal me, can you help me…speed up my demise? I’ll do it myself, you just need to--”

He shook his head, then surprised her with his next words. “If you want to live, there is something else I can do, but you have to be prepared, because it’s an…unpleasant process – and most people don’t survive.”

Aster thought this over for a while. “So if I live through this…process…I’ll be cured, and if that doesn’t work I’ll die?”

“Basically.”

She nodded. “I don’t see how I can lose here. Either way, I’ll be released, right?”

“You have to think very carefully about this Aster. Some fates are worse than death. This might be one of them. If you survive, you’ll be immortal, and you’ll be tied to me for as long as I see fit.”

What he said made no sense, and ordinarily she’d laugh and tell him that he’s out of his mind, but in the last few weeks she had seen a lot of things others would call figments of her imagination, but she knew it was as real as the bed she lay on. “Tied to you, how?”

“I'll bond you to me....You’ll be mine, for lack of a better word, until I decide otherwise.”

Aster stared at him. He was a handsome man – almost unfairly so. Tall and broad-shouldered, she could see every muscle ripple under his expensive linen shirt. His perfectly styled brown hair framed a face that reminded her of a marble statue carved by Michelangelo himself – but more importantly, he seemed kind. She supposed eternity with a man like him wouldn’t be too bad. There was only one thing that bothered her. “How do you feel about that?”

He ran two massive hands down his legs, wiping the palms on his trousers. “I will be honest with you. I am not thrilled about it, I’m really not…but if I don’t do it, the consequences would be severe.”

“For whom?” she asked softly.

He dropped his head, averting his gaze for the first time, and when he spoke, it was so soft that she barely heard him. “Someone I love.”

She thought this over for a while. It hurt her to say the next words, but she wouldn’t allow herself to be the cause of someone else’s misery. “Then we don’t do it. We say you tried, and it didn’t work.”

Declan lifted his head, and she saw emerald eyes swimming in tears. “That’s kind of you, but it’s not that easy. We will have to try regardless. I only told you because I want to be honest with you – you deserve that much.”

“No,” she whispered. “I can’t do that to you. It’s unfair.”

“You are not doing anything to me,” he took her hand in his, and she noticed with surprise how cold they were. After his warm touch earlier, she expected his skin to be searing hot. “They are doing this to us. We are in it together.”

“Who are they?”

“Our fathers.”

She should have known. Her father would do anything to keep her alive, including destroying another person’s life, just so he wouldn’t have to suffer. “If I tell him I don’t want--”

“Will he accept that?”

She didn’t have to think about it. She knew the answer. “No,” she bit into her lower lip.

“And if I go against my father’s wishes…she dies.”

Aster’s mind whirled. Trying to find a way out – not for her sake, but his. She came up blank. “So what can we do?”

He shrugged, a sad smile on his face. “If I could only heal you, it might have been enough…but I don’t even know where to start.”

“Okay,” she said, laying her free hand on top of his. “It’s okay. Maybe I’ll die. You said it’s dangerous, right? Maybe I’ll die and then no one can say you didn’t try. Will that be enough to save your girl? They can’t blame you if it doesn’t work, right?”

He pulled his hands away, and ran them through his thick curls. He was quiet for a while, staring of into the distance. When he looked back at her, he appeared slightly less troubled. “You are not what I expected, you know. Most rich girls I know are a little…selfish.”

“Terminal illness will knock that right out of you.”

He chuckled, and she couldn’t help but smile back.

Question upon question popped into her head, but she ignored all of them. She wasn’t even sure she believed any of the night’s weirdness, let alone a man telling her he could grant her immortality. Maybe it was all some kind weird dream being cooked up in a dying mind, or perhaps he was insane…or maybe, just maybe, he was telling the truth, and she’d find answers to her questions in due time. “Okay,” she finally said. “So when do we do this thing?”

“Right now.”

Without warning, he lifted her off the bed. Her brain misfired, and immediately went into fight or flight mode. If anyone had asked her, she'd have told them she had no idea why she panicked, but once that ball was in motion, she couldn’t stop it.

Aster screamed.