I'm so glad everyone liked yesterday's little marathon! :)

Enjoy!


Christine

Chapter 97

The Aftermath

I was awoken to the feeling of snow engulfing me.

My eyes went wide open and I gasped.

Not snow, my delirious mind realized, but water. Ice-cold water.

I was in a tub of freezing liquid, still in my underclothes, in a bathing room I did not recognize. It certainly wasn't Erik's - probably a spare one in the palace. My head still pounded, but the water on my skin felt so good.

"Christine."

I looked to my left. Erik was kneeling next to the tub, gaze as hot as the Chamber I'd just been in. He held in his right hand a small silver pitcher.

"You're awake." His voice reflected his relief. "You're alive."

I nodded very slowly. I opened my mouth to speak, but my tongue was fuzzy and large in my mouth. I tried to swallow, but found that I couldn't. I didn't have enough saliva.

He dipped the pitcher into the tub and poured some of the freezing water over my head.

Oh, that felt so nice.

He let the pitcher fill again and then pressed it to my lips. At the water's closeness to my mouth, I gripped the pitcher and drank. Deeply. I found myself furrowing my brows and moaning slightly with pleasure as I did so.

I finished the entire thing.

He took the pitcher from me. He went to my underclothes and peeled them off of me. I helped him. I wanted the cold water touching all of my hot skin - that seemed to be his goal as well.

He filled the pitcher again. He let me drink my fill once more.

At one point, a knock sounded at the door. Erik opened it, shielding me from view. He accepted, from whoever it was, a white silk robe. He laid it out on the counter and then went to me again.

My skin was losing its redness. My headache was abating. He continuously poured water over my face. I closed my eyes.

"I thought I would lose you Christine," he whispered. "I thought I had killed you."

My voice was hoarse. "You wouldn't have-"

"I designed the Chamber. So yes. I would have."

I opened my eyes and held out my hand to him. He took it. As I looked down at my hand, my eyes trailed over my arms, and I realized that I had little cuts spread sporadically over my skin. On my legs as well. I recalled how I'd leaped through the the glass wall between Echo and Mirror Hall. How I'd done so without thinking. How lucky I was that I wasn't more injured.

"Don't do that again," he said.

"Do what?" I asked. Had he been reading my mind? "Which part?"

He frowned. "Put your life before mine."

I stared at him. "I can't make any promises."

He closed his eyes and exhaled. We both knew that neither of us could make that promise.

"No more secrets," I whispered. "You kept your intentions from me."

"I felt I had to."

"You didn't trust me?"

"I didn't trust myself." His eyes slowly opened. "I was afraid I would change my mind if you begged me. As it was, it was difficult not to change my mind when I gave you those papers this afternoon, and by then it was already too late. We'd already set our plan in stone."

A long pause.

"But yes," he said, and nodded. "I agree. No more secrets."

I nodded too. I relaxed into the coolness of the water.

And then reality caught up to me. The weight of what had just occurred. The gravity and implications - if I was alive, then...

"The Shah?" I said then, staring at him. "Is he..."

"He's dead." He didn't smile. "Finally."

I nodded. "I killed him."

"We all killed him. Including himself. We all had a role to play in that."

I could tell he thought I was haunted by that fact - that I'd helped. But I wasn't so sure I felt so terrible. In fact, his death was a relief.

"Prince Izad is currently...'deliberating' about what to do with us." He said the word in such a way that I knew the Prince was putting on an act. "He wants to punish the Angel of Death and his concubine - one for creating the Chamber and one for activating it. As I said in my papers, the plan is to exile us - but he is giving you time to rest and recover."

Then he was silent again. He, I could see, was more traumatized by the affair than I was. I gripped his hand a bit tighter as he poured water over me, but I looked away. I was surprised I wasn't more shocked, more in pieces, after what I'd been through. Instead, I felt...strong. After enduring what I did. The terrible heat, the maddening thirst, the pounding head and heart, staring death in the face while I hallucinated and saw-

I whipped my gaze to his again. "Erik, I saw them."

He blinked. "Who?"

"Your family. I saw them. When I was...when I was dying. They appeared. All of them. Marie thanked me for loving you. Giovanni told me it wasn't my time."

His eyes went wide. He cleared his throat and looked down. "You were seeing things."

"I know I was hallucinating somewhat in there but-"

"That was a hallucination too." His chest rose and fell steadily. "You'd just read about my life, hadn't you?"

I could have said no. I could have lied and said that I'd chosen not to read it, that they appeared to me unprompted, that I had no forethought of who they could be. He'd be more inclined to believe that it was really them.

But I wouldn't do that.

"Yes. I did."

He nodded. But he was deep in thought now. Staring into the water.

Only when I'd begun to shiver did he lift me from the tub.

"Can you stand?" he asked me.

"I can try."

He put me upright, and though I wobbled a bit, still dizzy, I could balance on two feet. He helped me into the robe. Then he picked me up again and carried me to his chambers. This time we weren't flanked by guards, but Echoes. The same Echoes who'd overseen the torture.


He took me back to his rooms. I'd sleep there tonight. We'd explain ourselves to my father in the morning - and what a conversation that would be.

Together, we pulled off the robe I was wearing. He peeled off the blankets of the bed, making it so that I slept uncovered. I preferred that. Being trapped underneath any amount of heat sounded nightmarish at the moment.

He remained partially clothed - shirtless but wearing trousers. He held me close to him. I'd never been so grateful that his core body temperature ran much lower than others'.

In the silence of the night, when neither of us could sleep, he whispered to me, "Christine, I almost lost you. Again."

My heart sunk. The heartbreak in his tone was enough to make me want to cry.

"But," he added, "I didn't."

I looked at him. He was wearing a blend of awe and fear and love.

He continued, "First you were poisoned. You survived. Then you were taken by the Echo. Nadir and I saved you in time. Then I refused to kill the Lotus, and when I'd thought you would be executed, you showed up at my cell with Ibrahim. And now, you somehow defy death once more in that Chamber." A ghost of a smile played at his lips. "Christine, I-" He paused, putting a hand on my cheek.

"You what?" I asked.

"I'm beginning to think maybe you lifted my curse." His smile grew. "I'm not even sure you can be killed."

I smiled back. "I don't really want to conduct any more tests to that fact."

"No." His answer was immediate. He pulled me in to his chest tightly, terrified by the thought of anymore immortality experiments. "Absolutely not."