The City of Crows by Bethany Lovejoy (great books to read .txt) 📕

was in front of me, the back of his hand across my brow. “Thank god, you’re not sick. At least I think you’re not—”

My hand caught his wrist and he blinked at me, head cocked in confusion. That reaction too, was normal. And yet, Rowan still haunted me. “What are you drinking? What have you been drinking?”

His mouth opened, then closed. For a moment, he looked dazed by the question, but he replied with an even tone. “Fennel, green tea, turmeric, ginger, rosehip, and a dash of corydalis. There’s vinegar too; it’s not good. I, uh, probably should have mentioned it before, but I didn’t want you to worry too much. Since I’m at the end of my curse, I’m…”

“You’re still in pain,” I summarized, recognizing the plants. “You’re in a lot of pain.”

“Again,” he said, his face softening as I slowly released his arm. “I didn’t want you to worry, Lyra.”

“Yvie—”

“Is a talented potioner, I know,” he looked away quickly, heading once more towards the kitchen. “It seemed like a bit much to ask that you convince her to do it, or even make the potion yourself. I didn’t want to cause you any more difficulties than I already have, I’ve already torn you away from your life. It didn’t seem fair to keep asking over and over again for more than that.”

“Leo…” The one thing that I could have done in the end, the one gift I could have given him, and he wouldn’t even have told me about it. “About all of this…”

He knew. He immediately knew what I was going to say, how I was going to say it, and that there was no way to get me not to. But still, he tried. His voice, tender, pleading me, saying my name so preciously, clinging to it like a life raft. “Lyra…”

“What if I can’t help you anymore?” God, my throat constricted as I said it, it was like being strangled right then and there. I didn’t want this, I didn’t want it at all, but it was my only chance. “What if I know now that there’s no way to help you,” a lie, an awful lie. Yet it was the kindest lie I could tell. “What if all I could give you is those potions?”

“Lyra, come on, that’s—”

“I’m serious, Leo.” Sick, I felt sick. This was it, the moment that I would look back on in shame. I was letting him down, I was lying to him, and god help me, I was in love with him. “Leo, I don’t think I can do this anymore. If that means—”

“It doesn’t mean that,” Leo said, his fist balling at his side. It was a confirmation of something I’d always known, that he couldn’t ever bear to be the one to rip my dreams of humanity away from me. “It never meant that.”

“Then…” Did my eyes betray me? Were they as glassy and heavy with tears that threatened to spill over as I thought they would be? “Leo, I can make you the potions, I can get you enough to last these last few weeks, but I can’t—”

“You can’t make it stop,” he said, allowing himself to fall against the couch, a dullness filling his eyes. I wondered what he thought then, I wondered what comes to mind when you know that someday, someday real soon, you would be dead. “Two weeks,” he murmured, resigning himself to his fate. I wish it wasn’t like that, I wish that it was something easy. “My mother… My aunts… You.” You. The weight that he put on that word was indescribable.

“I…” I love you, I want to be beside you, I don’t want to live in a world without Leo Hoang smiling at me. “I will make the potions, I promise. You won’t feel anything.” Coward. God, I was always such a fucking coward. “But I need to go home to do it,” and there I was, running away again.

“Right,” his strangled tone made it clear that he wanted anything but that. He was dying, he would die, and I was going to leave him there alone. After so long, after cutting nearly everyone out of his life for their own good, he finally had a friend, and here I was, leaving him.

If my mother was there, she would have slapped my back and told me that I could do better, that a real woman would do better. She wouldn’t have had the emotional response that I had, but she would have had a sort of certainty to her. She would have been able to decide not to help Leo right away and stand by her words when she did. If he somehow convinced her to help him, she would have fought tooth and nail to save him. Lydia Wynne would have been twice the woman I was.

But I was where she should have been. Uselessly, my arms wrapped around his shoulders, head tucked in by his neck as I desperately fought back the part of me that wanted to cry. I clutched him close, my fingernails digging into him as I couldn’t bear to let him go. I hoped, despite it all, that he couldn’t hear me, that Leo heard no trace of the sob that desperately climbed up my throat and fought at my lips for release. I wanted, more than anything, to be remembered by Leo as someone kind, but just not capable of what he needed.

I hoped that when I pulled back, he wouldn’t see the regret in my eyes, the genuine desire to do better for him. No matter what it was, no matter if Rowan was telling the truth or there was something greater going on, I couldn’t let him get hurt. Doing this, not telling him what I knew in my soul; that was kindness. And yet, when I pulled back and his hand ever so gently reached for my face, cradling my cheek as if I was an object made of