Page 82 of The Endless One

He headed over to one of the sealed buildings, the door held shut by a multitude of nails that had yet to budge, no matter how many times the infected within had rammed their bodies against it. But Elric lifted his hand, and all the nails started to shake. One by one, they popped out of the wood.

At the very least, he did catch the pieces before they hit the ground and made a racket loud enough to bring all the infected in that building down upon their heads. She wasn’t sure what would happen if they did. After all, the creatures within those walls were not entirely human. But if she was bitten by them, with her soul now intact in her body, what would occur?

“Don’t worry,” Elric murmured as he opened the door. “You’re staying out here.”

“What if you get bitten?”

He glanced over his shoulder at her with an unimpressed stare. “You think I walk around with my soul in my body? I have locked mine up, just like I locked up yours. Death means nothing to me, Jessamine.”

And then he disappeared. Like he wasn’t worried about them at all. Which, she supposed, if he didn’t have a soul to worry about, then what would a bite even do? Likely nothing.

She counted to forty before the door opened again, and Elric slipped out just as quietly as he’d entered. But this time, he had a little girl in his arms. She was definitely infected. Her jaw was lax and her eyes were fogged over, as all the infected were. But worse, there was a gait to her step that made Jessamine think perhaps the others had been feeding on her.

Her hair had once been blonde, although now it was so greasy it had a strange, dull gray coloring to it. Her dress was still sky blue in parts, but most of it was smeared with mud and blood and all manner of other things. And she was so calm in Elric’s arms, it was hard to think of her as anything other than a child who desperately needed someone to look after her.

Dropping to her knees, Jessamine looked up at Elric for permission.

“I’ve done what I can to keep her quiet. There’s still something in her that wants to fight, and I’m not sure what about Ajax’s curse did that.” Elric released the little girl, who remained standing very still.

But her hands were twitching. Her fingers curled, releasing, then moving into different patterns of various clenched fists and odd finger positioning. She was still in there. Some monstrous beast had taken over her body, but soon enough, Jessamine would release her.

“You think I can stop this?” Jessamine asked.

“I’m curious to see if you can.”

The golden light that was currently coiling around her body thought she could. She wasn’t sure she could cure any of this, but she wanted to try. She wanted to put color back into this little girl’s cheeks and see the barest hint of life in her eyes.

Jessamine reached for her arm, pausing only when the little girl’s head snapped to the side, gnashing her teeth at Jessamine but remaining still.

“Not so fast,” Elric murmured. “Go slowly.”

So she did. It was the first time she’d ever touched one of the infected. The little girl’s skin was ice cold and dry like paper. She could hear her fingers sliding over it, the rasp of contact grounding her as the magic slid down her arm and bled into the little girl’s skin.

And then… magic.

Warmth bloomed into the skin she touched, the flesh turning from ashy gray to warm and pink. It spread, continuing up into the little girl’s face, which soon wore an expression of anger and panic. But then those milky eyes cleared for a brief moment. Blue as the sky above them. Blue as her dress had once been.

The little girl blinked a few times, as though clearing a bad dream from her mind. “Princess Jessamine?” she asked.

“You know me?”

“I saw you walk through the streets when I was with my mum,” the little girl said. Her eyes widened, and there was something akin to pleasure in them. “You were so pretty then. What happened?”

Elric tried hard to hide his laugh, but he failed at doing so. With his hand over his mouth, he said, “Children are brutally honest.”

Jessamine ignored him. “I died.”

“Oh. Did that hurt?”

She didn’t want to lie to this little girl. But dying had hurt. Every time. It was an ache that never went away. A brutal, gut-throbbing sensation of her body failing her time and time again. But she was still here. And she supposed that was something to be celebrated.

“Not that much,” she replied, running a finger down the little girl’s plush cheek.

Jessamine was going to ask her name, or anything that might identify where the child had come from. But it was too late. Ajax’s curse was already taking her away from them.

The gray pallor settled into the little girl’s skin slowly, like a poison spreading throughout her body. And then her eyes glassed over again. The shocked expression on her face turned into something a bit like pain before Elric nudged her back inside the building and then closed the door.

“Get the nails and boards,” he said as he held it shut.