Chapter 51: The Nightmare Curse

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Fliss

She woke up with a headache, which was never really a good thing to wake up with. Her head felt groggy and her eyes felt like they had been glued together. Her ankle throbbed, and there was a bag of frozen peas lying against it. Her eyes squinted open, and she tried to figure out her surroundings.

Books were scattered across the floor, on the couches and on the desks. Some of them lying open, some of them looking like a page had been torn out of them. She swore she saw one book steaming.

Her eyes darted around the room until they found Alex, who was sitting cross-legged on a desk, a pair of glasses rested on the bridge of his nose, (since when did he need glasses?), with a notebook and pen in his hand. He was scribbling madly, his tongue sticking out just a few centimetres from his mouth. His hair was messy as usual, and he looked strung out.

After a few moments, he stopped scribbling and looked over at her. She blushed because she had been caught staring, but his eyes lit up upon seeing her awake, and he dropped his pen and notebook and scampered over to her.

"You're awake." he said as sat down on the edge of the couch.

How are you feeling?" he asked quietly, his voice full of concern. He reached out and brushed her cheek with the back of his rose-tattooed hand.

He frowned.

"You're burning up." he stated anxiously, running a hand through his mop of tousled, chestnut hair.

He stood up and headed over to a shelf that was overflowing with books. She watched as he scratched his stubbly chin in thought before pulling out a blue book. The shelf slid to the left, revealing a small cooler. His hazel eyes scanned the contents of the cooler before his hand reached in and took out an ice pack.

He waddled back over to here (kind of like some sexy-man-nurse) and placed the ice pack over her forehead.

He gave her a soft smile.

"There. That should keep you cool." he said happily, sitting back down on the edge of the couch.

"You just need to relax and I'll take care of-"

"Alex, what did your Demon do to me?" she asked quietly, cutting him off.

He bit his lip and she watched as his calm composure start to crumble before her very eyes.

"Felicity-"

"Alex, please."

He let out a long breath and ran a hand through his tangled locks once again. It was only then, in the dim firelight of the Secret Room, that she noticed the dark circles under his eyes and the false jittery energy that he must have been getting off a cup of coffee.

She could tell that his mind was at war with itself. His eyes kept flicking from her face to her frozen-pea-covered ankle.

Finally, after a few more moments of anxious silence and flickering eyes, he sighed deeply and trailed his fingers down her thighs, straight towards her sore ankle.

She raised a perplexed eyebrow at him and sat up, her back squashing the cushion behind her. She removed the peas from the joint, only to find-what looked like-a tattoo that she had no memory of getting.

It was rather big, the whole mark clear on her ankle. The first thing she noticed was the five pointed star with an eye in the middle of it. A circle ran around the whole thing, enclosing the star inside of it. There was writing around the edge of the circle in a language she didn't know, and for some reason it stopped halfway around it.

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