Hourglass → Ace; Nancy Drew [1]

xiii. the bitter betrayal

THE BITTER BETRAYAL
CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The thin sheet of paper scrubbed against Olivia's thumb as she drew it to the left, eyeing the next page with furrowed brows. She sighed, almost drained by the number of times she had scanned over the same drawings over and over again. They were engraved in her brain by now, like letters smoldered into a log of wood. Nothing appeared to clarify why after all their work in defeating the Aglaeca, she was still plagued with visions any time the heavy sapphire ring wasn't placed on her ring finger. Nothing could amount to the energy that was drawn from her, every time she blacked out. It was tiresome, painful. And all she had that could possibly explain anything were her drawings of each vision, and her ring passed down to her from her Aunt Hillary.

"I don't get why you had a vision of us when we were kidnapped by Steven." From where he was seated closely behind Olivia on her bed, Ace tore his eyes away from the book on the girl's lap. His chin hovered over her shoulder as he cocked his eyebrow questioningly, but she only sighed and pursed her lips in response.

"I don't know." She shrugged. Her head, pulsing with pain, was not being made any better with Ace's attempts at conversing on a complicated topic. Olivia, more than anyone, desired to understand what was going on with her mind and body. She wanted to figure out the twisted things going on in her blood and the supernatural connection there was to her soul. She desired to know how to stop it, to get rid of it, to detach herself from its burden. Yet, no matter how hard they tried to understand, the logic behind it was worlds away, and Olivia grew tired, drained from the energy each vision took away from her, the patience she lost every time she took one step forward but felt she was being dragged a thousand steps back. "I guess I was just thinking about you guys pretty hard," she added, trying to show Ace some motivation, to make him feel like he wasn't the only one making the effort. It was clear from her dragged, trailing voice and her slumped shoulders, however, that her phase of motivation, of persistence, had passed. That all she had now was the little bit of hope that reduced more and more each time she realized how far away they were from a solution.

"But you weren't thinking about the Aglaeca when you saw our deaths."

"I know that," Olivia grumbled, staring down at her thumbs as she picked at the skin around her nails. The blood in her veins warmed more and more each time Ace spoke, each time she was asked a question she didn't have an answer to. It was painful, almost– being asked something she so desperately wanted an answer to but knew she couldn't have.

"It doesn't make sense."

Olivia gritted her teeth and shuffled forward, away from where Ace's knee was digging into the small of her back. She turned her body so she could look straight in his face, barely able to contain the red frustration looming in her eyes. "I don't get how any of this works, either, okay? How do you think I feel?" Her words were cold, bitter, diving into Ace's ears like shooting bullets while her eyes bored holes into his head like daggers.