Chapter 63: Behind the closed door
Anastasia let Dante inside her room before someone would catch them alone, which would only fuel them to spread another rumour on top of the one already floating around. Once he got inside, she closed the door to hear it click. Since the room didn’t contain a table, they sat on the edge of the bed.
"Let me help," Anastasia offered when she saw him open the wooden box and pick up a bottle that contained a transparent gel. She said, "My hand isn’t hurting that much—Ah!"
She winced, feeling pain shoot up from the back of her hand when Dante placed a single finger on top of it.
Dante held an unamused expression as he looked at her. He reprimanded her,
"If you cannot take care of yourself, you are unfit to care for anyone else. This includes my sister." She heard the cork being unplugged from the bottle. "My hands are used to such activities and aren’t frail. You didn’t have to punch him."
Dante would have done it himself. Like the others, he was taken by surprise by her action, but it was possibly the influence of the alcohol that had made her impulsive. Though her eyes were still slightly dilated, she wasn’t as tipsy as before. He knew it because she had gone back to making a conscious effort not to address him by his name.
"That... I didn’t think. He spoke ill about Lady Lucretia," Anastasia whispered, her gaze falling back onto the transparent glass bottle. If she hadn’t accepted Issac’s invitation in the first place, the man wouldn’t have uttered those awful things, even if they were true. She said, "I didn’t know he would turn out to be someone like that..."
"How would you have known? You only just met him," Dante remarked before raising his hand and saying, "Your hand."
Anastasia brought her hand forward and felt him grip her fingers while he applied the gel to the back of her hand, mostly on her knuckles. It left a cool sensation that reminded her of the chilly night she had spent in the dungeon cell.
"What is this?" She asked him.
"It is a gel made from the prickly pear cactus, along with other ingredients. It will reduce the inflammation in your hand," Dante explained to her, and Anastasia’s eyes moved from his long fingers to look at the black veins resembling a tattoo that spread over the back of his hands. She gasped softly when she felt the pain in her hand radiate up her arm, and her eyes met his. "People say a lot of things that aren’t worth paying attention to. Speaking about others is a common habit among people."