"I can cure you," I said to her.
Maribel didn't react immediately. She just stood there in the dim hall, the torchlight casting uneven shadows across her face, and for a moment the only sound was the distant groaning from somewhere deeper in the building.
Then her hazel-brown eyes widened. Slowly, like the words were arriving in pieces rather than all at once.
"W...What?" The word came out small and stripped of everything except pure bewilderment.
She'd made her peace with it. I could see that clearly, somewhere between the bite and now she'd done the quiet internal work of accepting what it meant, had folded herself around it and decided how she was going to carry it. And then I'd walked back in and pulled the floor out from under that acceptance entirely.
"I can cure you," I said again. "With my Symbiote. I mean it."
