Chapter 19 A Familiar Place #2
“It’s okay, darling,” she murmured. “You’re safe.”
She sat up quickly, kissing his cheek, then stroked it with a soft hand.
“You’re okay now. Everything is fine, my darling boy.”
She kissed him again and sat back in the chair and clasped his free hand in both of hers. She squeezed his fingers, the ones not currently captured by Leda.
“We can talk,” she told him, just as soft.
“I had her drink a sleeping draught earlier. She desperately needed one, but would only agree to it if she could stay in here. We probably don’t even need to be quiet, if I’m honest. I gave her enough to knock her out well into tomorrow morning, but I simply can’t bear the thought of waking her, given how little she’s slept.
” She wiped her eyes again, beaming at him. “She really is lovely, Caelum.”
His fingers compulsively gripped Leda’s.
He felt his magic gearing up protectively, without him really willing it.
He couldn’t help it. He loved his mother, but she had to know––
“Of course I know who she is,” Varya Bones said, her voice a near-scold.
He swallowed, but didn’t contradict her or even ask what she meant.
She squeezed his hand more tightly between hers, then let him go.
She dabbed her eyes with the edge of her silk robe.
“I’m sorry we brought you here, darling,” she said next, her voice genuinely apologetic.
She brushed sweaty-feeling hair back from his forehead, seemingly unable to stop touching him compulsively.
“Gideon didn’t think it was a good idea to try and care for you at either his home nor at the school,” she explained.
“He thought it would be too much for Leda to handle alone, and you being in the tower and unable to alter your chimaeras or wards made it difficult for anyone to assist her. The hospital at the school is understaffed over the break, and the Cambridge hospital seemed dangerous, given no one knew exactly where you went that night, or what you’d done.
Gideon told me what you did to the mirror after you came through.
Clearly, you believed someone might be chasing you.
He thought perhaps here would be better. ”
She gave him a watery smile and squeezed his hand reassuringly.
“Really, darling, don’t worry,” she said, smoothing his brow. “The Praecuri changed all the wards and mirrors as a condition of your father’s arrest. No one can come here without them being notified. Including your father.”
For some reason, Caelum’s mind fixated on and circled back around to maybe the least important part of that mouthful.
Gideon? Did my mother just call Professor Forsooth “Gideon”?
“Are you hungry, darling?” his mother asked next, still compulsively brushing his hair out of his eyes and touching his sweat-damp cheek. “You must be starving. I’ll have the cook make you something. Anything you want.”
He frowned, trying to think.
Before he could decide if he was hungry or not, his stomach decided the question for him, letting out a low, rumbling growl. He looked at her, and nodded.
“Sure,” he said. “Anything that won’t bother her.”
He didn’t look at Leda as he said it, but his mother only smiled.
“Of course, dear. Of course. Of course.”
She leaned over him once she stood, and kissed him again on the forehead.
He watched her leave his childhood room, and struggled to find his way past the confusion in his mind. In the end he only sank his weight into the pillows, and stroked Leda’s fingers as he watched the stars writhe and change colors over his bed.
When his mother returned next, he had a lot more questions.
His stomach demanded attention first, growling louder as the first smells reached his nostrils. He couldn’t remember ever being so hungry, not as an adult, at least. He was dizzy with it, nearly out of his mind with it.
His mother walked in, too damned slowly, floating a tray in front of her.
She floated it over to him, and his stomach growled demandingly again.
His shoulder hurt and his thigh, both on the left side, the one closer to his mother and the door, but neither pain was enough to discourage him when he smelled the roasted meat, vegetables, and buttered bread on the tray.
Firstly, though, as soon as the tray got near enough to his hand, he scooped the glass of dark red juice off one end and began to drink.
He couldn’t remember ever being so thirsty, either.
He downed all of it.
Perhaps that wasn’t wise, given his mother probably put a sleeping draught or something even stronger in his drink, too, but it tasted like ambrosia.
He set down the glass, and his mother instantly used a murmured spell to make it disappear. He didn’t catch her inaudible cast, but assumed it was the same boomerang charm that returned all dishes in the house to the downstairs kitchen sink.
Every utensil, piece of cutlery, china, stone, and glassware had the same charm attached to it by the servants as soon as it entered the house.
The same was true of every article of clothing purchased, only those boomerangs tied them between the laundry room and specific clothing closets where they lived when they were clean, or sometimes coat closets, or shoe racks, drawers, tie racks, and so on.
Caelum reached for the fork once he’d finished off the juice.
He grimaced lifting his arm to reach for it, and again as he stabbed a piece of meat and swirled it in gravy.
He didn’t let go of Leda with his other hand.
That felt out of the question to him, even to eat, although he didn’t think to question why, not consciously.
He didn’t mind the pain.
He chewed and swallowed the first piece, and could have groaned aloud. He ate three or four more, and was halfway through the potatoes, when the sheer immensity of his hunger brought all of his questions swirling back.
“How long have I been here?” he asked his mother between bites. He cleared his throat, drank some water, and chewed another piece of meat as he waited for her answer.
The question seemed to make her uneasy, although it couldn’t have surprised her.
“Don’t worry about that right now, darling,” she said after a too-long pause. She waved a hand vaguely, as if shooing his question away. “Just eat and rest for now––”
“Just tell me, mother,” he said, stabbing another chunk of fried potato.
She exhaled, and he realized for the first time that, despite her perfect hair, skin, and everything else about her that never seemed to change, she looked tired.
Exhausted, maybe. Now that he was looking at her up close, he could see dark circles under her eyes that she’d likely already smoothed over with magic.
He also noticed the slight tremor in her hand.
She looked like she hadn’t sleep in at least twenty-four hours, either.
“Your professors contacted me early in the morning on the 9th of December,” she said into that silence, sounding a little defeated. “Today is the twenty-second of December, dearest.”
Caelum half-choked on the hunk of potato he’d been in the process of swallowing.
He managed to get it down with a few more mouthfuls of water, only burning his tongue a little. He never stopped staring at her as he did.
“What?” he managed.
She exhaled again, and reached for his face to again try and finger his fringe out of his eyes. She seemed to give up a second later, when he moved his head out of the way.
“Mother––” he began, exasperated.
“Corvid has been attending to you every other day,” she said, before he could get any further.
“He was here yesterday. He’ll be back again tomorrow morning.
I’ve also had a magi-physician here… not Dolens,” she interceded quickly, likely seeing the rage rising to Caelum’s eyes.
“I’ve fired Dolens, darling. Just like I told you I would in Cambridge.
He is not allowed to set foot in this house ever again, I promise you. ”
“So who was it?” Caelum asked coolly.
“Someone Gideon recommended,” she said, a little defensively.
She folded her arms and tilted her nose and chin up in a way he might have found funny under different circumstances.
It made her look absurdly young, like she’d been called onto the carpet at school.
“Her name is Brigid. She’s been wonderful.
She and Leda have been getting along very well.
She approves of her, and I approve of her, so you’ve nothing to complain about, Caelum. ”
He snorted a little, unable to help it.
His smile faded though, as he thought about the dates his mother had just given him.
“It’s Yule,” he said numbly.
“For one more day, yes.”
“I’ve been asleep for two weeks.”
“Roughly, yes.” She still sounded a little prim, but he heard the sympathy in her words. “You were hit at least twice by vampiric spells meant to drain your magic. Unfortunately, you didn’t stop to repair any of the damage, or even neutralize the effects––”
“I was a little preoccupied with the not dying part of my evening,” he muttered.
“––so by the time you reached Gideon, you were already dangerously depleted.” She sniffed a little, and refolded her arms. “Which meant the last spell you were hit with, which unfortunately turned out to the strongest, did a great deal of damage. Gideon thinks that particular curse got you right before you mirrored out of wherever you were, and at that point, you didn’t have much magic left to drain.
It basically began feeding off the magic in your blood and heart and bones, and you were already dangerously low on blood from having severed veins in your arms and legs––”
Caelum dropped his fork and reached for her hand, squeezing it when her voice caught.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He meant it.
“Gideon, Corvid, and that Underwood witch saved your life,” she said, wiping her eyes as she clutched at his hand in return.
“They literally saved your life on the floor of Gideon’s sitting room, to keep that spell from bleeding you out unto death.
” The tears spilled down her cheeks as she motioned towards Leda. “Then she brought you back.”
She didn’t explain that part, and Caelum didn’t ask her to.
He swallowed instead, and nodded, looking down at the mass of black hair framing a pale face.
She looked like she’d lost weight. He could only imagine, given he’d probably been lying here for the full two weeks, sucking every particle of magic off her he could, and throwing a fucking fit whenever she dared to leave him alone to shower, change, sleep, or eat.
His throat closed, and he felt a lurch in his stomach that wasn’t hunger.
It was a lot closer to self-disgust.
He’d been like a tick, feeding off her for over fourteen days.
Why hadn’t she just stabbed him?
It’s probably closer to what she would’ve wanted to do.
“Don’t look at her like that,” his mother said sharply.
She shocked him, smacking his arm, not to hurt him but to get his attention. It still made him grimace when he tensed and the clench in his muscles vibrated up to his shoulder.
“That witch came here to help you without a thought to herself!” his mother scolded. “She can’t possibly have been comfortable coming here, but she did it anyway… she did not hesitate. You have no right looking at her like that!”
Tears came to his mother’s eyes, shocking him.
He looked between them, baffled at first, then realized what his mother had picked up on, and how she had interpreted it.
He might have been exasperated if he didn’t feel a little touched at her impulse to protect Leda.
His mother had always been insanely empathetic.
It was one of the things that made it easy for his father to make her life a living hell.
She felt everything.
She especially felt everything in those she cared about.
“The disgust wasn’t aimed at her,” he told his mother.
“I saw it!”
“––It was aimed at me,” he finished.
She stared at him blankly for a moment, then her eyes widened.
“Well, don’t do that, either!” she exclaimed, making Caelum snort a half-laugh, in spite of himself.
“You were injured! Of course she would do it! I would have done it myself, if I’d been the one who could.
” She looked fondly at Leda, her grey eyes swimming.
“She was darling. And you were darling together, if a little frightening at times.”
Caelum cleared his throat.
He didn’t ask his mother what that meant, either.
He picked up his fork, and speared the last piece of meat.
“How late is it?” he asked, after he’d been eating long enough to begin to feel sated. “Tonight, I mean. Now. What time is it?”
She looked confused, then seemed to remember his magic still wasn’t back to normal.
He guessed he could probably cast a time charm, but he wasn’t ready to test that yet, particularly not if he was still draining Leda.
Varya made a graceful mudra with one hand, and a clock appeared, glowing blue in the air by the bed. Caelum looked at it, and frowned.
“It’s nearly eleven,” she said, somewhat unnecessarily.
“It’ll have to wait until tomorrow, I suppose,” he muttered, fighting to think. He glanced at his mother, and answered her silent question. “Telling Forsooth. And Blackstone. About where I was that night. I’ll need to talk to them tomorrow. Or right after Yule.”
“Oh.” His mother blinked at him, again looking startled. “No, darling. They’re on their way. Gideon was quite adamant that I tell him the instant you were awake.”
Caelum opened his mouth.
Before he could get out a word, a smattering of distant bells filled the magic of the house.
Someone was at the front door.