13. Alessia
The greens, blues, and purples of healing magic flow from my hands into the body of the poor child before me. She can’t be any older than five, and already, she’s combatting a serious disease, one that took our nation centuries to properly combat. The fact that there’s a simple potion back at home that would cure this malady, though, sets my blood to boiling.
She shouldn’t have to experience this. Damn you, Krastan royalty!
My magic glows softly as it enters the girl’s chest. I follow it with my eyes as it integrates with her bloodstream, then circulates throughout her body, brightening wherever it encounters the virus. It takes a considerable amount of my magic to cure her, enough to make me suspect she wouldn’t have made it another week without this cure.
She’s the third one out of five that has been that close to death.
My mind is racing, and my emotions are out of control. It’s taking more effort to keep myself calm than to heal these people, and that’s saying something, because there’s only so much magic I can use before it starts to physically affect me. My heart rate is spiking to an unsafe level, and sweat is pouring down my back despite the cool shade.
The only thing that’s helping me to keep calm right now is Aurelio’s comment about the knights. To see him light up like that, his gaze hyper focused on the task at hand, a twinge of pink showing up in his face the faster he talked…he surprised me. He does have a heart of gold under there, and he does have passions he holds dear. He just refuses to show them, let alone talk about them. I think he surprised himself just as much as he surprised me when he made that suggestion.
Damn it, Aurelio, you’re even more attractive when you care, I think, grumbling to myself.
“You alright?” he asks.
I nearly jump out of my skin. I look to my left, seeing Aurelio watching me intently from further down the line of patients. I startle once again when he makes eye contact with me without warning.
“Oh! Yeah, I’m fine,” I say.
“That’s a lie. But I know this must be hard on you.”
Not for the reason you think! I want to shout. Instead, I finish the healing spell on the child, then move onto the next one, saying, “It is hard on me. Every leader must care deeply about each one of their citizens. To see another nation’s people neglected makes it easy to imagine them as your own. It’s a rather painful imagination.”
“We’re lucky to have an empathetic leader such as yourself,” Aurelio says, flashing me a small smile.
Is he trying to get me to blush? I dive back into my work, shaking off the fluttery feelings in my chest. Unfortunately, Aurelio doesn’t take that as a sign to leave me alone.
“May I ask something?”
“What is it?”
“How is this ancient magic different from divine magic?”
I blink. That’s what he wants to know? I’ll admit, it’s a much nicer topic than my deep, dark feelings about the situation, but it’s not what I expected.
“Ancient magic draws power from the user’s energy. Divine magic comes as a blessing from a god or goddess. I explained that much earlier. In practice, divine magic only requires a specific prayer, and the magic user can perform a specific number of each spell per day as allotted by their patron god or goddess. You also need a staff blessed by the Holy Mother to channel that magic, or it could damage your body.”
“That sounds both terribly convenient and inconvenient,” Aurelio remarks.
“It has its pros and cons. Ancient magic, on the other hand, is entirely different,” I continue. “Only those with imperial blood can wield it; our bodies are constructed a little differently from regular humans. We’re sturdier, we live longer, and we have a lot more innate energy running through our bodies to fuel our magic. Magic is a part of us, physically and emotionally.
“We learn to channel our magic through ourselves from a young age. Everyone has their own preferred way of doing it, so until we’re around thirteen or fourteen, we have to figure magic out on our own. Once we’ve figured out the channeling process, we learn to regulate our energy usage, decrease our recovery times, and perform specific magic under pressure. We’re not bound by specific spells, charms, or enchantments; whatever we can imagine, we can breathe to life if we have enough magic and focus.”
“You make it sound as though an imperial human could crush anything with the flick of a wrist,” Aurelio chuckles.
“Easier said than done. To crush someone with a flick of the wrist requires years of practice to become so second-nature.”
“Interesting. So, even though your only limitation is your mind, that makes it incredibly difficult to cast magic because your mind is your limitation,” Aurelio summarizes, his brows scrunching together in thought. “You’d think there would be a way to make that easier overall, but maybe not.”
“There is no ‘easy’ when it comes to ancient magic. Even if I think I know the way a simple fire spell affects my body, if I’m not paying attention, I can have a really bad off day, burn down half the city, and nearly kill myself in the process. It’s an extreme example, but it has happened to previous frustrated rulers of Celestia.”
“What did I miss in history class?” Aurelio mutters.
I crack a smile at that one. “A lot, apparently.”
“Apparently. So…this healing you’re doing,” Aurelio starts, his eyes darting back to the child I’m working on. “How does it work?”
“Well, it’s kind of hard to describe. Give me a moment.”
I close my eyes, allowing myself to sink into the sensations of magic. I can feel the pulse of energy through my body, from the electrifying sensations in my heart to the twitch of my muscles to the surge of the energy coursing through my self-created channels. It runs from my heart up into my arms, then all the way down my hands. I’ve also got two channels intertwining through my middle, then diverging to run from my hips all the way down through my heels, where I have secondary energy release points.
“It’s kind of like…channeling lightning through your body. Only you are the source of that lightning,” I explain. “It’s warm and familiar, but terrifying and exhilarating all at once. I hold so much power right beneath the surface of my skin. If I restrain it too much, I can hurt myself; if I let it out all at once, I can cause calamity-level devastation.”
“That sounds like the adventure of a lifetime every day of your life,” Aurelio laughs.
“You know, when you think about it, it really is,” Daelia chimes in. “I never know if today’s the day I’ll trip in a public square and set off an explosion that destroys half the merchants in the city.”
“Whoa, that can happen?” Aurelio gasps.
I roll my eyes. “That’s a little dramatic, Daelia.”
“Is it, though? You used to sneeze and accidentally set things on fire as a kid,” she teases.
My heart seizes in my chest to see Aurelio look at me with that adoring expression on his face. I want nothing more than to punch both him and my sister now.
“Aw, that sounds adorable. Does she sound like a kitten when she sneezes, too?”
“She does,” Daelia replies, shooting me a devilish grin.
“I’d appreciate it if we’d focus more on saving the lives of these children and less on my embarrassing childhood,” I snap.
That’s enough to get the two knuckleheads to knock it off. I set to work curing the illnesses of the villagers in a tense silence, then shakily rise to my feet afterward, watching as Daelia heals the last injury. I don’t feel dizzy or anything when Ophelia comes up to thank me, but by the time she’s through her third sentence, I realize I’m not hearing anything she’s saying. Daelia’s words are a little fuzzy, too.
“Alessia? Are you alright?”
I feel like I’m hearing her from underwater, or from super far away. My feeling in my extremities vanishes, and my legs give out from under me. A pair of arms automatically wrap around me from behind before I can topple over, though.
“She just needs some rest. Take her inside.”
Rest? I don’t have time to rest. I need to help these poor people. I’ve only just healed their injuries. They need food, they need water, and they need help rebuilding their homes—
I don’t finish my thought. I suddenly find myself flat on my back on a soft, cushioned mattress, staring up at a water-damaged wooden ceiling. Someone has angled the shutters next to the mattress to keep the sunlight from shining in my face. I hear the footsteps of someone nearby, and I look to my right, finding Aurelio pacing around the room. He looks my way when I try to sit up in bed.
“Hey! You weren’t out for very long,” he says, grinning.
I frown. “I passed out?”
“Only for a few minutes. I think you overextended yourself in healing those kids,” Aurelio explains. “You might have forgotten to pay attention to how much magic you were using while you explained how your magic works. Sorry for distracting you.”
I shake my head, trying to clear the cobwebs from it. I definitely used too much magic, based on the unbidden soreness permeating my entire body, as well as the brain fog, so thick I can barely string two words together. It’s been a while since I pushed myself like this.
“You don’t need to apologize. I should pay more attention. Besides,” I add, a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth, “I’ve never gotten the chance to use my magic to heal real people. This was fun for me.”
Aurelio raises a brow. “Fun?”
“Yes, fun. It’s not ideal that the citizens of Krasta are suffering—I still plan to make their leadership pay in full for their transgressions—but I’m glad I’m the one that got to heal them. They need to feel that I have a personal stake in their well-being, and I got to show them what I’m capable of in the process. They need to know that they can count on me even if their royalty fails.”
I swing my legs over the side of the bed, intending to get up, but the whole world starts spinning before I can do so. Aurelio is by my side in a flash, holding me up by the shoulders.
“Whoa, you need to lie down still,” he says.
“I’m fine, just let me—” I protest.
“Ah! No! No, no, no. You’re laying down. Now.”
I have no strength to fight back as he lays me back down on the mattress and covers me up with a sheet. I press a hand to my forehead, sighing irritably.
“I don’t need you to baby me, Aurelio.”
“I’m not babying you. Someone has to take care of you if you continue to refuse proper self-care, and that job lands firmly in the hands of your husband. Or have you forgotten that we’re married?”
Even through my brain fog, my face heats. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“Good. Let me take care of you, then.”
“Why are you doing this? It’s not like we’re married for love,” I grumble. “You bear no responsibility for my well-being.”
“You may view it that way, but marriage, whether or not it was my choice, is a commitment to caring for another person. You don’t have to love them to care about them, but I think caring for the person you love is a noble sentiment, don’t you think?”
I’m struck speechless. I don’t know how to respond to that. Even if my brain wasn’t functioning on half-power, I don’t think I would be able to form a response that makes sense in the context of the question. My heart races out of control once more, but not from magic overuse this time.
“Aurelio…I can take care of myself,” I choke out.
“I know you can. I’m doing this because I want to, not because I have to. And no, before you ask, Daelia did not threaten me to get me to take care of you. I told her to take care of the villagers instead.”
I hear the trickle of water, then Aurelio appears at my side, a cool washcloth in hand. He places it over my forehead, where the chill of the water soaks into my burning skin. I sigh gratefully.
“See? Letting someone else take care of you isn’t so bad,” Aurelio says.
“Maybe you’re onto something,” I admit. “But don’t think you can get away with doing this all the time. This is a rare occasion, alright?”
Aurelio smiles patiently. “Whatever you say, Alessia.”
I suck in a breath. The way he said my name has those damn butterflies fluttering all over in my chest again. His eyes sparkle so brightly as he looks down at me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he almost looks…happy. Like, genuinely happy, as though he enjoys playing the role of caretaker.
I hate the fact that I’m enjoying it, too.
“How long are you going to hold me here?” I ask, turning away so I don’t have to look at him.
“Only as long as it takes for you to regain your strength.”
“I’m strong now. You can let me go.”
“Yeah, that’s not how that works. You need to take a break. A real break. Take a nap or something.”
“Or something?”
“I’m not the boss of you. If you won’t sleep, at least lay here, whatever you choose to do.”
I feel his side of the mattress decompress as he gets up. I’m almost a little disappointed that he’s leaving without saying goodbye. I prepare to give him a stinging comment on his way out the door when I hear his footsteps approach and feel something hit the side of my pillow.
“Here. I figured you might enjoy this.”
He walks out of the room before I flip around to see him. Sitting on my pillow in his wake, though, is a copy of a famous fairy tale, The Demon and the Dragon. I brush my fingers across its authentic, two-century-old cover, marveling at its fine details.
This has been sitting in my to-read pile forever. Did he…know?
I hug the book close to my chest, looking back at the door where Aurelio left only moments ago.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
I prop the pillows up, lean back, and flip to page one, diving between the pages of a book I’ve been dying to read for a long, long time.