Chapter 12
While the days are hot, a certain chill has filled my body, the tether to it frosted over. I am neither here nor there, yet my awareness slips each moment I participate in the village.
This morning I find my physical form slow but my mind sharp. Moving around the kitchen, scooping tea into a cup and trying to ignore the pang of hunger deep within is a task. Muffled words from outside the cottage startle me and I spill hot water on the counter.
“Your words of disrespect in regards to Liv are at best, just that, disrespectful. You would be wise to keep those thoughts to yourself.” Cedric’s voice is firm and deadly. Each word seems to hit their mark because someone replies back with, “Yes, Your Highness.”
Whatever caused this reaction only makes my anxiety rise when the front door spells open and Avonde steps through the threshold.
Trust is a fickle thing, after all.
I walk delicately into the sitting room, tea in hand, and take them in.
The book I was reading earlier about botany and natural remedies lays face down next to a bowl of sugar cubes on a small table.
I sip and nod in greeting to her and the group behind.
Cedric hangs far in the back, his black outfit contrasting with the natural tones of the cess.
“I just need more tea,” I say.
Avonde and Cedric cast a look at each other that I cannot read. Perhaps they did not expect me so compliant, so calm.
Cedric takes a seat on the incredibly small chaise. After seeing him sparring yesterday, even clothed, it’s clear his physique is honed by years of training. Standing well over six feet, he looks awkward sitting on the floral seat, but he does not complain.
The kitchen acts as a place of escape for me, yet as the water begins to boil, I make a mental checklist of what I need to say, to do.
My actions are being analyzed beyond compare.
Let them see me untrustworthy but open to help.
Let them see a broken girl, which is not completely a ruse, but let them also be blind to my discernment.
I will not give in to this life so easily.
Avonde’s voice startles me from my thoughts and I spill some herbs on the counter. Did she hear me?
“I see you’ve found elys.” She nods to the tin.
“Try it with some honey and a dash of nutmeg.” I make a quaint smile and turn my back to her.
“We have made some developments in our understanding of your ailment since yesterday. How are you doing?” Vampyrs likely have excellent hearing so I know there are more ears in this conversation.
“Better, I feel better.” Slowly, I plate the cup for Cedric, trying to quell the subtle shake in my hand on my way back into the main room. All eyes land upon me and the air goes tight.
As I walk into the room, my slipper catches on the edge of the rug and my wrist flexes awkwardly, tipping the tea over. Cedric’s quick reflexes catch the plate and cup midair but the hot liquid lands on his feet.
“You are still weak,” he hisses, emphasis on the last word.
The audacity.
“You think that because you threatened me, I will bend to your will?” I spit, baring my teeth.
His white teeth glint in the light. “You will bend,” he replies. “She has not fed, Avonde.”
The cess looks at him wildly, his brazenness.
The blonde one takes notes and the others stare at the chest of blood on the ground.
“We will work on this, Your Highness. Liv, I’d like to run a few tests, if that is permissible,” Avonde cuts in as she motions to the rest of the group.
I nod in consent, crawling up onto the other sofa.
Poised with my hands on my lap, I school my face blank again until…
A branch, a sliver of darkness snakes into my being, my mind. Probing, looking. A foreign feeling as if I am being threaded from the inside out. Everything tenses, fights against it. The visual of this invasion of my mind pulls clear while a gentle throb echoes in my head.
Thud, thud, thud.
I clench my jaw and try to stop this capture. Is it the cess? This internal scoping? I look over at Cedric. A bead of sweat rolls down his temple and his eyes are glazed looking down at the rug.
“You—” I start, words caught on my tongue as I try to force him out, but I can’t. Suddenly, his eyes focus back up to my face and he blinks a few times. Goosebumps mottle my skin, the hold on me retracting. A small zap beneath my hand brings me closer to the earth. “What did you do?”
The stares of the cess around us feel like a drill on my skin and he swallows deeply. “Please forgive my attempt without permission.” He apologizes more to them than me.
“What attempt? What were you looking for? Elivienne? She’s gone.”
Avonde moves to sit next to me and I growl.
Speaking to me directly, Cedric adds, “I tried to reach your mind, to visualize the malady if possible. Mindscaping is the most intimate work of magic one can practice. Being so, you need to have a bond with the person you’re attempting to reach.
Some sort of relationship. With you, I know I can get in but your mind,” he pauses, “it’s almost rotted over.
A steel wall shrouded in mist, but a dark place.
Where there was once light, there is an abyss.
“What used to be blooming with a beautiful and delicate lightness is now decrepit. It is a searing hot pain in a space built for bliss. It shot through the crown of my head, down my neck, through my arms and out my fingertips. As if a hot iron was being driven through every muscle and tendon.”
My limbs feel detached. Mindscaping – how many times did they attempt this when I was in the infirmary?
Avonde fiddles with her beads and the blonde one speaks up. “This means that she felt him just now.”
“Yes, I felt him like an assault on my mind,” I bite. “Do not ever do that to me again.”
Yully, the man with dirtied robes and a shorter stature, approaches me with silent shuffles. His beads, like the rest of them, are stacked and looped across his chest with varying designs, yet his seem worn from use. He smiles wildly and bows before me. “May I sit beside you?”
With my nod, he softly takes my other side. “I would like to run a diagnostic, similar to what I believe my counterpart has done before.” He motions to Avonde. “It will take only a few moments but my particular gifts work on internal structures, most notably the mind. Is this permissible?”
His calm demeanor means something to me here.
“Please, do what you need.” I tuck my hair behind my ears and close my eyes as he brings his hands to my temple.
A few silent moments pass and I feel nothing this time.
Yully slowly pulls his hands back from my temple, cursing at his palms as he shakes them back and forth in pain.
“You felt it, too?” Avonde crosses her robed legs.
“Felt it? It burned me,” he states, presenting bright red fingertips.
“I did that?” I jump up and grab for my head. I did that to them. My body did that to them.
“I felt it as well,” Cedric adds, much to my dismay.
Avonde and Yully have a silent conversation before she turns to me. “Gods, this is more complex than we thought.” Grenn, the long-limbed one with black hair tied into a messy knot, produces a piece of parchment from his robes and begins notating.
“We have come to understand what has caused the amnesia. Well, part of it,” Avonde begins. “There is a sort of…” she trails off, looking to Yully.
“Aggressive mental block,” he finishes, his face tight. Everyone nods in agreement. The notetaker picks up speed.
“Whatever Liv experienced prior to us discovering her body, in the state it was in, was magic. A curse, to be more precise. Cast against her.”
“A curse?” Cedric asks, shifting his weight back and forth.
“Not one that I have seen in a very, very long time.”
“Break it.”
“I can’t. Not now at least,” Avonde rasps, head lowering.
“Why?” His fists tighten at his sides and I sink into the cushions. I am not here.
“It is ancient. Far more ancient than the existence of your kind, Your Majesty.”
“What does this mean for me?”
Everyone looks back to me as if just realizing my presence.
“We do not know, but we can break it,” a female cess, a younger tall blonde with murky blue eyes says from the back of the room. “With time.”
Cedric looks back to her. “Do not promise something that is not feasible. The last thing we need is to be let down. To be strung down an avenue that has no end. If there is no cure – no, no I can’t let myself even entertain the thought.”
“We are dealing with no mere amnesia case but rather a whole new persona, a trauma response that created—”
“Me,” I finish for her. “Liv. Because Liv doesn’t exist. Elivienne created her.”
The energy shifts slightly and Avonde continues, bringing my attention back to her. “Essentially. But Serene is correct, we can break it. Anything done can be undone. It is the way of our magic. But Liv, you need to keep feeding.”
“I can’t stomach that.” I rise from the couch. “I want it, but I can’t do it. I keep trying and failing to get past a few drops.”
“You will,” Cedric replies before looking back to the healers. “How long will this take?”
“It could be days or years,” Yully offers. Grenn looks up briefly but continues recording.
“It’s already been two. Her health is deteriorating and her magic is snuffed.
You say she was cursed. A curse is a serious affliction, one I do not have to explain to you.
How did we miss this? Almost all have been outlawed by the conventions of war on the continent.
The High Council should have been alerted to a use of energy like that when it happened, but nothing crossed my desk. ”
“You know better than anyone that our enemy has been scaling his ire against us and anyone who stands with us for some time. While we can’t point our fingers south, we can remember that while this continent is big, allegiances run bigger.
Believe me, Your Highness, we have been exhausting our options and will not cease in doing so.
But we must remain firm in our duties. Every member in this room worked on Liv during those two years.
We had no indication this was the root. Have faith.
It will take some time. Be patient, Your Highness. ”
“You cannot force it? I have seen the extent of all your powers,” he responds quickly, looking at all of them.
“We could… but we cannot without more knowledge of this curse. It is dangerous, Your Majesty,” Percy speaks up.
Cedric was already exiting the cottage by the time Percy finished his response. I could have sworn a tendril of black smoke followed him out. My hands shake before me as daylight filters in from the lace curtains. Someone is speaking about plans but a rush of sound, of emotion, fills my ears.
Someone did this to me.
It was no accident.
It was deliberate.