Chapter 27
“Miss Gelsey said you weren’t feeling well.”
“Miss?” Maeve questioned, straining to open her eyes and look at Reeve, where he stood in her doorway. She hadn’t heard him knock. Or come in. She rolled over in her bed, putting her back to him.“What are you, twelve?”
She closed her eyes, hoping he’d take the hint and leave.
“You were missed this morning and at lunch, so I figured you were dying if it meant you were breaking our agreement.” A pause, then, “You do look like hell.”
Maeve didn’t even have the energy to scowl at him. His boots clicked across the floor until he was beside her bed.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, putting all her energy into inching across the bed, away from his outstretched arm.
“How else will I know if you have a fever?” he asked calmly.
“A what?” she snapped.
Reeve’s arm dropped to his side as he muttered. “I didn’t even think of that.”
“Think of what?” she groaned. “It’s always riddles and half-stated information with you.”
He was too close. The fire radiating from his body made her ill.
“You have a cold,” he said solemnly.
“A cold?”
At last, that fire-filled hand pressed against her forehead. The heat was so unbearable, she jerked away from him at once.
“You’re burning up,” he muttered.
“I’m burning up?” she asked incredulously. “You’re a walking furnace.”
Reeve made a contemplative sound. “Your Magic was protecting you from minor illness.”
“Minor?” she sighed, each breath feeling like it wasn’t enough.
He grabbed the decanter of water on the bedside table and poured a glass. He offered it to her. The command, or suggestion, she wasn’t sure which, was silent, but she didn’t have it in her to argue.
She took the glass in shaking hands and sipped the water.
She held the cool glass to her cheek and sighed. “How long is this illness going to last?”
“A day or two,” he answered. “You need rest.”
Rest was impossible. Not with the aches running through her body. When she did manage to land a moment of unconscious slumber, there was nothing peaceful about it. Her body fluctuated from freezing to cold. Her throat burned with each swallow.
Maeve waited for Reeve to offer his assistance, but it never came. She sighed.
“Could you possibly help me sleep?” she relented, rolling towards him.
Reeve smiled, his tongue lifting beneath one of his canines. “Oh,” he said with a purr. “She’s desperate.”
“Never mind,” she muttered, placing the glass of water back on her side table.
Reeve laughed, and it was the last sound she heard before a soft blanket of Magic consumed her, drawing her eyes closed and settling her mind into nothing.
The Crown’s Quarters, Maeve’s old rooms at Castle Morana, looked just as she remembered them. Beautiful, deep shades of blue and plum decorated the space. Memories of sleeping there with Mal as he held her back against his chest, their legs a tangled mess.
Now tainted by the presence of a demon.
Shadow’s hand crept up her breast, playing with herself as Mal moved between her legs, spreading them wider—
“Stop it,” she cried, her fingers bracing herself against the edge of the bath.
Reeve’s assistance had worn off, putting her mind at the mercy of watching such heartbreaking things. But she couldn’t even think about Mal at that moment.
Fire raged through her.
Maeve had never felt anything like it. The cool water should have offered her some relief, but she may as well have been sitting in a hot spring. She sank deeper into the bath, just that small movement draining her.
A muffled voice echoed across the bathroom. At her side, a figure appeared. Maeve opened her eyes groggily as someone leaned over the tub, eyes shifting between Maeve’s half-conscious ones.
“Oh dear,” they said. “Come on, child. Let’s get you up before you accidentally drown.”
The figure moved to help her out of the bath, reaching an arm around her back.
Maeve.
Mal’s voice sounded out, so clear that it had to be his touch against her back, lifting her.
Panic raced through Maeve. Electricity crackled down Maeve’s arm and across her chest, wild and violent.
The figure recoiled quickly, dropping Maeve.
Water sloshed over the edge as they gasped and jumped back.
The room darkened, only for a moment, and Maeve felt his presence as he appeared from the mist in the bathroom.
“The fever, My Lord,” said the voice softly. “It’s too high for her.”
Reeve inhaled stiffly and moved towards Maeve. He did not look down at her exposed body.
“Don’t,” she started weakly, barely able to open her eyes, but knowing it was him, “touch me.”
Reeve didn’t break her gaze. He nodded and kneeled beside the bath.
“Who can touch you?” he asked gently.
Maeve didn’t answer.
“Someone has to, Maeve. You have to get to the healing waters. Your fever is too high.”
“How far away is it?” She asked.
“If I can Obscure us, it’s instant. Otherwise,” he looked up at the blurry figure, “perhaps sedation for the journey there.”
Maeve surged forward, water shifting beneath her momentary strength. She reached towards him, gripping the collar of his shirt, forcing his attention back on her. His eyes slid to her hands.
“No,” she said weakly, her grip already faltering as her body threatened to slide fully into the water. “Please don’t do that. Please don’t—”
Reeve didn’t move to touch her. His face was pained as he said, “No one is going to sedate you. I’m sorry I said that.”
She looked back and forth between his saddened eyes. “Obscure me.”
“Hand me a robe, please, Miss Gelsey,” he said.
Gelsey. Not Mal.
Gelsey stepped towards them, placing the robe in Reeve’s outstretched arm. “Thank you,” he said. “You may go.”
Gelsey took her leave at once. Reeve’s eyes returned to hers as her body gave her a clear warning: it was going to be lights out in just a few moments.
“Can you stand?” he asked, his voice low.
She shook her head in defeat.
With each movement, Reeve’s eyes never left her wavering ones.
His hand moved to the back of her neck, supporting her head.
Fire surged from his fingertips, but she barely had the energy to register it.
Her grip on his shirt loosened at once, and her arms fell slack into the water.
His other arm wrapped around her waist like a ribbon of fire, his broad hand gently gripping beneath her hip.
He stood, pulling her out of the water and soaking the front of his clothes as he supported her.
Her head rolled forward, settling against his chest with a shallow breath. She was too drowsy to understand how he managed to wrap her in the robe, but as he slid her arms through the smooth fabric, the feeling of being smothered crashed over her instantly.
She found the strength to lift her eyes up at him, completely pliant and soft against him as he towered over her.
The breath that left him was calm, his focus on dressing her.
She met his eyes, dark and swirling with molten, violet fire.
They bore into hers with such gentle intensity that her knees took it as permission to buckle, but he held her perfectly still.
A bolt of electricity raced up her arm and crawled over his shoulder. It affected him less than a small breeze would have, but his eyes followed the bright blue path of light until it dissipated.
His eyes returned to hers. “Full of surprises, kitten.”
Her top half barely moved as he scooped up the back of her legs. Her body compressed against his as they moved through space. The lighting changed as he stepped across space.
New voices appeared, but her fever drowned them all out.
The water was ice as it hit her skin. Terrifying and smooth. It smelled of lavender and eucalyptus, and swirled with a thick purple color, rendering her unconscious in the white, oversized pool of water only moments after being placed in it.
Now minutes or hours later, she didn’t know, her fully conscious eyes were on Reeve, who sat in a chair at the far end of the water.
She sank deeper into the water, which was now pleasant. Her body was wrapped in a white gauze-like material that clung to her skin. She relaxed as she realized she wasn’t completely exposed to him.
Though she already had been. And he’d kept those devastating eyes up.
Her hair felt clean, washed, and dried atop her head.
“How do you feel?” he asked in a low hum.
His eyes were tired.
“I feel. . .rested. That fever is gone.”
Reeve nodded. “I can feel that.”
“You can feel my body temperature?”
“I can.”
Maeve leaned her head against the tiled wall behind her. “Is that because you are so great, or because of some other reason?”
Reeve didn’t smile. “All Immortals have heightened senses, should we want or need them. Smells, heartbeats. But with you. . . I haven’t got a choice.”
Maeve shifted in the water, letting it reach her back fully. She changed the subject.
“How long did it take for my fever to break?”
“Mere minutes. But the Healers worked on you for hours. Your arm had some residual issues they addressed. And their water did its part.”
Maeve brought her hand to the surface, and the deep violet waters glistened around her fingers.
“The famous waters of Aterna,” she said softly.
The place that she wanted Mal to come to before she’d altered reality, before he’d been lost to Shadow.
“How old do you think I am now?” she asked, a question she’d been wondering for a while. Wondering just exactly how much time had passed since she first began messing with her, and everyone’s perception of time.
“You don’t look a day over forty,” said Reeve.
Maeve’s mouth fell open. Reeve smiled triumphantly.
“Easy,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to evoke more of that lightning from you.”
Her eyes narrowed. Then widened as she remembered. She looked away from Reeve, down at her hands.
“How?” she asked, shaking her head. “I put all my Magic into those crystals. All of it. That lightning. . .it’s Dread Magic. I know it is.”
Reeve nodded. “It’s unheard of Dread Magic,” he corrected her. “Magic, your sister can also produce.”
She dropped her hands back beneath the water and looked up at him, at a loss for any explanation.
“My father couldn’t do that,” she said, partially a statement and somewhat of a question.
“No,” Reeve assured her. “He couldn’t. The first time you used it was the night he died. Is that correct?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
“Has Maxius ever?”
Her thoughts drifted to the little Magic her son had been able to produce. How Mal was helping him grow stronger and find that inaccessible and dormant power inside of him. But that was before.
She shook her head and then asked, “How long was Maxius here?” She braved the question, her own sense of time completely ruined.
“Which time?”
Maeve’s head hit the wall behind her. Reeve’s words dug deep, a reminder of her failure. Of relying on him again and again. Of how he didn’t trust her, shouldn’t trust her, and yet he came every time she called.
Likely sensing the guilt running through her, Reeve spoke.
“You trusting me with his life may, strangely, be the greatest honor anyone has bestowed me.”
“You took him without question.”
“What question was there?” asked Reeve quietly.
Maeve held his gaze for a moment and then slipped deeper into the water until it covered her lips. Pride kept her from expressing gratitude. Gratitude she’d never be able to repay.
“You have to eat,” said Reeve with a sigh. “You have to eat and actually sleep. Your body doesn’t have the things it once relied on to keep you well. And I think,” he hesitated, “that you need to do more than sit around the palace and read.”
She rose, only an inch, in order to reply. “I’m just so weak in your eyes, aren’t I?”
Reeve’s head moved to each side. “You’re so strong, it makes me feel sick. So resilient. You’ve been forced to build armor that didn’t exist on you years ago.” He nearly smiled as he said. “I have no doubt you’ll be the last one standing.”