Chapter 37 #2
“Whoa,” Autumn said, rushing to right her. “I’m going to fetch some help.”
Anna nodded and drifted back to sleep.
When she woke again, the spae who trained Cole was at her bedside, her hands pressed to Anna’s temples, eyes closed.
“I see nothing wrong, sir,” she said, and Anna searched the room to find Sean standing near the windows, arms crossed, expression inscrutable. “You said she saw something?” the spae prodded. “What was it?”
Sean shook his head. “A gray being, she said.”
Head pounding, Anna floated back toward the oblivion of sleep, waking only when the spae asked her to drink a pain tonic that did nothing but put a bad taste in her mouth.
The next time she woke, Maddy sat at her bedside, knitting.
“Maddy?”
The girl jerked her head up, her scarf dropping to a table as she rushed toward Anna, perching at the bed’s edge. “How are you feeling?”
Anna managed a short conversation and asked for some food, but she fell asleep before it arrived.
Besides Maddy, a rotating menagerie of people visited her temporary bedroom—Cole and Autumn, Kywyn and Elenya, even Cathaire and Leyla. The spae returned daily, but her report remained the same.
Mostly, she spent her convalescence with Sean.
It was Sean who brought her food. Sean who sat with her late into the night when the headache kept her from sleep. Sean who helped her to the chair beside the windows so she could stare at something other than the ceiling, always mindful never to brush her skin.
“I was careful what I told the Council,” he said one evening, two nights after the vision.
“Yeah?”
Uneasy blue eyes slid her way. “I didn’t mention what the creature said about you. I only said that it had threatened me. I didn’t want them suspicious of you.”
“I would never join someone who planned to kill you.”
His answering smile was soft. “I know.”
With a sigh, Anna stared out the window, the starry night reflecting over the pristine blanket of snow coating the forest. “I’ve wondered my whole life who my mother is. Now I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Sure you do,” he said. “You’re not a coward.”
Anna was no longer certain of the truth in that statement. She was terrified to learn the truth. Whose blood ran in her veins? Who gave her this magic?
“Sean?”
“Mmm?”
“I—I have Morgan’s magic.”
Without looking, Anna wasn’t sure what expression he wore, but she sensed his sudden stillness and felt the spike of alarm like an ice pick in his emotions.
She wasn’t sure what made her say it, but this man had been nothing but kind.
He was a real friend, and if he truly was the Savior they said, then he needed all the information. She trusted him to keep her secret.
“I’ve been hiding it for years,” she continued. “But David figured it out, and his mother was training me to control it before…this.”
Sean was silent a moment before his gruff voice asked, “David knows?”
“He said my emotions feel like a battlefield. It was obvious to him.”
Amusement sparkled through his emotional core. “A battlefield, huh? How do his feel to you?”
“Like ice.”
Sean chuckled darkly. “Of course they do. Even his feelings are bad at communicating.”
Anna wasn’t sure what to make of that comment, so she ignored it. “I just didn’t want you to be in the dark.”
Another quiet stretched. “Thank you for trusting me with that.”
Her eyes fluttered closed. “I’d trust you with anything.”
They spoke of many things in the following days.
Their lives before Luxoria. Her father. His mother.
She described her fears upon learning she had Morgan’s magic, the pressure of keeping it secret.
He confided his worries regarding the Sending and the blood oath, divulging deeper foreboding and more uncertainty than she realized.
It made her ache to hear him speak of never feeling as if he belonged, especially after the death of his mother.
She wanted to hug him, to hold his hand or offer comfort, but the unspoken rule between them remained unbroken.
They did not touch.
David never came. He didn’t even send her messages through the others. He just…ignored her.
Deep inside, another ache bloomed, somewhere in the vicinity of her heart—a combination of missing him and fearing that she’d somehow botched things irreparably.
By the fifth day, the headache finally began to abate, giving her short intervals of relief from the pain but not the dizziness. Someone could have carried her to her bedroom, but she refused to allow that. She’d walk out of this suite on her own two feet.
She stopped fearing the gray being would return. Instead, she spent her days contemplating her bloodline and her nights gazing at the skies, millions of stars winking, bright as diamonds.
On the seventh night, Sean tucked a blanket about her, warding off any chill. “Second scouting mission in Viterra today,” he said.
“Going well?” she murmured, uncertain whether she was more dizzy or more sleepy.
“Better than I thought it would. With so many pixies in the group, any Indies we run across stay far away.”
“You’re staying safe?” she asked. “You and…the others?”
Sean’s pitying gaze landed on her. “He’s being safe.”
Anna’s mouth tightened, hating herself for caring about a man who clearly didn’t care about her. “And the pixies? They’re staying covered?”
“Yes. They keep away from mortals when we come across them, but—” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s a risk, them being there. I never really considered how inhuman they are until I saw them in Viterra. If anyone looks too closely…”
“Why are they risking it?”
“Bowenn doesn’t trust anyone but his team with me. Not after last time. He says he looks close enough to human to pass.”
Anna sighed, unsurprised. “What about Isobel?” she asked. “The baby?”
Sean’s emotions flattened and a thin layer of frost coated them, somewhat reminiscent of David. “She’s fine.”
He hated speaking of Isobel, but she couldn’t stop her curiosity. They had been so in love for a time, but tension had worn the edges of that love. It seemed to have started when Sean discovered what she’d done to his soul.
Anna could understand that. A betrayal so deep would be hard to forgive.
Her eyes fell shut, and she counted minutes by the rhythm of his breathing. By now, Anna was certain she’d be able to pick it out of a crowd.
A sense of helplessness washed over her. For years, she’d trained her body to be strong, but it had utterly failed her. She could barely walk and her head thrummed with pain, all from a silly vision.
A flash of anger gave way to a profound sadness, sucking her down into a deep hole.
She was sick, and no one knew if she would ever get better. The spae who checked on her each day appeared more and more troubled as time passed with minimal improvement. At Anna’s request, Maddy brought her books to research this mysterious illness, but her vision was too blurry to read.
And sitting atop all that, adding unbearable weight, was the cracking sensation in her chest, the one she could ignore no longer, that foreshadowed splintering facets of pain on the horizon.
The longer she went without any contact from David, the deeper the splinters burrowed, straight into the bloodiest parts of her heart.
Heartbreak was looming. She knew it as sure as she recognized the pity in Sean’s gaze for what it was: David didn’t want her.
Her heart longed for a man who would never come, and she couldn’t understand how she’d gone from lying in his arms, basking in the glow of Maybe you’re exactly where you belong to total silence.
It was destructive, his unexplained absence, breaking her from the inside out.
As hours and then days passed, Anna began to fear what her magic could turn this into.
How painful was heartbreak to a child of Morgan, one who had no barriers, no cages, no ice?
Would it even be survivable?
A single tear slipped from her eye, and she swiped it away.
She couldn’t think on it. No use worrying about something she couldn’t change.
“Thank you for sitting with me like this,” she murmured into the long silence.
“You don’t need to thank me, Anna.”
“Yes, I do.” Her voice was raspy with emotion. “You have a lot going on.”
Sometime later, his soft “None of that matters more than you” whispered through the spaces between them.
It was almost worse that Sean was so kind. She’d tried not to wonder why it was him in this room instead of David, but the question lingered. If David didn’t care, why was his soulmate so invested in her recovery?
“Why hasn’t he come?” she whispered as another tear fell.
Even without the mixture of hot anger and electric dread that burst from his chest, Sean’s long exhale would have told her he wasn’t thrilled about this subject. Perhaps they’d discussed it.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Another tear, but Anna ignored it. “I’m sorry,” she said with a sniffle. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”
Sean waited a moment to respond, but when he did, her tears came in earnest.
“Yes, you do. It’s because you love him.”