Can You Feel That #3
Magic was heavy in the air, like a thick fog or a humid day in the midst of the worst summer. It made her skin prickle, and she couldn't tear her gaze away even as Thea hid them behind a set of trees.
As the crowd dispersed, the perceived threat gone, the magic in the dragon's throat subsided. He dropped to the ground, curling around Carissa. The last Aaryn saw of her was her head thrown back, glowing just like her dragon was.
Vaelen made it to them with a soft whisper of grass, and she carefully approached the tense dragon protecting his… Awakened.
Even in the midst of such chaos and worry, something twisted through Aaryn's chest.
The dragon's eyes were narrowed, ever intelligent, as Vaelen drew closer.
Vaelen placed herself between the dragon and the remaining crowd and lifted her hands. "Please give her some space. Carissa is safe, and Stormstrike will feel more at ease."
Her tone was kind to appease the worried and firm to mitigate the curious.
"You too," she said, nodding in Aaryn and Thea's direction.
"Will she be okay?" Aaryn asked Vaelen, daring to step closer despite the dragon's glare.
"The Hoard is a powerful, unpredictable beast of its own. This isn't quite ideal, I'll admit. But all the more reason for Carissa to retain her privacy. She will be fine," she declared.
The flash of blood, the soft glow slightly reminiscent of the orange flowers, her dragon's roar… Carissa had broken her brand. She was… Awakened.
"So she was… desperate. To save him. To do something," Thea explained, once she had met with Vaelen.
"Because Rolim is set to be executed," Aaryn repeated, a little dazed. "With a dead punishment resurrected by the new king. Who is now… Jarrick."
Reportedly, the King succumbed to the illness that had secretly been keeping him from the public eye for so long. His empty seat in the Dining Hall certainly made more sense now, if that was certainly the case.
Which Thea wasn’t convinced of in the slightest.
“He killed him,” Thea said, throwing her hands up. “Had to. Destroying a city, using magic so grossly, reinstating inhumane executions, what’s helping dad into the grave a little early?”
Aaryn winced. The prince, someone Aaryn had once thought of as a protector, had gone… mad. And they weren’t the only ones to think so. Reports from staff within the castle, a visiting diplomat, all described Jarrick as quick to anger and paranoid. Anyone smart was afraid of setting him off.
"We’re gonna save him,” Thea declared. “Rolim. A week from now. A quick extraction. In and out."
Aaryn's stomach turned with worry, but Thea was confident, if not serene in her determination.
"We need to save the Tethered, too,” Aaryn said. “If the reports you have of Jarrick’s descent into madness are true, then they’re not safe with him."
“I know. We can only do so much, and there’s so much to do. How’s Carissa?”
“The Awakened are looking after her.”
Carissa, who had been awaiting Rolim to tap into her magic, and now didn't have him.
Everything Aaryn had heard made the process of awakening one's magic seem so…
romantic. So fun and personal and intimate and freeing.
But Carissa had seemed like she'd been in such…
pain. The unnatural arch to her neck, the glow to her eyes, the… the magic around her had felt…
Aaryn shook it from her mind and continued walking with Thea, Starspark, as always, at her side.
"This seems like an absolutely terrible time to ask, but if anything, I've learned there might never be a good time."
"Thea," Aaryn teased. "It's a little soon for a proposal."
Thea groaned and shoved Aaryn playfully, both relieved by the brief distraction. "The bonfire is in a few days. Will you go with me?"
Aaryn saw the possibilities, Thea's cheeks flush from drink and the warmth of the fire and the heat between them…
"Of course," she answered, because there was no other answer.
A celebration of sorts, days before one of their own was to be rescued from his death.
Aaryn tried to pretend it didn't feel like a goodbye.
She clung tighter to Thea's hand anyway.
The feeling persisted. As if something was… as if Aaryn was awaiting something.
She was so, so very tired of waiting. A child, waiting for her father to care for her. A lady, waiting for the lottery to save her. A Tethered, waiting for the prince to loosen her leash. And now, here she was… what? Not a Tethered. Not a druid. Not an Awakened.
And she was still waiting.
But for what, she didn't know. She just knew her chest felt heavy—different than the fullness that occupied it when she was around Thea.
Which wasn't often in the following days as Thea prepared for the rescue, meeting with those tasked with Rolim's survival.
Aaryn focused on training with Starspark under the tutelage of another Awakened, one who told her lightly of Carissa. Nothing more than "She's lucid now."
It wasn't until the day of the bonfire that Aaryn was able to see Carissa on her own, but not like a patient in the healer's tent, or even recovering in her own home. Surprisingly, Aaryn came across her in the fields of the Dragons’ Nest with Stormstrike.