by Lina Langley
“Thank you,” Taln mumbled, leaning back onto the wall and looking at the white-gray ceiling. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply, the way that Rayne had told him to. It wasn’t working. His heartbeat was a little slower, a little less hard. But it wasn’t helping. There was a knot in his stomach that he didn’t seem to be able to shake and his vision kept getting blurry.
It scared him.
He wanted to ask them, ask Jesse, what it was about, but he couldn’t. Rayne had told him it was just anxiety and he had wanted to ask her what that meant, but he had asked nothing. She talked about it like it was air or fingers or food. Like he was just supposed to know what she was talking about and just by knowing what it was, he would feel better.
It hadn’t made him feel better at all. And his head hurt now more than ever, despite drinking copious amounts of water and having as many painkillers as he was allowed to have.
His foot also hadn’t stopped moving. He’d never been the fidgety type before. Now he was completely unable to control it. It seemed to have a mind of its own.
A man in blue scrubs stepped out of the double door and nodded towards them.
“Dr. Richardson,” he said. Peter stood up and walked over to him. They talked in whispers. Rayne watched them while Taln watched his ever-moving knee.
Peter turned to them and smiled thinly. “Okay. He’s ready to see us now.”
Taln followed behind the couple as they filed into the room, both making their way to the small bedroom in the middle. The room was nice, definitely nicer than the hallway, but he only looked at that for a second before he set his eyes on Jesse’s face. His face, still covered in bruises, had now become a dark shade of purple with surrounding yellowish green rings and there were bandages and stitches on his skin.
His mouth was being held open with a bunch of long, rectangular, wooden things that Taln didn’t know the name of.
“I thought they were supposed to help him,” Taln said, more to himself than to anyone.
“We are,” Peter said. “The tongue depressors are because his jaw is dislocated. He’ll have to stay like this for a couple of hours but he should be fine soon. The swelling will go down. It’s not instant, you know? He needs to heal.”
Jesse set his brown eyes on him. They seemed to shine. It was enough to get a smile out of Taln, weary as it was. He could hear Rayne and Peter talking but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He only had eyes for Jesse, lying there, a blue blanket over him.
“We’ll give you two a second,” Rayne said when she finally looked up at Taln.
Her husband followed her outside and Taln stood at the bottom of the bed, trying to figure out if there was some way to help him. He had helped him before when he had been hurt. But this time, when he had found him seriously hurt, despite feeling magic coursing through his veins, he hadn’t been able to help Jesse at all.
He had just remembered his name.
“You can hear me?”
Jesse blinked. Taln tried to nod. Without thinking, he moved to Jesse's side and put his hand inside of Jesse’s. It was sweaty, clammy and uncomfortable, but he squeezed Taln’s hand and it made him smile.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Jesse creased his eyebrows.
“I liked the sofa,” he said. “This only happened because you were trying to help me.”
Jesse didn’t stop frowning.
“You are always so kind,” he continued. “And the one thing I could have given you, I was unable to. My access to magic may be limited, but I’m good at combat, and if I had been there—”
Jesse squeezed his hand, his eyebrows creasing together even further, a line appearing between them.
Taln shook his head. “Can I stay here? Do you think they’ll let me stay the night?”
Jesse stopped frowning. Taln smiled at him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Salisei focused on the mage’s flickering hair color. She hadn’t been in Isocrice’s dwelling before and she felt like she wasn’t welcome. “Are you sure about this, child?”
Isocrice sat on the floor, her open hands over the hearth. Salisei swallowed, looking down at her leather-clad feet. Her boots needed to be fixed up, but she had been avoiding going to the Great Hall lately. She had always found secrets hard to keep. People already avoided her after her brother had been banished, but whenever they spoke to her, they prodded her and teased her. She wanted to tell them about her meeting with The Conjurer. Only important people got to meet The Conjurer. And no one had ever been given the chance to return before, not as far as she knew.
“I need to see what is happening right now,” Salisei replied in a thin voice.
Isocrice looked up at her and nodded. Her hair was white now. Sometimes it was purple, sometimes it was a light blue. She looked scarier with white hair, Salisei thought.
“You will not enjoy this,” Isocrice said before waving her hands over the hearth. A black fire sparked to life in front of her.
Within the flickering shadows she could make two shapes out. One of them was still unclear, little more than a silhouette. It looked like a private chamber with a man—maybe, she couldn’t be sure—propped up so that he was sitting in a bed, a blanket thrown over his waist. She saw Taln next to him, also in bed, but not under the covers. He was facing away from the other person, curled up on his side and hugging his knees in front of his chest.
“Is he sick?”
“He’s hurt,” Isocrice replied.
“He doesn’t appear hurt.”
“He is in pain,” the mage told her, training her violet eyes on her. “It’s not a type of pain you are able to understand.”
“Is he always in pain?”
Isocrice frowned. “I don’t know.”
Salisei thought that Isocrice would know but she decided to keep it to herself and ask something else instead. “Does he need help?”
“I don’t know,” the mage repeated.
Salisei took a step forward. “I want to help him.”
“It is a dangerous realm, child,” Isocrice said. “More dangerous than anything you have ever known.”
“I don’t care,” Salisei stared through the fire at her brother’s face. “He needs help. I want to go get him. The Conjurer said he is being punished. You said you don’t know whether he’s always in pain. If he has learned his lesson, I may be able to bring him back. That is what the council said.”
Isocrice looked her up and down. “You are so young.”
“I can help him. Can you get me to him?”
Isocrice sighed and focused on the fire. “I can get you to the same… street. You will have to attempt to enter every dwelling there before you find your brother. That’s the best I can do.”
“Thank you.”
“I can only buy you so much time. If you stay there for too long—”
“I won’t let you get in trouble,” Salisei said. “Thank you.”
Isocrice sighed and waved her hands over the black fire. It disappeared, and a bigger bluish flame replaced it.
“You must stay very still,” Isocrice said. “If you move in transit, you may perish. And child, be careful. Earth is a dangerous realm, especially for one so young.”
“Yes, Mage,” Salisei said. She took a step forward and hesitated in front of the fire.
* * *
Isocrice trained her gaze on Salisei Lahtinen as the girl moved towards the fire. Salisei’s body slowly disappeared as the light flickered out and the fire was.
She waited until she was sure the girl had gone through before she spoke into her empty house. “It’s done, Conjurer.”
* * *
Jesse faced away from Taln and as he listened to his labored breathing. At least he had finally fallen asleep. His head was still a little sore and his jaw hurt. Jesse reached for the bottle of pills on his nightstand and stuffed some in his mouth, taking a sip of the lukewarm water sitting next to them.
Swallowing was always something he had ta
ken for granted. Now it hurt the sides of his face and his throat. His tongue felt like sandpaper. He only thought about it for a second before he closed his eyes and thought about Taln. He had been looking after Jesse, bringing him water, smoothies and painkillers.
When Rayne had asked him if he wanted to stay at Jesse’s place, he had looked at her like she was an idiot. If Jesse had been to laugh, he would have. Something had happened, though, ever since they had found him. There was the fact that he could remember his name, obviously, but there was something else. It was as if the event had triggered a massive change in Taln and his generally accepting if slightly confused disposition had turned completely. He wasn’t just upset, he was inconsolable.
It had been a few days since he had been released from the hospital. In that time, he had seen Puck—Taln, he was upset when he had accidentally called him Puck—cry every single day. It always seemed to be triggered by something silly, insignificant, like dropping a glass of water on the floor or watching Jesse whimper when he put a cold compress on his face.
Jesse had seen Taln try to choke back tears while cleaning the sink, putting plates into the dishwasher, hanging towels on racks. They’d held a conversation, as if nothing was happening, while tears were streaming down Taln’s face, his eyes dark while he smiled at Jesse. Jesse had heard him cry himself to sleep in the living room. This was the first night that Taln had joined him in the bedroom since being back from the hospital.
Whenever Jesse asked him to explain what was happening, Taln just shook his head. He had tried a couple of times, but it had ended up sounding incoherent. The only thing Jesse could tell, or thought he could tell, was that Taln was overwhelmed.
He sighed as he slid his back down the headboard, lied down on the bed and faced Taln’s back. His hand hovered over Taln’s shoulder as he wondered if it would wake him up before he decided that it didn’t matter. He set his hand down on Taln before moving closer to him so that his arm was actually wrapped over his chest instead.
A hug wouldn’t do any harm. That’s what he told himself while he took a deep breath. He probably wouldn’t even wake up.
Taln stirred under his touch. “Jesse?”
Jesse exhaled, slowly moving his arm off of him. “Hey. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s okay,” Taln replied. “I don’t know why I’m sleeping so much. I’m always so tired. Why did you stop? I liked that.”
“You did?”
“Yes. I did,” he whispered. “I am sorry.”
“I wish you would stop apologizing all the time,” Jesse said. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“It feels like I have. It feels like something is really wrong and it’s my fault and I don’t understand it. It’s so selfish.”
Jesse put his arm around him again and squeezed him. “Please don’t cry. How is it selfish?”
“It’s selfish because—” He stopped for a second to take a deep breath before he continued. “It’s selfish because you’re actually in pain. You’re wounded. I can see it on your skin and on your face, in the way you move, in what you have to eat. But I…”
“Yes? Wait. Roll over. I want you to face me when we talk.”
Taln did as he was told.
his long eyelashes and his huge amber eyes.
“You’re what?”
“I am in pain. And I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Sometimes you can’t fix pain,” Jesse said, playing with a strand of Taln’s hair. “Especially when you don’t know what’s causing it.”
“So you just have to live like this?”
“No,” Jesse replied. “Of course not. You can quiet pain. It doesn’t have to be the thing that’s like, at the top, all the time. You know? It can still live there with everything else. It doesn’t have to take over your life.”
“How do you do that? Does everyone feel this?”
“I’m still figuring that out,” Jesse said. “And I mean, yeah, to an extent, probably.”
“Oh,” Taln said, looking down.
Jesse smiled at him and stroked his cheek with the back of his hand. “It’s not that bad. Every day is a little better.”
“I don’t understand. How?”
“Like this.” Jesse said stared at his lips before leaning in to kiss Taln. Taln’s lips were soft and warm against his own as he pressed against them, breaking it off after a few seconds. He licked his lower lip. Taln was smiling. “See?”
“Yes,” Taln said, looking into Jesse’s eyes for a second before he smiled. “I see.”
He waited about ten seconds before he leaned in for another kiss.
* * *
Salisei’s eyes hurt.
This realm was bright. That wasn’t something she was expecting after what the vision in the flames. Taln could be anywhere. She was faced by the most intimidated row of dwellings she had ever seen. People stood outside their doors, waving at each other and taking things that made jingly noises out of their oversized bags and their pockets.
Everyone was wearing something different.
Even the dwellings, though fairly similar on the outside, were different. The one at the corner of the street had a blue door with flowers she didn’t recognize hanging above it.
She didn’t know where to start looking for her brother.
It seemed like this place was a lot bigger, a lot busier than the Citadel. A woman turned toward Salisei with wide questioning eyes.
“Are you lost?”
Salisei wasn’t sure what to say. Maybe she was a guide. “My brother. I’m looking for my brother.”
“How old is he?”
She swallowed. “He’s come of age.”
The woman frowned. “What does he look like?”
“His appearance is similar to mine.”
The woman laughed. “You’re a cute little thing. Where are your parents?”
Salisei looked down at her shoes. They were made of brown material that went up to her ankles with thin black wrapped around them. The woman’s were small and black. They made her seem taller. “Away.”
The woman shook her head and glanced at her wrist. She wore, a bracelet with a circular white gem encrusted in the middle. “Do you want me to call the police?”
Salisei shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Listen, kid, do you know where your brother is?”
She frowned, trying to remember the words that Isocrice had told her. “He’s on this street. In one of the dwellings.”
The woman looked her up and down. Then at the dwellings on the street. Then back at her. “Ugh,” she said. “Okay, I can’t let you do this by yourself. Come on.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jesse opened his eyes when someone knocked at the door.
Everything hurt. People rarely knocked, especially not without announcing they were coming over first. The last time someone had, he’d ended up in the hospital. Taln was sleeping again, his head on Jesse’s chest. Jesse wondered if he could hear his quickened heartbeat. He didn’t want to worry the him; he was already so upset. He was also tired, probably, from looking after him.
“Wake up,” he said, putting his hand on Taln’s shoulder. “There’s someone at the door.”
Taln’s eyes fluttered open. He furrowed his brow for a second before a smile dawned across his face. “Hello.”
“Hello,” Jesse said, returning his smile. Whoever was at the door knocked again. “I better go get that. Can you put some coffee on?”
“Yes.” Taln nodded and got out of bed. He had tried coffee before and not really liked it, but Jesse needed at least three cups a day. Jesse watched him walk out of the bedroom before he took a deep breath and tried to get out of bed himself.
Walking hurt lately. Not his legs, luckily, but he could feel every vibration in his face when it did. He didn’t want Taln to see him like this. Everything was upsetting to him.
Whoever was at the door knocked again.
Jesse closed his eyes befor
e he put his hand on the doorknob and turned it.
He expected to see Jon standing there. He didn’t expect to see a younger, female replica of his guest. He stared at her for what seemed like forever until the woman she was with cleared her throat.
“Hey,” she said, her eyes narrowing. Jesse realized she thought he was a pervert. He blushed and looked down at his feet before she continued speaking. “She’s looking for her brother. She says he’s on this street somewhere. Have you seen someone that looks like her?”
Jesse nodded. “Yes. He’s here.”
The woman raised her eyebrows at him. The girl continued to look at her shoes, like they were the most interesting things in the world.
“Sorry, yes,” Jesse said. “Taln! Come here. There’s someone here to see you.”
* * *
It wasn’t the warmest reunion Jesse had ever seen. Taln had just stared at his sister until she asked him if she could come in. Jesse nodded, unsure of what to say.
She looked just like him.
She was younger and her hair was pinned up, so he couldn’t see if it changed colors like Taln’s did, but he assumed so. The main difference was their eyes. Taln’s were wide and yellow. His sister’s were a dark purple, the type were black unless her eyes were directly under the light.
Salisei had thanked the woman and walked inside. Now they two of them were standing in the kitchen just looking at each other and Jesse wondered if they were ever going to speak.
Maybe if he wasn’t around they could actually start a conversation.
He started to make his way to the bedroom when he heard Taln finally speak. “What are you doing here?”
It wasn’t an accusation, exactly. It was more like a tired reproach. The way only a family member could speak to another one, Jesse thought, trying his best not to smile.
“Brother,” she said, after taking a deep breath. “The Mage showed me your punishment in the flames. I came to help you.”
“Did she send you?”
“No,” Salisei replied. “I asked her to let me come. You were hurt.”
Taln took a deep breath, closing his eyes. “I’m fine, Salisei. I am glad you are here. I was concerned for you.”