Emerald. I sent out a mental call. I had to know if she were alive.
Her answer came from the direction of the Black Mountains. It was faint and tinged with pain. It was my fault she was injured. I had to help her. But there was no way I was going to be able to do it like this.
I sagged to the ground, trying to ignore the burning of my skin. I wasn’t sure how the whole faery-me, witch-me thing worked, but I had to hope I could use it to my advantage.
‘I hope you can hear me,’ I rasped. ‘I’ll take the pain and you help her.’ This had to work, it had to. The worst part was that I wouldn’t know if it had.
I closed my eyes and willed myself back. As soon as my spirit touched my body the wounds of my mind transferred themselves. Pain lanced through me and I gasped awake.
Chaos ruled the room. Scruffy was on the end of my bed with his head thrown back. Howls of loss ripped from his throat. Guards stood in clusters talking animatedly. Rako waved his arms as he yelled at Aethan. ‘Two of them? How could you let them take two of them?’
I ignored them all as I reached a hand to unclasp my arm band.
Have to do this. Have to help .
Pain lashed my every move. Blisters burst and fluid trickled down my arms as I struggled with the catch, my swollen fingers too stiff to manage it.
‘She’s awake.’
Can’t lose focus. Have to succeed.
Aethan’s face, creased with worry, came into view. He winced as he looked at me. ‘What happened?’
I shook my head and motioned to the band.
Have to get it off.
He reached over and unclipped the latch, gently opening the band and taking it off. It was the only patch of smooth, unbroken skin on my arm.
I gasped with relief and lay back. He undoubtedly thought I didn’t want to risk going back to Trillania. He didn’t know I had every plan of going back. At least I hoped I was going to.
Go to her.
I closed my eyes and let the pain wash over me, hanging onto it with every fibre. I drew it in till it consumed me. Red spun in front of my eyes and I let it drag me down towards unconsciousness. I hoped she could access Trillania from there. It was the closest thing to sleep I could give her.
Down, down through a void of black; agony smothering my every thought. I spun slowly in the dark, clinging to the pain, and I waited for her return.
***
The room was the same as it had been the last time I’d opened my eyes. Scruffy still howled, guards still milled and Rako still waved his arms and yelled. But now my body was covered in an icy, wet towel.
I could see another figure lying on one of the other beds, but the rest were empty.
I moaned as pain danced across my mind. Scruffy immediately stopped howling, whimpering instead as he licked my foot.
‘Hey boy,’ I whispered. Even that hurt my throat.
‘How are you?’
I tried not to move my head as I rolled my eyes to Aethan’s. ‘My own fault.’ The physical pain trivialised my emotions, and suddenly, I felt very stupid.
I had alerted dreamers to my presence. I had almost got Emerald killed. I had let myself get captured and tortured. There was no excuse for any of it, and I was ashamed of my behaviour.
He shook his head. ‘No it was…’
Before he could finish his sentence, my Mum’s voice cut through the rest of the noise.
‘Where is she?’ I‘d heard Mum angry before but I had never heard her like this. Rage shook her voice as she swept into the room. ‘What have you done to her?’
Oh whizbang. This was so not good. She hadn’t wanted me to join and now she was going to see me like this.
Her eyes lighted on me and she let out a gasp. She pushed Border Guards aside as if they were half their size as she made her way to my bed. ‘What have they done?’
‘I’m okay,’ I croaked. Oh yeah, that was convincing.
‘You are most certainly not.’ Her voice cracked like a whip on the ‘not’ and I winced. She pulled the edge of the towel back and tears filled her eyes. ‘My baby,’ she said. ‘Oh my baby.’ She whirled and stalked back to Rako. ‘Did you do this to her?’ Her finger poked his chest with each word.
‘I can assure you Ma’am that this was not done by our hands.’
‘Then by whom?’ She glared around the room.
‘Goblins.’ I managed to make my voice loud enough for her to hear. ‘It was goblins.’
‘May I ask how you knew?’ Rako asked.
‘Half an hour ago her familiar appeared in my kitchen, howling and crying. I could only surmise that something terrible had happened to Isadora. I see now I was correct.’ Her voice still trembled with rage.
‘Your daughter is a hero,’ Rako said. ‘She single-handedly turned a battle against a horde of goblins attacking Isilvitania.’ I noted he didn’t mention anything about my dragon mount.
Mum shot me a look of pride but her back was still stiff. ‘That doesn’t explain why she is like this.’
‘She was captured and tortured.’
Tears started to pour down Mum’s cheeks. ‘Why haven’t you healed her?’
‘I can’t.’ Brinda’s voice came from behind me. ‘It would take too much of her energy to heal so large an area. She could die.’
‘You must be able to do something.’
‘I am removing the heat from the burns. Then I will place a dressing on them.’
I was going to look like a mummy if she had to bandage all my burns. ‘Scars?’ I whispered. I could feel some welts on my face that I didn’t remember receiving.
‘My dressing will prevent scarring.’
‘I want her brought home,’ Mum said. ‘You will tend her wounds there, and then this madness will stop.’ She waved her arm around her as she spoke. ‘No more Border Guards.’
What? I struggled to sit up but Aethan pushed gently on my shoulders, pinning me to the bed.
‘I think that is up to Isadora.’ Rako’s voice was stiff.
Mum turned her attention to me. ‘No more, Isadora. Surely you can see now that this is too dangerous.’
I didn’t say anything and she took my silence for acquiescence. That was a fight I would leave till I was better. There was no way I was leaving the Guard. I had to get even with that bitch Galanta.
‘What happened to this girl?’ She waved an arm at the other bed and I realised it was Isgranelda lying there. The snippet of conversation I’d heard earlier made sense. They’d captured two of us.
‘I gave her a sleeping potion,’ Brinda said into the silence of the room. ‘She had a headache.’
‘This is a rather odd infirmary,’ Mum said. ‘Why do you arrange the beds like this?’
‘We find it helps with the healing if they are able to engage each other.’ Brinda was doing a good job of masking the real purpose of the room, but my mind was on other things.
What had happened to Isgranelda? Was she dead? I hadn’t liked her at all, but it didn’t mean I wanted to see her dead.
As if on cue Isgranelda moaned. So, not dead then. Brinda rushed to her side.
‘She’s bleeding,’ Mum said. ‘Why is she bleeding?’
Not dead, but wounded.
‘Get her out of here,’ Rako yelled, waving an arm in our direction.
Aethan wheeled my bed towards the door. ‘Prunella,’ he said, ‘we will take Isadora home now.’
‘But why is she bleeding?’
Aethan maintained his silence on the subject. He wouldn’t have been able to explain it without suffering the effects of the binding spell. After a while Mum let out a huff and stopped asking. I’m not sure who was more pleased, Aethan or me.
They moved me oh-so-carefully off the bed and onto a litter, but even that caused me to shriek in pain. Then they placed the litter in the back of a car and drove me to Eynsford. Another painful transfer from the litter to my bed, and I was home.
Mum huffed and puffed as she bustled around me. She carefully spread ice ove
r my towel and I even managed to sleep for a while as the cold stilled the pain.
Brinda arrived hours later and she and Mum removed the towel and dressed the wounds. Mum stared at my burns with a look of hard resolve. It was going to be difficult to tell her I was going back.
I waited till she had gone to the kitchen to get more ice and whispered, ‘Isgranelda?’
‘Alive,’ Brinda said. ‘It was touch and go for a while there. She was pretty badly wounded.’ She reached over me and hung a dream-catcher on the bed head.
I nodded my head, partly in thanks for the dream-catcher, and partly in response to the information, and closed my eyes. The salve felt wonderful on my skin.
‘I will have to do this every day for two weeks,’ Brinda said.
‘Two weeks?’ I couldn’t bear the thought of being stuck in bed for two weeks. I had to find Galanta and kill her.
‘Two weeks,’ she replied, her voice firm with authority.
Rako waited till I was well enough to sit up in bed before he visited. Mum showed him into my room, her face stony with anger. Her feelings on my returning had not softened with time, and I hadn’t summoned up the courage yet to tell her.
Rako waited till she left the room before he spoke. ‘You are healing?’
Too nervous to speak, I nodded my head. Was he here to kick me out of the Guard?
‘How did they capture you?’
‘I forgot I could disappear, and then by the time I remembered she had done something with my blood.’
‘She drank it?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far, but yes, she consumed some.’
‘A blood bond.’ He scrubbed his fingers through his stubble. ‘What did she want?’
‘She wanted me to say I wouldn’t marry Aethan.’ I said it as fast as I could, but it was no less embarrassing.
He started to chuckle, his laughter slowly dying off as he realised I wasn’t laughing with him. ‘You’re serious?’
‘Deadly serious.’
‘And did you?’
I squirmed. ‘No.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘I didn’t know why she wanted me to say it, and I felt it best not to give her what she wanted.’
‘You thought the words might give her some kind of power?’
‘Well after the whole blood thing I didn’t know what they would give her.’
Black shadows hung under his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept for days. ‘What is she up to?’ he murmured to himself. He looked up at the ceiling while he thought. ‘How did you get away,’ he finally asked.
‘I managed to tap into my powers. I stabbed her and tasted her blood.’ I screwed my face up at the memory of the foul stuff.
‘Clever girl.’ Coming from Rako, that was quite a compliment.
He stood up as if he were about to leave and then stopped and stared at the photo of Grams and Mum on my bedside table. ‘Might I take another copy of that?’ he asked. ‘I seem to have misplaced the other one. I was sure I put it into your file.’
I watched while he copied the photo again. ‘So that’s it?’ I finally said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re not going to yell at me for riding a dragon?’
He rubbed at an eye for a moment and then sat back down. ‘You are bonded to her. What is there for me to say?’
‘You’re not going to yell at me for scaring those dreamers or leaving Aethan and Wilfred… what did you say? Bonded?’ I stared at him. ‘That’s not the first time I rode Emerald is it?’
He shook his head. ‘You’ve been bonded for a while now.’
‘Why won’t anybody tell me these things? Why won’t you tell me about what I’ve been doing when I’m dream-walking?’ My voice rose with my frustration. I clenched my fists into the bedspread in an attempt to calm myself.
‘We can’t tell you lass.’ His voice was kind. ‘If we changed your perception of a memory you may not get it back.’
I opened my mouth to argue but I didn’t know what to say.
‘What if I told you about something that had happened that I’d thought was funny, not realising that the same event had made you sad. Your perceived memory is now one of hilarity; it wouldn’t match the real one. You would either remember it differently or wouldn’t remember it at all.’
‘But just one memory, surely it wouldn’t matter.’
‘What if you’d made a major decision based on how sad that event had made you feel? A huge, life-changing decision.’
The enormity of what he was telling me sunk in. It could alter my past and therefore, also, my future. It could change who I was.
‘Don’t tell me anything.’ I shook my head vigorously. ‘I don’t want to know.’
14
Three Blind Mice
‘Only a few more days and I’ll be able to go back,’ I said to Sabby. My wounds had healed to faint-pink patches.
‘You’re crazy,’ she said. ‘Why would you go back to that?’ Before I could say anything she added, ‘I don’t know why you’re bothering with him.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You know who I’m talking about.’ She placed her hands on her hips and stared at me. ‘I mean he hasn’t even been to visit you.’
I wasn’t sure if I were pleased about that or not. I still cringed whenever I thought about my behaviour. ‘He’s not the reason I’m going back.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to tell you.’
‘Tell me what?’ Whizbang, could she get any weirder?
‘Nothing.’ She sat back down and twiddled her fingers for a few seconds before saying, ‘Oh fine.’ She flicked her wand at her handbag and an envelope rose from one of the pockets and floated to her. She plucked it out of the air and handed it to me.
Her name was inscribed in gold writing on the front, and the back had a broken wax seal. I pulled a piece of paper out and unfolded it, running an eye down the elegant script.
It was an invitation for the following evening to a ball at Isilvitania. It was being held in honour of Aethan’s birthday. ‘Oh.’ I put it carefully down on the coffee table.
‘Oh’s about right,’ Sabina said. ‘While you’ve been convalescing he’s been planning a ball.’
‘None of my business.’ I hadn’t got an invitation. Where was my invitation?
‘Rumour has it that his mother is trying to find him a wife.’ She really wasn’t helping with my attempts to remain calm.
‘Are you going?’ I was rather proud of my ability to keep my voice level.
She blushed and looked away.
‘Please tell me you are. I need someone to get all the gossip for me.’
‘All right then,’ she huffed like she was doing me the biggest favour in the world. ‘But only because you insist.’
***
I was lying in the loungeroom, trying to take my mind off the ball by reading a book. I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. I’d been staring at the same page for an hour.
They would have started arriving by now. All the single women wearing beautiful gowns, designed to catch Aethan’s eye. Even though I knew there was nothing between us, I still felt ill at the thought.
I had fallen for him, damn it, and it seemed there was nothing I could do about my feelings except ignore them.
I heard footsteps leading up to the front door and then Grams’ voice telling Eric to let her in. She had been off with Lionel looking for a wedding venue.
‘Why aren’t you ready for the ball?’ She placed her suitcase by the door and gave me a hug.
‘You had to get an invitation,’ I said, returning to my slovenly position in the armchair.
‘That’s ridiculous, of course you would have been invited.’
‘Grams, I dumped him. I think that would have been when my invitation got torn up.’
‘You could be right about that,’ she said.
‘Where’s Mum?’ I asked. It wasn’t like her not to be home
in the evening.
‘Probably book club,’ Grams said with a mischievous grin on her face.
‘Book club?’
‘That’s what she calls it, but have you ever seen her reading a book?’
‘She was reading one last week.’
‘Huh.’ Grams sat down in the chair opposite me. ‘Maybe she really did join a book club. I was hoping it was code for something naughty.’
A knock at the door interrupted us. I hopped up and opened it, secretly hoping it was a last-second invitation to the ball. It wasn’t. Instead, a pumpkin, a rat, and six white mice sat on the doormat.
‘Grams,’ I said, ‘you’ve got to see this.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said in amusement when she peered out the door.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Well, I’ve only ever read about it, but it looks like someone has cast a Cinderella spell.’
‘A what?’
‘A Cinderella spell.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘I’ve always wanted to see one in action.’ She backed away from the door, watching me with an excited look on her face. ‘Izzy,’ she said, ‘they’ve come to take you to the ball.’
‘Oh, no they haven’t.’ If I hadn’t been formally invited there was no way I was turning up. I couldn’t shut the door though, because the pumpkin, which I was sure had not moved, was blocking it.
‘You can’t fight it,’ Grams said. ‘Just go with the flow.’
‘I am not going to let a pumpkin publicly humiliate me.’
A green shoot emerged from the top of the pumpkin, winding its way through the air towards me.
A sharp knife would fix that. I turned and ran for the kitchen. A step short of the knife block the pumpkin vine wound around my ankle. I reached down and pulled it off but it immediately re-attached to the other leg. ‘Let go,’ I said as another creeper emerged from the vegetable. It grew at an alarming rate, reaching out to snag my other leg. The two vines tugged together, whipping my feet out from under me and pulling me to the ground.
‘Best not to fight it Izzy.’ Grams rubbed her hands together.
Faery Born (Book One in the War Faery Trilogy) Page 17