“Okay, just for a minute. Your father won’t approve another venture if we are not back on time. It would be a shame to be grounded after your eighteenth birthday, that is when you get to try all the good magics, you will get to travel to the fabled realms and learn from the magical creatures themselves, you will get to trial with the elves too if you wish.”
“You know I won’t be joining the elves, father won’t allow it.”
“But when you are eighteen he will not be able to protest, it is a right of all fey if they choose to take it.” Traflier stood and stepped a few inches into the water. The coolness was a welcome distraction from the knot that had formed in his stomach. Why doesn’t she want to train with the elves? He couldn’t stop her even if he wanted to.
“I don’t get you sometimes, Traflier,” Annabella said, catching him off guard. She usually called him T, reserving his full name for whenever someone else was around, or if he had really peeved her off. He didn’t think it was the latter.
She smiled at him sheepishly, tilting her head so as to peek at him through her thick lashes.
“What?”
“I know you feel it too.”
He frowned at her statement. What the Fey is she on about? “Feel what? The water? The sand?”
“Oh my Fey, you are so dense,” she huffed at him storming the distance between them
What is she…
Then she grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him.
He felt her fingers in his hair and her tongue in his mouth. Oh, my Fey is this really happening? He thought as he found his own hands moving up her back to pull her closer.
She made a little noise, kind of like a sigh as his arms wrapped around her and his hands held her tight. Finally.
***
TRAFLIER STOOD WITH HIS back to the wall, watching the door across from him. The glass window in the upper section had been blacked out, but light crept past the edges where the paint had begun to chip away. He didn’t understand why he had to wait outside. He should be there beside her. He had always been beside her. Since the day at the podium when she hugged him and made him feel like his world wasn’t crumbling. But now it was. He was in a hall way and she was screaming in another room.
“I can’t take it anymore, this is ridiculous,” he spat at no one then performed a cast to reflect his presence. It wouldn’t work if they had neutralised the room but if they hadn’t they wouldn’t be able to see him. Except for Annabella; she would always be able to see him. Since the day they were married she was tied to him. Bound in magic and in love. They would share their lives as one.
He had to go in. He had to be with her now. Her screams drew him to her, down a long corridor, lined with the same blacked out windows, but each of them silent. Then he reached the desk where a small woman sat eyeing a screen of blinking lights beside room numbers. She didn’t get up, just watched the lights continue to blink.
Another woman stepped out from a door a few places down. “I’ll see to three then seven, then who is next?” she asked the small desk sage, neither of them seeing him there.
“Nine was next but eleven just flashed blue, go now.”
The sage in the hall ran to the end of the corridor to room eleven. Traflier paled. Annabella is in room eleven.
The walls began to close in around him. He closed his eyes as his mind threw him images of flames and a smile he would always remember. Snap out of it, this is not that place, he chastised himself. It worked. The walls moved out and he opened his eyes in time to see the back of the sage just as she entered room eleven.
He ran after the her. When he reached the end of the hall Annabella’s screams stopped. A new cry filled the air. A strained squeal like a calling cat. Traflier pushed open the door, his eyes darting from white floor, to silver trolley, to bloodied sheets before finally landing on his wife. Her skin pale and wet with sweat, but her lips still raised at the corners as she stared at something across the room. Traflier landed beside her and ran his hand down her hair.
“Are you okay?”
Annabella’s smile grew, and the sages looked around for him, unable to see him, they could still hear him.
“I am fine, T. Go, see our daughter, she is beautiful.”
Traflier muttered the reversal cast and appeared at his wife’s side, all but one of the sages jumped back a step, thankfully the one holding his new daughter remained unfazed by his sudden appearance. She stepped towards him and held out the bundle in her arms. It cooed. Traflier's heart stopped. I have a daughter.
“How do I?” he mumbled as he reached awkwardly for the baby.
The sage grinned then took his arm and adjusted it to the right position. Resting the bundle in his bent arm, she placed his other hand on top of the blanket.
But Traflier didn’t notice, he stared wide eyed at the baby in his arms, her pink skin shining in the room’s artificial light, her button nose that couldn’t be cuter if it had been cast that way, and big bright brown eyes. Trfalier’s eyes.
My mother’s eyes. He thought as a flashing came from a monitor beside Annabella and a sage pushed past him to her side. “We are losing her, something is wrong.”
Traflier shoved the baby into another sage’s arms and re-joined his wife. “What is it?” he asked in a choked cry as he struggled to draw breath. His throat went thick like his heart had crawled its way up and gotten stuck. Forcing himself to swallow he felt the lump move enough to gasp in a lungful of air “Annabella, come back to me, please don’t leave me,” he begged taking her hand in his. She felt cool to the touch and his eyes widened, his mouth falling open in disbelief at what he was seeing. Then, all at once, he came to his senses. “Why aren’t you casting?” he asked the sages, each of them fiddling with one thing or another.
“We can’t, the chief will be here soon, she can perform the casts. We only have the potions, please move aside, we need to slow the bleeding.”
“You can’t cast?” He shot daggers at the sage who revealed their limitations and then looked back at his wife. His Annabella, fading away in front of him. He tried to remember a cast to help. Over the years he had read them all, or at least all the ones in the shared scroll library. He hadn’t practiced and perfected them though.
His hands shook and his heart raced against his chest but the memories wouldn’t come. The nightmares did though. He saw his mother’s burning face repeat over and over again, only just before the flames obscured her image, it changed and became Annabella on the pyre. Annabella lost to him forever.
He couldn’t take it. He shoved the images away by trying to focus on an image of Annabella in health. Specifically, how she had been the day they married. Bright eyes, tanned skin, full red lips. Her hair glistened in the pink light as they were joined together, bound by magic.
That’s it! he screamed inside as he remembered what being married did. It bound her to him. He felt for his magic, his power. Something he had only done a handful of times, and once he was sure he had it, he pushed it out of him and over her. He wished for her to be healed, then he imagined her well. A cast crept its way into his mind and he repeated the unusual words aloud, not really sure if they were the right ones.
The sages gasped beside him and he opened his eyes. Annabella smiled up at him, healthy as the day they were married, then she frowned. He slumped beside her, the weight of what he had done too much to bare.
“We need the chief now!” he heard a sage call before everything went black.
His eyes fluttered open. The dull light in the room shone above him in tiny specks like the stars of a human sky and in their amber glow he saw the room. White walls, white floor and white sheets over him. At the end of the bed a clipboard sat peeping up over the top of the base rail. He pushed himself up onto his elbows trying to remember what had happened. He reached forwards to grasp the chart and when he turned it over he saw the words scrawled across it.
Unexplained complication during birthing resulting in unconscious male but otherwise healthy moth
er and daughter.
“Annabella,” he said aloud as he tossed the chart to the end of the bed and pulled himself free of the covers. “Annabella, where are you?” He stumbled to the door. It too had the glass blacked out and he wondered how they kept an eye on their patients if they couldn’t see them. But the thought left as soon as it came, his mind preoccupied with trying to find his wife. His Annabella.
He pulled the door open and was met with another white corridor.
“Sir, you shouldn’t be out of bed,” came a young male’s voice. “Sir, please, return to your room.” Traflier’s eyes finally focused on the figure before him, a young sage wearing a pale blue shirt, the colour of trainees.
“I will not return to my room, I want to find my wife. Where is she? Where is my Annabella?”
“Annabella, oh my Fey, are you the one who saved her? They are all talking about it, how it should have been impossible for any other than the chief. What did you do?”
Traflier leaned against the wall to steady himself and raised his brows at the boy.
“Oh, I am sorry, your wife, yes she is down here. Let me help you.”
The boy held out his arm. Traflier hesitated, but the wall was offering little support as the slick paint made it difficult to lean against with any stability. He grasped the boys arm and allowed him to lead him further down the hall way. They rounded a corner and came upon an older sage. He wore a dark purple shirt, high ranking, but not a chief.
“What is the patient doing out of bed?” he asked the boy, not bothering to meet Traflier's eye. “Take him back immediately until the chief has cleared him.”
The boy stopped but Traflier pushed forwards. “He will not take me back. He will take me to see my wife.”
The senior sage took a loud breath through his nose contemplating his demands. His jaw tightened and his eyes became ferocious slits, and with a purse of his lips, he tilted his head in a defiant acceptance.
Traflier didn’t care for his permission, but he did need the boy for support and direction, his head felt heavy and all the white around him was making it hard for his eyes to focus.
“She is just down here, your daughter too. Both were doing well last I checked.”
“Really?” Traflier asked, a desperate plea to his voice. “How old are you, you look too young to be a sage?”
“I am not a sage yet. I am training to be one. I am in my last year of school, but if this training month goes well they will let me take the trails and maybe I can study to be a chief”
“Nice,” Traflier smiled through his strained face, the walk taking a lot out of him. “How much further?”
“Just here,” he replied as he turned the handle and pushed the door open. Propped up in a simple white bed surrounded by vase upon vase of various flowers was Annabella. And in her arms, was his daughter—with his mother’s eyes, he suddenly recalled.
“Traflier. Thank the Fey you are alright. They wouldn’t tell me what happened to you. They wouldn’t let us see you. Are you okay? What happened?”
“I am fine now that I am with you,” he said, allowing the boy to help him across the room and into the chair by her side.
“Thank you…” he said to the boy, then he grimaced, realising he didn’t know his name.
“Conrad,” the boy offered without hesitation. “She is beautiful, your daughter. Congratulations to you both. If you need anything, press the call button.” He gave them both a small smile then left them to reconnect.
“Are you sure you are okay?” Traflier asked, grasping Annabella’s hand in his. Her skin was warm. Her face glowed like it had been kissed by the sky of the Feydom. “I was so worried about you. What do you know about what happened?”
She smirked, and the baby cooed. “They said you fainted.”
Traflier scowled. “Not likely, why would I faint?”
“They said you saw our daughter and it all became too much for you.” She was almost giggling now and his eyes moved from her face to the baby sleeping curled up against her chest, and his memory slowly returned.
“You were dying,” he said slowly raising his gaze to look at her again. The image of her greyed face, the coolness of her touch, the clueless sages, it all flooded back to him. “Anna, I nearly lost you.”
“No, they said I was a little tired afterwards but nothing like that.”
“Anna, I saw you, I felt you going. I don’t know how I did it, but I saved you. I somehow remembered a cast that would bring you back to me, heal you. Don’t you remember any of this?”
She shook her head. “Why would they lie?”
“I don’t know, but the boy…he said something about me saving you. Press the call button, we will ask him what happened.”
Annabella reached across to the little orange light beside her bed and pressed it once. It began to flash on and off.
“What should we name her?”
“I don’t know. What name fits her, let me see?” Annabella shifted in the bed to lower the baby away from her chest, but she remained asleep, bundled snuggly in a white blanket.
“She doesn’t really fit the names we had on our list, does she?”
“Well, I am sorry, T, but I didn’t really think our child would suit Moya or Theodora. I don’t even know where you herd those names before.”
His lips rose at one side as he squinted back at her. “They are not that bad, but they don’t fit anyway. So, any new ideas?”
“She is perfect, she needs a perfect name.”
“We can’t call her Perfect.”
The door swung open and Conrad returned. “What can I help you with?”
Traflier stood and closed the distance between them. “What can you tell me about what happened to my wife?”
Conrad shifted from foot to foot, not meeting his eye. “I was not there myself, I only know what I heard and I was told not to speak of it again.”
“I don’t think that applies with us, it was after all my wife who nearly died, yes?”
Conrad nodded. “She did, but you saved her, brought her back from the edge of the light.”
“So, what happened?”
Conrad turned and for a moment Traflier thought he was going to leave without telling him anymore, but he reached over and closed the door, turning the lock before looking back to them and locking eyes with Annabella. “You lost a lot of blood giving birth, the child was fine but you began to fade quickly. The chief was not responding to heralds, a wider call was placed for any chief to respond. The night was uneventful up until your visit, the chief on duty left the realm early and the next rostered on wasn’t due to arrive for an hour.”
“The sages don’t know how to help someone who loses too much blood?”
“They know how to slow the bleeding, or heal minor tears, energy loss, those sorts of things. But there is always a chief with higher magics to see to such things.”
“But there wasn’t a chief on duty,” Traflier growled struggling to keep his voice low so as to not stir the baby. “And my wife nearly died.”
“You did something not even a chief has done, you brought her back from the edge.”
Annabella shifted to sit higher in the bed. “You said that before, what is the edge?”
“The edge of the light. Just before your monitors went dark, he muttered something, it must have been the cast. The sages don’t remember what you said, though they wish they did. For a split second, you were gone. Then you weren’t. Then he fell over and they took him to another room to run some tests.”
“And?” Traflier pressed.
“And,” Conrad began, stepping closer and tilting his head towards them. He cupped his hand to the side of his mouth. “They said you could be an elder, the highest power seen since there were records of power.”
Annabella smacked her right hand over her mouth in awe. “T, you could be an elder?”
“Wow, then why did they tell you nothing happened, why try to cover it up? They must have known I would remember.”
> Conrad moved back to the door and placed one hand on the knob. “Maybe they didn’t want to frighten the new mother, especially with her husband down the hall unconscious.” He smirked, turned the lock with one hand and the handle with the other, and left the room.
“Kids these days,” Traflier scoffed.
“And now we have one of our own. Oh, T, isn’t she just perfect?”
“She is, and she is still unnamed.”
“What about Beauty, as she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”
He frowned. “I don’t think that is an appropriate name. She should desire more in her life than to be beautiful. Maybe something that means strong, or powerful?”
“I know she must be strong, she will be with you as her father. But she must also have poise and grace.”
“That’s it!”
“What is?”
“Grace.”
The baby cooed and flickered open her eyes.
Traflier bent down and whispered to her, “Welcome to the Feydom, my darling, Grace.”
***
TRAFLIER WATCHED AS Grace toddled after some sprites flitting around the trees by the river. He cast a layer over the water itself, should she trip and fall, she would bounce off it like jelly, rather than sink below.
Annabella was reading beside him. She had voiced her anger quite impressively at the lack of training given to sages and after a month or two, a new ranking was deemed necessary, and she set about undertaking the tests herself.
“T, are you sure you read that cast you used to save me in the healing scrolls?”
“Pretty sure. Why, still haven’t found it?”
“No, and you having no memory of what you bloody said makes it that much harder. None of the Chiefs know of it either and they are supposed to learn all of them.”
“Maybe it wasn’t in the healing scrolls? I was reading every scroll I could since our teens, remember?”
She nodded at him but didn’t take her eyes off the scroll in her hands. Finally frowning at it and with a slight grunt of defeat, she rolled it up and tossed it to the side.
Enchanting the Fey- The Complete Series Page 49
