Luin was halfway across the table, his hand outstretched, as Thea slumped in her chair, her head rolling to the side as her eyes fluttered closed. But it was the commander with his longer and stronger arms that was able to reach Thea more quickly, to put pressure on Thea’s shoulder to make sure she didn’t fall from her seat and onto the floor, possibly hurting herself. Seeing Thea lose consciousness, Luin’s heart began hammering in his chest.

A few seconds passed, and finally, Luin closed his outstretched hand into a fist and sat back down in his chair. “Is she—is she okay?” he asked the commander.

Cyris reached over and used both his hands to readjust Thea so that she wasn’t about to topple from the chair before feeling for a pulse with two fingers on her neck and then for her breath on the back of his hand. He sighed softly before smiling at Luin and saying, “She’s fine. I think the shock of everything has just taken its toll. I think I’ll move her though in case she stirs. We wouldn’t want her to fall.”

Luin watched the commander stand up, unsure what he was about to do until he murmured, “Please excuse me, my lady,” before putting one arm behind her upper back and the other beneath the crook of her knees. An uncomfortable feeling of tightness in Luin’s chest nearly pushed the words put her down out of his mouth, but he ground his teeth. If only he weren’t locked in this child-like body, if only his power wasn’t split and he could find a way to fix it, he could have been the one to carry her.

Thea’s head rested on the commander’s shoulder as he walked to the bed on the other side of the room. He laid her down gently and tugged the throw blanket over her just in case before returning to the table and taking his seat again.

Cyris’s expression lost all softness as he locked eyes with Luin. “So it seems you care about Lady Thea deeply. So I have to ask, you do know you’re the cause of all her current hardships, right?”

Luin’s chest suddenly felt hollow. “I do,” he answered. There was no denying it.

“You also seem to be highly intelligent. Surely you know that one solution is that you leave her side? While there’s no guarantee that your enemies will leave her be now that you’ve been with her so long, it would still be much safer for her if you were somewhere else, no?”

“It would.” Luin met Cyris’s eyes straight on.

“But you don’t plan on leaving, do you?”

“No, I don’t. As you said, there’s no guarantee they’d leave her alone, and if they ever figure out I blessed her, they likely would hunt her down as well. I’m going to stay and do what I can to protect her and her family and those close to her. And to do that, I know I’ll—we’ll—need more allies.” Luin took a deep breath. “I’ve given you some explanation, though I’m lacking information on some things myself, but everything I do know is yours if you help us.”

Cyris seemed to analyze Luin’s face for a moment before he slowly closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “I get it. She’s all you feel you have, and believe me, having just one person like that is more than some ever get.” He ran his hand through his dusky blonde hair. “Gods, I feel like I’ve opened some vault of mysteries that no man should ever find out about. This may well prove to be the biggest mess I’ve ever gotten myself involved in, but I decided to help a long while ago. So, first thing’s first, tell me all the details you remember, especially about these creatures that are after you.”

Luin glanced at Thea whose chest steadily rose and fell as she laid on the bed. I’ll figure out a way…. He quickly nodded to the commander before beginning to recount every detail he could remember.

***

Thea heard voices. Her mind recognized the words but their meaning lagged behind, almost as if she were drifting through brain fog from a late night reading session.

Who’s in my room? Slowly she recognized the two voices: Luin and Commander Cyris Hollendale. Why are they— Then Thea’s fogged mind remembered that she wasn’t in her room but in the one Luin had been given. Her eyelids still felt heavy; even if she tried, she didn't think she could open them. And soon, she realized that Luin and the commander were discussing her.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Ah, so Luin felt that he had endangered me all along. Thea was sad to learn that Luin readily admitted that Thea would be better off without him around, and that he’d been carrying around that burden all alone all this time. But her heart also swelled with the knowledge that she meant so much to Luin as he had grown on her as well. But you don’t have to leave, Luin. I can help protect myself and you too! She tried to say those words, but her lips wouldn’t move, and her body still felt leaden.

However, she didn’t have to say it since the next thing Luin said was how he decided he wasn’t going to leave. That a boy! Though, he’s not really a boy, is he?

Thea’s thoughts slowed, and feeling began to return to her body. She felt the soft comforter and bed beneath her body, the pillow beneath her head, and the plush throw overtop her. How did I get on the bed? Oh right, I fainted. Then she realized that her being on the bed meant that someone put her there…and the logical conclusion was that Luin couldn’t have carried her. So that means—

The realization that the commander had had her in his arms and had carried her and pulled the throw blanket over her nearly had her springing up from the bed, but her embarrassment caused her to continue laying still and keeping her eyes closed if only to avoid Luin and the commander noticing that she was awake.

But thankfully, the next part of the conversation between Luin and commander took a turn that had her refocusing. Luin was recounting every detail he could remember to the commander from how he had been dreaming in some space outside of normal reality, to how he had been violently awakened and chased, how he had taken refuge in the library in search of knowledge about the world that he wasn’t able to garner from his dreams, and how he was likely the source of all the skills that people had been developing over the last ten years.

Thea listened with an open mind. She threw what she knew to be true into suspension as she tried to see it from Luin’s perspective. He believed he’d been dreaming for about ten years; that matched up with the timeline for when the skills began appearing. And more people developed skills here in the capital city of the empire than elsewhere. That fact was fairly well known. Thea wouldn’t be surprised if a scholar or academy mage would later discover that the city had been the epicenter of it all, perhaps even note that more skills manifested more quickly the closer city residents were to the clock tower as well.

Thea was still milling over the details, cataloging them in her mind, when Luin finished his report. After a few moments of silence, the commander asked, “So, you truly don’t know what you are? How you came into the world is hardly how any other creature would come into existence. You have no mother, and no father, it seems, and you’re saying that your form would not appear this way if you hadn’t been awakened prematurely.”

“I truly don’t know, though I think there may be a way to find clues about that.” Luin’s voice sounded shaky, as if something about not knowing what he was had rattled his confidence.

Is he still afraid I’ll tell him to leave me alone if we find out he’s something odd or dangerous? Logically, yes, Thea should want to distance herself from people who were dangerous, but she just couldn’t believe that Luin would knowingly hurt her or her family—or anyone really. The consideration and trust he’d shown in just telling them all of this was proof of that. He might have hid the truth at first, but he was trying to make up for it now.

Thea opened her eyes, unable to hear the down tone in Luin’s voice without comment. “A god or a saint,” she said, sitting up.

Luin and the commander’s gazes shifted to her immediately. Luin jumped down from his chair and ran over to her.

“Thea, are you okay? Does anything hurt? Do you feel sick?”

The commander also asked, “Are you sure you should be sitting up so soon?”

Thea patted Luin on the back of his hand before saying to both of them, “I feel alright now. I think with the accident earlier and the quite unbelievable revelations I’ve heard tonight, it was just a bit of a shock.” A “bit” was a bit of an understatement.

“Right,” agreed the commander. “But I think you should still sit there and not stand up just yet.”

“Alright,” Thea agreed. It was true that she didn’t quite trust her legs just yet, but she felt she still needed to make sure they heard what she’d said. She turned to Luin and looked him firmly in the eyes. “A saint or a god—those are the two types of beings mentioned in stories that can bless people, and if the sudden appearance of a skill in someone who was skill-less simply because you willed it isn’t a blessing, I don’t know what is. So, that means you are either a saint or a god—or perhaps something in between. And I don’t think you have to worry about me having a problem with you being any one of those, Luin.” She gave his hand a squeeze.

For the first time, she saw Luin’s eyes start to shine and then tears silently overflowed down his cheeks. He seemed surprised, his hands flying up to his face to feel the wetness there and then look at it sparkling on his fingers with his mouth slightly agape.

Thea took a breath to keep herself from tearing up. “What you are isn’t as important as what you do and how you act towards others anyway. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” She patted Luin on the head and tousled his hair a bit.

Then, hesitantly, Thea addressed the commander. “Ah, so Commander Hollendale—”

“Calling me Lord Cyris is fine, Lady Thea. I think it will be easier since we’ll likely be speaking to each other quite a bit from now on.” Thea could barely bring herself to look at the commander out of the side of her eye, but she caught sight of a slight smile on his lips nonetheless.

“Alright, Lord Cyris.” Thea cleared her throat. “So how do you suggest we proceed from here?”

Cyris looked to the ceiling as he thought. “We simply don’t know enough at the moment to do more than stay on the defensive. We need some way to get more information on the threat.”

Luin’s voice was slightly hoarse when he spoke next. “I think I may know a good place to start looking.”