Kaylar looked over the trembling line. He walked down it as he usually did, though he was not really looking at any of the girls but one. She seems to have had a tough time since I saw her last, he thought. She was very slim looking, and she seemed to be shaking. More than that, she was also extremely pale and washed out, and her face was slicked with a thin layer of sweat. Do I scare her that much?

He noted she had her hands behind her, and was trying very hard to stand very still. The black dress they had chosen for her fit better than what she had worn before, and this time, they plainly wanted her out of Mire. He got close enough to hear what she was thinking, but she was clearly not actively thinking anything about the situation. All he could sense was that she was feeling was a lot of alarm and an internal struggle of some sorts. She is struggling against what part of herself? The alarmed feeling?

“Look at me,” he said softly. She slowly looked up. Her eyes were dilated, and she shivered. She did not want to meet his eyes. “What, no difficult comment from you this time?”

She shook her head no and closed her eyes.

He hummed a little to himself. Well, that much was promising, she did not seem to be outwardly looking for a fight. He finished moving through the line, and then he picked three to be finalists. He went over them again, waiting and watching Rosalea. Her feelings remained constant, and he felt doubt about taking this changer one last time. She had not thought about even one thing since he had arrived, and it spoke of a stubbornness that would be difficult to manage. Just watching the trouble she had caused getting caught to be brought to him was enough to aggravate him. It did not change that he needed her though. He could see clearly from her magic that she was either a mix of Ieshan and Uryan, or perhaps from the far north and an Indran. She absolutely had healing powers accessible, and he had need of that. He took a deep calming breath, and then he pointed at her, and relieved them all by choosing the one no one really wanted.

***

Me? Rosalea thought, not as surprised as she thought she should have been. She staggered forward another step, nearly falling. She wanted to catch herself, but her hands were bound, so she came roughly to her knees. Maybe he really is drawn to magic? Then she wished she had not thought it; the dragon was probably listening. She looked up at him, and a moment later, everything turned very green.

She also could not feel the dragon as she looked around. The whole place was exactly the same color, though she noticed some walls seemed quite angular. This must have to do with why Rhainnon just disappeared. But where am I now? What will happen next?

She didn’t have answers for either of those questions, and she could hardly focus as it was. Her whole body was throbbing, and she felt distinctly like the world was attempting to buck her off of it by rocking so badly. Dull terror was making her feel even worse. If I can’t get control of myself somehow, I am going to faint…

She was jarred again by a scenery change, though she never felt different. She was looking at a stone floor, and as she raised her eyes she was faced with the brilliant blue of the dragon, and aware of different rich tapestries on stone walls. A castle? she wondered, struggling to her feet.

“Yes,” the dragon answered her thought. “This is my home.”

Rosalea was annoyed about him being in her thoughts, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Her magic had gone completely dark the moment he had arrived in Mire. She had no idea where she was now. She shivered and tried to stand still. At least when she felt this overwhelmed, it was easy to just zone and not think.

***

“Come here,” Kaylar said, and watched as she looked up at him, taking a step toward him, but she overbalanced and began to fall. He caught her with magic when she was about half way down, frowning, She did not put her hands forward to catch herself? He moved the cloak aside with magic and saw that she was bound. He focused his essa magic and sliced the scarf away. He heard her joints pop as she finally brought her hands out in front of her to try and push off of his magical barrier to get up right. Her arm is bandaged? When did she hurt her hand?

Kaylar could feel that she was really struggling with something inside herself, even her feeling of alarm had subsided to this intense internal struggle. He frowned. Something was very off, and he did not like it at all. “When did you hurt your hand?”

He watched her emotions carefully, but there was only a twinge of something akin to hatred in her reaction. She did not answer him. His first impulse was to continue thinking that she was exceptionally stubborn, partially because he could feel an iron resolve in her mood that she was clinging onto with every scrap of strength she could summon.

But with the bandage on her hand, a different picture was emerging. “Who hurt you,” he repeated slowly, deliberately, barely asking it as a question.

However, all he got out of her was a flat, No. She had wobbled her way to her feet, but as soon as she got herself upright, there was a pleading, Please… not here, not now, and that was it. She fainted. He had to catch her again.

“Oralee! Please come help.”

“She fainted?” the woman asked, walking toward the fallen girl. He nodded. Hopefully she is worth all this trouble, the woman thought. It isn’t often they faint, and isn’t often they think they can get away with refusing to answer the Master right away.

Kaylar agreed though he did not acknowledge it as the woman knelt next to Rosalea and turned her over. She laid a pale hand on the pale girl’s head. “Master! She has a terrible fever!”

Kaylar frowned more as it all clicked together in his head. “Get the bandage on her arm off.” His head maid jumped to do as requested, and unwound it quickly. Just as Kaylar expected, her hand was dark purple, and it was traveling in angry streaks up her arm. “She has been poisoned.”

The head maid looked quite startled, and was very curious why anyone would want to poison her to begin with. Kaylar lifted her up with magic and got her to the nearest bed. He gave instructions to Oralee how to best try to treat this. Great, he thought angrily. My healer needs a healer. He felt like turning around and going back to Mire and putting the fear of him back into all of them. How dare they? He kept his wrath in. “This room will suit until she is well again,” he said. “Get some cool clothes and try to keep her fever down as much as possible.”

Oralee nodded and held out the bandage. “I am pretty sure this is just Areeyo weed. It’s pretty mild.”

Kaylar looked at the bandage, and Oralee was right. It looked like and smelled like dried Areeyo weed. The poison usually only caused an upset stomach and nothing more. But then, he had never seen it put directly into the blood before.

He wasn’t sure when she had been cut, and he was concerned by her weight as Oralee stripped away the fine dress and got her into a sleeping shift. I wonder how long they had her living by herself in the middle of the swamp. I should have gone and checked as soon as they said she killed that horse. He instantly felt quite guilty for it. And now she isn’t at a good weight to survive a massive fever or poisoning either… if it keeps her down long, she will certainly die. Without a healer, Rhainnon might certainly die.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

***

Rosalea stumbled in a world of nightmares. Children with wide eyes and tear-stained faces were ripped away from weeping mothers. Dragons laughed raucously, saying they could do whatever they wanted. She dreamed next that she was a black wolf, lying on her side, panting for breath that came shallow. She was dying and no one cared. No one was there to comfort her because she had no one. Annie came and treated her with reproach. “Is this how it ends for you, stupid human?” she asked with an icky grin.

The dream shifted. She had never escaped the Ieshan castle; she was laying in a bed there, unable to get up. Ulric was livid. “You cannot die until you have fulfilled your purpose!” Rosalea wanted to scream at him that he would never tell her what to do again, but her voice was not her own.

The nightmare seemed to abate. She was still lying on her back in a bed, and it was in a castle, but the gray and white stones were definitely not those of the Ieshan castle. She could hear people talking around her.

“Do you think she will live?” asked a deep pleasant one.

“I don't know, master,” said a brisk feminine one. “Yelena has already done all she could… Unless we can find a way to break this fever...”

“Do the best you can, Oralee,” the deep voice rumbled.

The voices and the room faded out. Rosalea was on a dark plain galloping in a four- legged-form. Terrible heat and pain sizzled through her and she should have been dead from it, she thought. It was much too intense for her to bear. A light shone on a black sand dune ahead of her. Someone was calling through it to her, “Come back! You have to want to live. Come back!”

The dream shifted again. She felt surrounded by people she had met, and yet she knew she had never met them at the same time. Maybe she would meet them? One of them told her that if she didn’t go back, he could never be. Another begged her to teach him magic for some reason. Rosalea was unnerved and drifted away from them toward that light that was calling for her.

The dreams faded, I am in that gray castle again, she thought. “We almost lost her,” the woman said. She looked into the familiar fair face, though she didn’t know why it would be familiar to her. Not Genya though, but nice like her, she thought abstractly.

There was some other vaguely familiar deep voice in the room. “Try giving her some Mathwyn. Her magic is low, and I do not want to lose her.”

The not-quite-Genya woman was pressing a bowl of something foul smelling to her lips, “Open your mouth and drink,” she said gently and put pressure on her jaw that opened her mouth. Rosalea reached up and grabbed a wrist holding a bowl that was pouring liquid down her throat. She wanted to say something… but darkness and more dreams settled over her like a heavy blanket.

There was a white wolf. Father! she thought as she lunged for it, but it dashed away. Why did I do that? Gaiden wasn’t a white wolf.

The wolf looked at her sternly. She realized he was really huge, even for a wolf. “No, Nadia. The time is not now. There are things you must do. You must set us free…”

The dreams faded again. Oh, it’s the castle room again. I must be actually here, wherever the dreams are taking me, this is where my body is. It was a strange feeling, to feel oddly separated from herself. “It has been two days, and she has gotten worse than ever.” That was not-quite-Genya again.

“It makes no sense; I do not understand!”

Suddenly Rosalea felt a sharp pain on her ankle. Actually, it wasn’t her real ankle. It was like a mental her, here with the real her, and that pain in her ankle was this bright yellow mass swirled with blue that was trying to pull her down into itself. She kicked at it, but not with much power. It laughed. She vaguely realized that this was what was creating her nightmares.

She opened her eyes and saw clearly for the first time and saw the fair-faced one. She had long black hair, and an almost cat-like face. Her eyes were bright green. She also saw the dragon and that they were in a stone room with tapestries. She wanted to say something, but she wasn’t certain what, and the yellow and blue mass was weighing her down. When she opened her mouth no sound came out. Oh well. She gave up and let the yellow mass drag her down.

Oralee patted the girl’s face, “Come on, kiddo, I’ve been looking after you for almost a week. You can’t just die. Come on,” she pushed on her chest. But the girl just took shallower and shallower breaths until they stopped altogether. “Kaylar!” she looked up at the dragon.

“Move,” Kaylar said. A mage could live through a poisoning if they had magic to keep them alive. He could see she was spent. Forcing his own magic on her might save her, but lots of bodies would reject foreign magic and go mad or die. But, at this point, she might be dead if he didn’t do something.

Rosalea did have every type of magic hidden inside of her though, he had been able to see it. Which meant he had a little bit of commonality with him, which might help her. But, he was mostly deep magic oriented, and it was her weakest magic. He hesitated. He had once seen a plant mage take in terra magic, go mad, and combust. She is this minute dying on us, so this is better than doing nothing.

He took a hold of some of his magic and focused on her, until he could spiritually see her nearly empty magical pool. If such a thing could be called a pool in this one, she had more what he might term a lake compared to the average human he saw. He poured magic into it.

As he expected she gasped in a wheezing breath and her body began to convulse. He backed off, but within moments, that magic was already burned through as her body struggled to overcome the infection from the poison. I cannot just give her a little and stop then, so he poured more into her. Her body convulsed and thrashed, and tears began to pour from the corners of her eyes.

***

Rosalea knew she was in a lot of pain, but she could barely feel it. She felt more like she had fire burning through her, and like she was not as faded as she had thought. Then, fire felt like it was flowing through her, following the normal paths of her magic, and burning her. That burning sensation came with a sensation of strength, so she gripped the wrong-feeling magic, and looked to the mass that was surrounding her. She simply sent the magic to burn it too. Searing hotness flowed through every part of her, and if she had been in the physical world, she would have not been able to not scream about it.

The blue-yellow mass seethed and steamed away, finally breaking up. All right, I can do this. She gripped more of it and blasted again, screaming from the pain it caused her.

***

Kaylar could feel her pulling on his magic and using it. She was also screaming a terrible hoarse scream that was making his head maid cover her ears and huddle into the corner she had moved to so she could be out of the way. He fed more magic into her carefully. Her skin was glowing to his magical vision. Another minute or two at best was all she could handle before his magic began to consume her, a fate maybe worse than just going insane. You can do it, he thought at her. You can survive.

***

Rosalea had never been in such pain before, and did not know how she was surviving it as she managed to blast the last of the yellow around her. She shoved the magic away violently, trying to get it off of her or out of her. It did not want to go. “PLEASE!” she heard herself scream, but she did not have any idea who it could possibly be addressed to.

***

Kaylar heard the word and immediately pulled back most of his magic, leaving only traces of it inside the empty lake. She was trying hard to push even that away from her. Her skin was glowing brightly, and she writhed, violently kicking her sheets all the way off. “If you don’t have some magic inside you, you will die,” he said firmly holding it in place, but with his heart rate picking up as he felt anxiety. He held his breath as he waited.

She slowly calmed, though she still whimpered a little with every breath, and more tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. She stopped trying to force all of his magic out out, and slowly her skin started to cool down, the glow fading to show skin that was red as if burned. Her hands, where she would have believed she was handling the magic in her head when fighting the poison, were blistered.

He breathed out as she seemed to stabilize. He strengthened the mental blocks on her magic, to help trap it within her so she could recover. She slowly stopped whimpering and her sleep became productive and deep.

“Oralee, get some salves for burns and get Galena and keep this room cool.”

“Will she be all right… after all that?”

“I… think so. We will find out.”

She nodded. “Doesn’t it make… you know, a magical bond when magic is shared like that? One that is dangerous?”

“Yes, it can. Which is why you should not do it,” he said, reaching down to press his nose against her shoulder.

She patted his nose. “Scary.” She gave him a squeeze, as if she was reassuring him. She moved away to hurry and get medicine and a weather mage.