When the blow didn't immediately come, I opened one eye wearily. "Well?" I asked, disturbed by how weak and breathless my voice sounded, "What're you waiting…?" I trailed off and opened both eyes, trying to focus on what was going on above me.
Brenna's face was turning red as she strained to bring the sword down with all her might, but something - some invisible force - was keeping her from doing so. She had turned her head and was glaring off to one side with a weird mixture of anger and fear on her face. I slowly turned my head to follow her gaze, and through my pain saw a man standing there with one hand outstretched towards her. He was backlit by the torches, so I couldn't get a good look at him.
"It is time for this madness to cease," he said in a quiet, strangely resonant voice. Then his tone darkened somehow, making me shiver with apprehension. "Your actions do not please me, daughter."
Daughter? Oh, bugger. I wondered what I had done to so infuriate the gods that they seemed determined to prove me wrong every time I thought this day couldn't get any worse. Then I realized that my attention had drifted and I was missing what was going on around me.
"...achieved what I wished you to," Brenna's father was saying. "It's time to stop now."
"No!" Brenna shouted, and I could see her face above me twisted with fury. "Let go of me, daddy!"
"Release the blade, and I will consider doing so," he said quietly and tonelessly.
"No!" Brenna said again, more quietly but no less forcefully. "I was willing to let the burns she caused go past, since there was nothing personal to that fight. It was just business. But this was personal, and I will have her blood!"
"Because she refused you?" He asked coldly.
"Yes!" Brenna shouted and seemed to wilt. "I just wanted her to be with me...we're so alike, we belong together. If she won't be mine, I won't let her…" Brenna started to say angrily, but was interrupted when he spoke again, his soft voice overriding hers effortlessly.
"You have yet to repay me for the favors I granted you to accomplish this task," he said in a tone of voice that radiated power, making the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. "This is the payment I demand. You will let her live."
"Why?" Brenna asked, incredulous and hurt.
"Because this is not what I told you to do," he replied coldly. "True, this started with my commands, but it has spiraled far beyond what I wished. You were to use my gifts to subdue her family and subdue them only. I spoke naught of sacrifices or betrothals. I said nothing about drawing attention to yourself by destroying a town and killing people. I needed you to bring your sister here to test her, not to join with her and never to kill her. Those things must never be."
"Sister?" Brenna asked, all the color draining from her face. Her fingers went slack and the shieldblade drew away from her hands, dropping point-first into the ground beside me.
Wait, what? I must've hit my head harder than I thought when I fell. Sister?
"I may have been forced to allow it to go this far, but I do not wish my daughters to harm one another so." As he spoke, he moved her to the side and I got a look at him for the first time. But through the pain of my injuries, all I could tell was that he was tall.
"What?" Brenna asked dazedly, looking first at him, then down at me with growing confusion.
He knelt down beside me and touched my forehead gently, and to my astonishment the amazing pain that seemed to be the dominant factor in my world faded to a dull ache. My senses cleared and everything came into sharp focus. His features were a perfectly wrought image of male beauty. His hair was fine, pale gold, and fell in waves past his shoulders. His ears were delicately pointed, his eyes the same golden hue as Brenna's...and mine. He wore a simple white silk shirt laced up the front with a black cord and black trousers. There was no doubt in my mind that this man was actually a Sidhe lord, one of the highborn of the Fairy Folk. Not human, a being half of the spirit world, half of our world.
"It pains me, my child, that we must meet thus," he said softly to me, his voice surprisingly gentle after the mind-bending tones he'd used on Brenna, "and it shames me that I had no choice but to allow this to happen. So ordered Oberon, my liege and master, and his commands may not be disobeyed."
"Who…" I rasped weakly.
He smiled sadly and put a finger to my lips, silencing me. "Do not speak. Conserve your strength. The mortal constabulary approaches already, and will be here soon...we have little time, and I have much I must say."
He reached up, took Brenna's hand and did something that made her gasp in pain and drop to her knees beside him. "My daughters…" he sighed. "Would that I could have raised you both as I wished. But Lord Oberon has his secrets as well, and has not seen fit to explain his commands to me."
I felt a wash of hurt and sorrow flow through me. Some of it was mine...but some of it felt alien. My dazed brain sluggishly suggested that perhaps Brenna's spell was still active on some level, binding us together weakly now that we were in close proximity.
He paused for a moment, looking first at Brenna, then back down at me. "I was to sire two daughters by different mothers," he began finally "You, Alys, were to be raised in the mortal world by your mother, to grow in the light and in the ways of the Light. I was to take you, Brenna, from your mother, and raise you in loving darkness, bound to me by my will and your love for me. You were to be mirror images in every way."
He lowered his head and shook it. "I did not wish to do this. But I could not go against the word of Oberon." He looked at Brenna. "I have done my best to be a father to you, my child, but I could not shield you from darkness that consumes you, and it cast a shadow over every minute I spent with you and how I had to treat you." His eyes returned to me. "I allowed you to be raised exclusively by mortals, and in doing so shielded you from perhaps more than was wise. Yet...you are loved, cherished by your mother, and your teachers, and your familiars." He returned his attention to Brenna. "You have only my love, and by Oberon's command I was forced to use it to twist your perception of what love is."
I felt a quick stab of anger and glanced at Brenna. Her brows were drawing down in a frown, her eyes fixed on him with an emotion I didn't - or maybe couldn't - recognize.
He paused again, then sighed. "My task is completed. You are mirror images of one another. Alys, a creature of the Light. Brenna, a creature of the Dark. But freed from my geas, I wished to try to balance the scales slightly...Brenna, I wanted you to see what it means to be truly loved by observing your sister. Alys, I needed you to see that you are not yet ready for the challenges that await you. So I set Brenna against you.
"I did not believe it would come to this," he said with a frown that turned into a glare as he turned his attention to Brenna. "You have never been so willful before, child. Why did you have to start now?"
Brenna glanced away from him, a fresh swell of anger washing over me from the remnants of her spell along with other emotions. Shame, fear, and a sickened sense of wrongness.
When she didn't answer, he began to speak again. "I will pay for what I have done here, I doubt it not," he said to no one in particular. "Yet I feel it was necessary."
"N-necessary?" I whispered, trying to catch my breath.
He reached down and caressed my cheek gently. The gesture was intimate, but strangely paternal at the same time, and I found it unaccountably comforting. "Yes, dear child. You are strong, and you are skilled...but you are also naïve. Naïveté will get you killed, and that I will not - "
"I could have had her life?" Brenna asked quietly, interrupting him. "I...I could have had a mother? And teachers who cared about my development rather than how I could be used for their purposes? I could have been...happy?" The way she said the word spoke volumes about how foreign the idea was to her.
I turned my eyes to her, feeling her anger swell and grow wildly out of control, turning darker with every passing moment.
He nodded. "I am sorry, my child…"
"N-no…" I whispered, but barely heard it myself. I tried to reach out to touch him, but he was on my right side and all it accomplished was a stab of pain so intense that it stole what little breath I had and left me struggling to remain conscious. It was probably too late anyway.
Brenna positively roared in fury. In one smooth movement she pulled away from him, snatched the shieldblade from where it stood in the ground, and swung it so hard that when it decapitated her father...my father?…his head flew yards before thumping to the ground.
As his body slumped to the side - I noticed with distant curiosity that the stump of his neck wasn't bleeding - Brenna dropped the blade and screamed at the sky. It was a sound so anguished, so despairing that I thought it might shatter my eardrums, and it went on and on until she ran out of breath and stood there, chest heaving, her cheeks streaked with tears.
She looked down at the body beside me, then at me. "I'm sorry," she whispered, though I wasn't sure if she was speaking to me, to his corpse, or to both of us. "Hecate!" she called, "Hathor, to me!"
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As her familiars rushed to her, she strode to meet them. I lifted my head as much as I could to watch them, and saw her take Hecate's hand, laying her other hand on Hathor's shoulders as an unfamiliar voice from somewhere nearby called, "Stay where you are! This is the police!" Then she and her familiars vanished with a flash of light and a loud pop as the air rushed in to fill the spaces where they'd stood. "Damn! They teleported away," the voice called. "Get the ambulance up here now, we've got wounded…"
My head dropped back to the ground and rolled to the side as the last of my strength flowed out of me. I saw the Sidhe lord's head lying not far away, his last expression - I thought - one of surprised resignation mixed with sadness.
He had said he would likely pay for what he'd done here, though I doubted he'd meant this.
I hadn't even learned his name.
Darkness crept in at the edges of my vision. I couldn't concentrate enough to tell if Athena was all right, but felt Artemis's paw press against my uninjured left arm. <
It was getting very dark, but the darkness was better...it made the pain and confusion go away. There was simply too much of both. As Artemis's voice faded out, I let myself drift away after it.
Some indeterminate time later, I felt myself being jostled and my mind snapped back to alertness with the jolt of pain that accompanied being moved. Someone was speaking, so I tried to focus on their voice.
"...have punctured a lung," an unfamiliar woman's voice was saying. "We don't know yet. She has at least three broken ribs, a broken wrist and her kneecap may be shattered, all on the right side. Probably a mild concussion from when she fell…" She trailed off and I felt gentle fingers touch my face. A moment later my left eyelid was peeled open and a light shone down, making me wince.
"Well," she said, "hello there. Don't try to move or speak, you've been badly…"
When you're distracted or not feeling well, the unconscious mind has a way of doing precisely what you've been told not to. Without meaning to, I shifted ever so slightly, and the resulting pain sent my mind reeling away into darkness again.
A gentle rocking sensation was the next thing I felt, and when I opened my eyes I saw what I immediately believed to be the inside of an ambulance. A handsome young man I didn't know bent over me and smiled a purposefully reassuring smile. "Hi there. Alys, right? Don't try to talk, just nod or shake your head."
I nodded.
"Good. My name's Dan, and I'll be your waiter today…"
"Dan," said the female voice from before, sounding annoyed, "That joke is never funny."
I tried to smile at him to let him know I appreciated it anyway. He noticed and winked at me. "I know, Carol," he said, "But what the heck." He checked something above me and looked down again. "Pain bad?"
I considered the question seriously. My body felt like it was a million miles away, and though I could tell there was pain, it was wherever my body was. So I shook my head a little.
"Good. With what we've got you on, I'd've been really worried if it had been," he said, smiling. "We're going to have you at the hospital in a few minutes. Your familiars are here with us. Your parents are in another ambulance, they're gonna be okay."
"Thanks," I whispered weakly.
He smiled. "All part of our amazing service here at Chez…"
"Dan, give it a rest," Carol cut him off, though she didn't sound too put out. I tried to let her know that I appreciated his joking, I really did, but the darkness was swallowing me up again, and I didn't have the strength to fight it.
More jostling grabbed my attention and voices surfaced out of the darkness. "...how my daughter is." That was my mother's voice. I felt a surge of relief...if she could sound that anxious and firm, she really was all right.
"Mom?" I wasn't sure I'd actually managed to say it out loud. It sounded weak in my head, and barely audible when it left my lips.
But a moment later I felt a warm hand take my left hand and squeeze gently. "Right here, honey. Jon and I are okay, Artemis is a bit scuffed and scratched but she'll be fine too. Athena's hurt, but not as badly as you are...they're stitching up a few of her wounds right now. She'll be all right in a few days."
Gods bless her. Without even having to ask, she'd known precisely what I wanted to know. I squeezed her hand weakly. "Me?" I mouthed, distressed that I couldn't catch my breath enough to actually talk.
"Mrs. Kinnear…" An unfamiliar voice began carefully, "We need to take Alys into surgery now."
"You're going to be fine," Mom said. I could hear the distress in her voice, but was so exhausted and out of breath that the thought was gone almost before it had started to form. "Jon and I will be here when you wake up again, honey."
Okay. That time I was sure I hadn't managed to say it out loud, but that was okay too.
"Now then, Alys," a reassuring male voice said a few moments later, "My name is Dr. Canmore. We're going to be putting you to sleep in a minute, so you just try to relax."
As if I had a choice.
"We have you on very strong painkillers, so you might feel a bit detached," he said.
I was just fine with that.
"That's perfectly normal, don't let it worry you," he continued quietly. "When you wake up, you're going to be well on your way to healing."
Neat. I'd get to miss the really awful parts. That thought brought to mind an image of Brenna decapitating her father. Our father? Wow, it was just too weird to think about. My mind veered wildly away from the thought. Instead, I managed to gasp out, "Athena?"
"Who?" he asked, confused for a moment. "Oh! Your Elevated familiar." I felt his hand squeeze my left shoulder. "You can't feel her right now because she's sedated, just like you're going to be in a few minutes, but she's going to be fine. She had a few nasty cuts and one deep gash across her belly, but none of them were life threatening, and she took a blow to the head that left her a bit dizzy. She's being patched up right now. She'll need to take it easy for a week or two, but she's going to be fine."
I didn't try to tell him my head was so loopy that I wasn't sure I could sense either of my familiars at all. But everything was so far away, it didn't worry me at the moment.
"Alys?" he asked.
"Hmm?"
"All right, we're going to put you under now," he said, sounding amused. I must've drifted off for a minute there. Still, if he was amused, I couldn't be all that bad off. "Just relax and count down from a hundred for me, okay?"
"Okay," I said weakly. "Ninety-nine...ninety-eight...ninety-seven…" I seemed to blink, even though I hadn't actually opened my eyes. "Ninety-six…"
"Pardon?" A familiar voice said from somewhere nearby, breaking my concentration. I wondered if I'd have to start counting down again. "Alys?" The voice asked.
"Jonathan?" I asked weakly, recognizing the voice finally. Wow, talk about not sensing the passage of time.
"Hi there," he said quietly, and a chair creaked beside me. "Can you open your eyes for me?"
I did, then slammed them shut again. "Get rid of that flare," I said weakly, my voice unaccountably raspy, "and I will."
Jonathan laughed softly. "No flare, honey, just the room lights. Hang on and I'll turn them down a bit."
I heard the chair creak again, followed by quiet footsteps which moved away and returned. "Okay, try again."
I opened one eye ever so slightly, squinted at the dim light above me, and slowly opened both eyes. I looked around slowly, turned my head to the left and saw Jon sitting down in a chair beside my bed. Then turned my head to the right and saw Athena asleep in another bed, Artemis sprawled beside her and watching me silently. <
Artemis blew out a relieved sigh and put her head down on her paws. <
I blinked. <>
<
I let that go and returned my gaze to Jonathan, pitching my voice low. "She said I 'almost went away'."
"You got pretty lucky," he said by way of reply, leaning forward with a cup of water that he put to my lips. I sipped from it, cleared my throat and sipped again before he set it down and bent close to me, resting his elbows on his knees. I saw that the scratches on his cheek and forehead had closed up and were healing. I must've been out for a while. "One of your broken ribs punctured your right lung. You were in surgery for a while."
I looked back up at the ceiling and had absolutely no idea how to reply. Had I actually almost died?
"How bad?" I asked quietly.
"It would have been worse if the police hadn't arrived when they did," Jonathan replied. "We have Ben to thank for that. As I understand it, he and Hollis made a few calls and cast a few Sendings after you left London and tried to get people to follow you when you arrived. They were a bit late, but they figured out where Brenna took us quickly enough to save you."
I absorbed that silently for a minute. "How bad?" I asked again.
Jonathan sighed. "Three broken ribs and another one cracked, shattered kneecap and two breaks in your right forearm. All of those have been healed, but you're still going to have to do some rehab for the knee. It was the punctured lung that was the real danger, and that's been taken care of too - though you might feel a bit short of breath at first." He was silent for a moment. "And the spell that Brenna used on you caused some pretty severe psychic trauma. We don't really know how bad...there's been a mind healer in here every day since you were put into recovery."
The list certainly explained the dull ache all down my right side, and why I felt a bit wheezy. "How long?" I asked.
"Five days since you came out of surgery," he said quietly. "Six days since your fight with Brenna. Your ribs are taped, and your right arm and knee are still immobilized, so don't try to move much. Before you ask, your mom went to stretch her legs right before you woke up."
Almost an entire week. I closed my eyes again and felt a sudden surge of heartache and loss that I couldn't explain. Emotions swirled through me, anger and fear, despair and loss, and I couldn't control any of it.
A hand touched my cheek and I opened my eyes again to find Athena looking down at me. She smiled gently and bent to kiss my forehead. <
I reached up with my left hand and curled my fingers around hers, squeezing gently as tears filled my eyes. <> I added, turning to look at Artemis, still sprawled on the other bed. <>
<
<
Jonathan rose and stretched. "I need to go let the duty nurse know you're awake. Will you be okay for a few minutes?"
I squeezed Athena's hand again. "We'll be okay," I said as she wiped the tears from my cheeks. I wasn't sure I meant it...I wasn't sure I'd ever be okay again. But with Athena and Artemis by my sides, I'd make it. Somehow.
Jonathan paused in the doorway and spoke. "Are you going to keep lurking in the hallway, or are you going to go in there and give her a kiss?"
I looked over in time to see Ben step inside as Jonathan left. He wasn't wearing the sling anymore, but was still moving a bit stiffly, and the bruises on his face from the broken nose had faded.
"Hi," he said quietly.
"Hi yourself," I replied, looking away as I tried to sort out my emotions. I was happy he was there, but at the same time I still had all those negative emotions bubbling up inside…
Athena squeezed my hand and I felt her emotions press against mine, warm and calm and soothing. My heart and stomach settled. <
She just smiled and gestured to Ben with her chin.
I returned my attention to Ben and gave him a smile. "Come here."
He looked relieved and moved to my bedside. "I'm here."
"Good. I think Jonathan was right. I need a kiss." I smiled up at him. "Besides, I hear I might owe you my life."
Ben rubbed his eyes briefly and returned my smile. "We're even. No matter what, we're always even."
Then he bent and kissed me gently on the lips, and I decided that maybe...just maybe...everything really would be okay.