What is your plan for me?
I wanted to ask, to pray, to beg for an answer. For something. If only to ease the guilt that still laid heavily upon my heart.
I could still picture little Mirabel's face, so fractured with despair as she watched the suffering of her father, unable to do anything. Could still picture Fenrir laid out and growing cold on the Institute floor, his body twitching and so wrought with pain.
My arms hugged around my body, hands rubbing up and down at the chill that danced across my skin. Had I too once looked like that? So small and broken as I watched on helplessly while my mother was tied to that Goddess forsaken stake?
Where were they now? Were they safe with the rebels that I knew hardly anything of?
"You appear deep in thought, Potion Maker."
A gasp escaped as I turned quickly, catching sight of the man that approached, his golden eyes a glowing beacon in the night.
Prince Kairen gave me a warm smile. "I apologize for startling you. Mind if I join?" He gestured to the rim of the fountain and I nodded, watching as he too removed his shoes.
Settling in beside me, feet dipping into the water, he followed my gaze up to the sky. "I've always found the night sky to be far more poetic than day."
I blinked.
Then blinked again.
"Excuse me?"
A Solerian Prince openly admiring the embodiment of the Goddess Lua? It was sacrilegious.
He gave a knowing laugh, low and tense. "Ironic, isn't it? For someone such as myself to admire something that everyone claims to be sinister." His expression turned wistful, his eyes trailing the stars. “Yet my fondest memories are beneath the night sky. How can something so beautifully and intentionally created be something of evil and worth abhorrence?"
"I don't know, Prince." My response whispered softly, unsure what to say as my gaze trailed from him back to the stars above.
"Still intending to use honorifics, then?" The sly look aimed in my direction had my eyes rolling, fighting the tugging that twitched my lips.
"I'll let you know when you've earned the familiarity of me using Kai again."
He laughed then, the act lighting up his whole face, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "Very well, Potion Maker," he said, moving to stand. "Let me take a step towards that trust then. l'd like to show you why I'm so desperate to find this cure."
The walk had me grumbling beneath my breath at the ridiculous amount of stairs, the twisting halls that had my feet aching once more. We finally came to a stop before an extravagantly large door, two guards standing alert outside it.
My blood chilled slightly as I caught a familiar blue gaze sparking with recognition beneath his golden helm.
Aldrin McCay.
Stiffening slightly as his hand moved to rest against his chest, the other guard mimicked the gesture. "Your Highness."
"Apprentice Sommers has been cleared to access, we will enter now."
Aldrin moved to open the large door, his gaze lingering as I brushed past, my nerves prickling as I felt those eyes studying my skin. There had once been a time when I thought I could drown in his gaze and die a happy death.
Now I just wanted to gouge them from his head so he couldn't ever look upon me again.
The doors shut behind us with a soft click as I took in the scene. A healer sat beside a large four-poster bed, the mattress the largest I had ever seen and covered in fluffed pillows and soft blankets. But it was the man laid up in that bed that caught my focus and held it firm.
I stepped closer, hesitantly. His dark hair was slick with sweat, I presumed. His skin ashen as if sickness had leeched the color from him. His eyes were closed, and breaths labored with each harsh rise and fall of his chest. I eyed the rash that spread up his throat, but it was the golden glow of the Healer that had the curiosity within me swarming.
The Healer appeared exhausted, his eyes screwed shut as he focused all his energy into maintaining the golden light that encased the ill man's entire body.
A feeling of dread bloomed within me.
"Who is this?"
