Page 6 of A Touch of Royalty
“Call the palace healers,” He ordered the page standing nearby. “I will take her to-“ Where would he take her? ”I will take her to the room adjacent to mine.” It was the closest unoccupied room that came to mind.
The page took off at a run and Cas went the other way. Carrying Emryn’s limp body through the palace corridors to the room next to his. He shouldered through the door and laid Emryn in the huge bed. it was easily sized for three people, and was the twin to his own next door.
He retreated from her bedside when the healers rushed in. Shaking his head and pointing to Emryn.“I called you for her.”
One of the palace healers looked down at Emryn and shook her head. “She needs to return to the city temple. Maybe they can do something for her.”
“Can you do nothing?”
The healer backed up and shook her head. “Healers, by their nature, do not take healing well. And this is Emryn, she does not take healing at all.”
”Can you at least tell me what is wrong with her?” Cas asked.
The healer that had spoken stepped back to the side of the bed and laid a soft hand on Emryn’s forehead, wincing before ripping her hand back and looking at Cas. “She is profoundly exhausted.”
”Then she can rest here.” Cas said. “I will have a servant assigned to her and we will care for her.”
”The head of the city healers will object.” The healer looked down at Emryn again. “But he would do the same thing. Place her in quarantine and not allow her to heal until she is back to full strength again.”
5
DREAM
Emryn didn’t know where she was. That was odd in the extreme, and very unusual for her. She remembered where she’d been, in the palace healing some sort of mild fever that had cropped up among the servants. She knew she’d overdone it and had been heading back to the temple, but she didn’t know where she was now.
It was dark all around her, a sorrowful sort of darkness, lonely and somehow familiar. But she didn’t know where she was. Emryn had to get out. She was due back at the temple, had a vow to keep and she couldn’t do that from here.
“Child,” a broken voice whispered through the darkness. “Vow child, my child, my eyes, my Wings, you are my last hope.”
Emryn squinted through the darkness, finding a tiny light and walking toward it. She knew that voice, it had been in so many of her dreams lately, and it was past time she figured out what was behind the dreams.
Because there was something behind them.
She walked into the tiny ring of light, to face someone that she never thought would appear to her. Her holy women saw theGoddess, but Emryn had never thought to. Not with the lie that burned in her bones. The one she didn’t dare speak.
That she was no true healer.
But there was something direly wrong here. The Moon Mother was seated, as she often appeared to the holy women, but it was clear to Emryn that she wasn’t seated by her own choice. There were chains around her, wrists, ankles, even a thick collar around her neck that held her to the throne she was seated in.
“M-mother?” Emryn stammered, legs buckling as she went to her knees before the Moon Mother. “Who has done this thing?”
The Moon Mother lifted her head, looking Emryn in the eyes. It felt like she was looking her directly in the soul and Emryn had to force herself to not squirm. “Seek them, my Wings, seek your Three. The Phoenix, the Seeker, the Flame, only then will you know.”
“Know what?” Emryn was trying to hold on, but the edges of the light were beginning to run like chalk in a rainstorm. “Mother,please, let me help you.”
The Mother raised a hand, the chains striking the side of her throne, it sounded like doom. “There is time yet, my Wings. Seek your Three and find the others.”
The light went out, leaving Emryn crying in the dark, reaching out for something that was no longer there.
And the dark went on forever, stretching into infinity. But there had to be an end to it. She had to wake up so she could do the thing that the Mother had told her to do. The words made no sense. Phoenixes didn’t exist. They were a thing from fairy stories and fancies for children. But the Mother had told her to find one?
The other two didn’t make sense in context either. Were they concepts? People? She needed more information and there was none to be found here in the dark.
Which meant that she needed to get out of the dark.But how?
Darkness dies to light, and Emryn’s core was fire. So if she let the fire out, would it burn the darkness away?
Emryn nodded, wiping the tears off her face and rising from her knees. She was tired, she’d been tired for a while, but the Mother had given her a duty and Emryn needed to see it done.
