Enchanted World: Elves and Vampires

3: Arwin

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Nora's sock-covered feet lifted onto the seat to press her knees against her chest tightly as she tried to shrink into herself to avoid touching either of the men seated beside her. She could not seem to breathe calmly and could not stop the tears running down her face, especially when thinking about what had just happened.

It was dark outside, a while before sunrise. Inside the car, it was pitch black. Even if it had not been she would not have enough courage to look any of the elves in the face.

“Plea-please let me go.” The whisper surprised her.

She did not think she would be able to speak being so scared, but the voice had come out of her throat shaky and delicate, barely making a sound louder than her struggled breathing had before she managed to utter the words. Still, it was clear what had been said. What did they want from her? She could not possibly have anything to offer them, could not be worth anything to them. Was she going to be punished for having stared at him? Were they going to give her to a vampire? That was what elves used humans for. Gifts to vampires or vampire bait.

“That is not going to happen.” It was the black-eyed elf. She knew even without looking at him because he was the one seated on her left, having climbed into the car after they shoved her inside earlier. He was the one that had blocked her immediate escape. “Did we hurt you?” his voice was gentle but still terrifying to her.

“Please let me go,” she repeated, trying unsuccessfully to keep her voice from cracking because her terrified crying was on the verge of becoming panicked sobbing.

“My name is Arwin.” The name sounded familiar but she could not think clearly enough to place it and could not care less about who he was or what his name was anyway. Why he even felt the need to introduce himself given the situation was beyond her.

Were they going to kill her? Probably not if he was concerned about whether they had hurt her. Were they arresting her because he knew she had stolen from the store? It was elf-owned after all and they had been spotted and chased on the day.

Nora thought back to her neighbourhood. There were no hospitals close to their house and they had no way of calling for an ambulance. Zachary would bleed out before they could get near any type of medical institution. She felt more tears leave her eyes and clenched her teeth together tightly. Despite fighting to think of scenarios where Zachary would be okay, the reality was glaringly obvious and her thoughts would not stray from it.

“Is she hurt?”

“She does not appear to be, your highness,” the elf to her right replied.

Nora froze at the term used to address the elf that had spoken and suddenly remembered where she had heard his name before. No. It could not be. She refused to believe that he was one of the elvish princes.

“What is your name?” Arwin asked.

If he was the prince, they really were going to imprison her for staring at him, weren’t they? That did not matter. What mattered at the moment was getting back home. Who else had been hurt? There had been so much blood on everyone, even the elves. Nora highly doubted that the blood most of the elves were stained with had been their own. Was Zia okay? And Mike...

“Let me go.” She saw a hand move from her right as soon as she spoke and held her breath waiting for the man to harm her but Arwin spoke again.

“Do not,” his voice was a cold command. The hand fell quickly at the corner of her eye while her gaze focused on her knees refusing to look at either of them. “Your name,” Arwin repeated.

Nora blinked as she was hit by a sudden realisation. They were elves… and though they did not heal instantly like vampires could, it was rumoured that elves had the ability to heal through spells and magic… What could she offer them in return for healing Zachary and anyone else they may have hurt? Her cooperation? Knowing they were probably not going to take her back, how would she know if they would actually go back there? She would just have to trust that they would... It was the only thing she could do at the moment. It was the only possible scenario that could save her brother's life. It seemed that being distracted by her thoughts had made Nora stop crying, so she swallowed nervously and lifted her chin from behind her knees but focused on the road ahead of the car that was lit up by its lights to avoid looking at any of the elves.

“If I answer your questions… will you let me go?”

“No,” At least he was honest about that, “but I am sensing there is another way to get you to answer me, am I correct?” Sensing? Nora frowned at the word. Elves could not read minds… could they? She paused for a moment, waiting for Arwin to confirm that he now knew her name as she repeated it over and over in her mind. She felt pretty dumb when no one said anything after a minute of silence.

“You-you stabbed my brother,” Nora muttered, unable to utter the words without stuttering as tears filled her eyes again while her throat closed up.

“Your brother?” Arwin’s shocked voice showed the first sign of emotion since she had initially heard him speak. “Oh – Cullum.”

“I will send someone back right away.”

That made Nora look up right at Arwin who could just barely be seen in the dim moonlight that made it through the tinted windows. His eyes had not changed but she ignored their beauty as looking at him filled her with anger and repulsion.

“You would have let him die,” she whispered in realisation. He would have let someone die for stolen beans and macaroni or just because she dared look him in the eyes?!

“If I knew he was your brother –”

“That doesn’t matter. You could have healed him and you were just gonna let him die.” she cut him off through her grit teeth as her eyes stung. How could they just let anyone die like that? Nothing she could have done deserved that kind of punishment, especially because it wasn’t directed at her. “What do you want from me? Am I going to prison? Why am I here? Why did you hurt them?” her voice was harsh as it matched the anger she felt, the range drowning out her fear.

He raised his brows subtly making the blue jewel that hung on his forehead gleam. “You do not know much about elves, do you?” he asked. She did not respond and instead shrunk back in shock and fear when he unclasped the hands on his lap to snap his fingers lightly. It seemed that the movement created a small blue flame in his palm. Despite her fear, Nora's gaze stuck onto the flame. The magic was surreal, it did not matter how much she had heard about their magic in the past, no description lived up to what it really looked like and actually seeing it was mesmerising. The flame was bright for its size and beautifully glowing as the arrows had been earlier. “Your face –” he lifted his other hand snapping her out of her daze.

“Don’t-don’t touch me.” She glared at the hand and he slowly pulled it back before placing it on his lap. Nora looked at the flame again wondering how long it was going to take for him to ignore her instruction, wondering why he would listen to it considering who he was and how she had ended up in the car.

“Your name?” Nora didn’t want to tell him, didn’t want to keep talking to or being near him… but they had an agreement that she probably needed much more than he did.

“Nora,” she mumbled glancing at him to find him staring back at her, it made her eyes avert back to his palm.

“Nora...” he repeated, “I am not going to harm you and you are not going to be imprisoned.”

“Then please let me go.” she pleaded, her heart picking up again with the realisation that she had no idea what he wanted to do with her. There were so many possibilities, she had no reason to trust that he would not hurt her after watching them stab Zachary the way they had, knowing they were so powerful and there was no way she could defend herself against them. The thought made her stomach twist nauseatingly and sent a shiver through her body.

“I cannot do that,” he said lifting his hand.

“Don’t touch me.” Nora tried to grab his wrist to stop his hand when he didn’t retreat this time but hands gripped her arms from behind her, preventing them from moving any further.

“Trust me, this is to calm you down.” His finger brushed her temple gently and light seemed to fade from her eyes and mind immediately as she felt her body go numb.

Arwin watched the girl slump back against Cullum and quickly took hold of her arm carefully to pull her away from the guard. He did not want anyone else touching her when it was not absolutely necessary. Her feet slipped from the seat limply as he pulled her over to his side, his arm around her shoulders securing her limp body against his. Her pyjama shirt and track pants were quite dirty, but he did not care if she dirtied his clothing as long as Cullum was not touching her. He lifted a hand to brush a strand of her curly dark brown hair from her temple so he could examine the cut he saw earlier. She must have gotten it when they were so roughly dragging her from that place. He had told them not to hurt her multiple times, but she put up quite a fight for someone her size and stature. Arwin did not think that place could be called a home having gotten a glimpse of the inside through a hole in the boards which covered some of the windows that were not painted over. It looked like a big old storage room or a small warehouse area. He had been told to stay back but did not listen to his guards, had never been one to listen to anyone really and, in turn, he sometimes created some unnecessary work for the people around him. Not that it mattered, he was the prince and was quite responsible, rarely venturing into anything dangerous. His brother was a lot more daring and had always been a bigger problem for their guards to keep watch over. Lifting a finger to the cut that was covered in rough, dry blood, he watched it disappear beneath his touch making it look as though she had never gotten hurt. He was an incredibly powerful elf, one of the few that did not need to say a spell out loud to perform it.

Though her clothes were quite stained, her hair felt and smelt clean and her face was clean too, apart from the damp tear stains that he wiped away with his thumb. Maybe she did not have enough to wear to wash the clothing? That was not going to be a problem anymore, he would make sure of that. He had yet to put out the flame in his other hand and was using it to study her features under the cool blue light. She had a straight nose that tilted slightly lower at the edge, two small beauty marks right below her right eye that he remembered thinking were adorable the first time he saw her, her lips were even and not very plump or thin and he wondered what they looked like when she smiled. Did they tilt up more on one side? Did she look mischievous or sweet when she smiled? Did her eyes close completely when she laughed? Did she have dimples? What did it sound like when she laughed? She also had a faded scar on her jaw, near her ear. He wondered how she got it. Did she fall when she was little? Or had someone tried to harm her? So many questions were forming, burning at the tip of his tongue but could not yet be asked… He figured he would have to wait a while to receive answers to anything. She obviously was not very inclined to speak to him, let alone answer his questions. He could not blame her. She had no idea who he was and what just happened was probably nothing short of traumatising for her.

Nora did not know it yet but she was going to marry him. From how little she seemed to know about elves, how his magic had surprised her and made her instantly back away, he knew it was something he was going to have to ease her into because she was human and did not understand how elves dealt with soulmates. He knew the second their eyes met that she was supposed to be his and he was already hers. Despite never having seen her before, it was like staring at someone he had known his entire life, a person closer to him than anyone else, someone that made his world stop moving and then almost come crashing when she just ran away before he could even call out for the chauffeur to stop the car.

Humans were fragile and wary little creatures… he was going to try not to scare her too much, though uncertain of how much she would find scary considering that no one he had met before ever reacted to magic the way she and her friends had. Being an elf prince, he barely even saw any humans from a distance, let alone met any. Most of what he knew about them right now he had learnt in the past couple of days from his guards and helpers who he interacted with most.

So far, he knew most humans did not see dragons often so his dragon Tar was not someone Nora was going to be introduced to very soon. She would probably not appreciate knowing royal elves could alter or erase memories so he was going to keep that to himself until they were more acquainted and she was not so afraid and thus less likely to become paranoid about him having replaced any of her memories while she was asleep. He smiled brushing another strand of hair from her face very excited about getting to know her, even though he had not expected her to be human. That was a shock. He had waited over two hundred years to meet her, had assumed she would be an elf. Unlike vampires, elves were not immortal, but they did have a very long lifespan compared to humans. Usually about five thousand years if not killed or so heavily injured that they could not heal themselves in time.

He frowned as she let out a soft whimper in her sleep and seemed to tense up, her hands fisting and eyes clenching tightly.

“What is happening?” He looked at Cullum who glanced at Nora for a second making Arwin have an impulsive feeling of covering her but he stopped himself as the man answered.

“She appears to be having a nightmare.”

“Oh, they get those too.” Arwin could alter his own memories as he could with other elves’. He had never had a nightmare, but he heard about them and helped get rid of them often. Elves did not usually react so visibly to nightmares but would wake up constantly, so it did interrupt their sleep. He lifted a finger to Nora’s temple again and felt her body relax against his. He had not erased or changed anything, just calmed her mind as he had done to put her to sleep earlier. What was her nightmare about? He paused as he looked back at Cullum. “Human nightmares are inspired by traumatic experiences, are they not?”

“Sometimes they are,” Cullum replied. Arwin had grown quite annoyed at being addressed as ‘your highness’ following every word from Cullum after the first fifty years of his life when they spoke so much and had commanded that the man stopped referring to him as such when they were not in public. It had taken Cullum a while to stop the habit, but he managed to do so.

Arwin frowned slightly as he watched Nora. Had they caused the nightmare? The way they had taken her out of there would be quite shocking for a human, especially when she watched her brother being stabbed. Would she mind if he just erased the memory of what had just happened then? He shook his head at himself. Of course she would mind, it would probably distress her even more to wake up in a new place among a bunch of elves she did not know and have no idea how she had gotten there. He decided against tampering with her memory and settled on just calming her mind if needed again as he shut his hand to kill the little blue flame darkening the car interior once again.

“Who did you send back? Are her friends alright? Her brother?” Arwin watched Cullum place the call on his cell phone and it only rang for a second before being answered.

“Elaria. How are they?”

“Angry, especially the older one that almost died. You would be surprised how much fight was left in him with those wounds and the amount of blood he had already lost, but we’ve put them all to sleep.”

“Has he been healed?” Arwin spoke.

“Yes, your highness. They all have.”

Arwin did not even notice Cullum looking at him for confirmation because his eyes were already back on Nora who he was once again studying as though not having done so just a few seconds prior. His eyes kept being drawn back to the scar on her jaw.

“Good. See you at the palace.” Cullum hung up.

“As soon as we get back I want you to put someone on guard near my room. Do not let anyone into it. Make sure Nora can call on you for anything she needs.” Arwin did not really trust anyone but Cullum near her even though most of the people working in the palace had been there before he was even born. He had always been closest to Cullum; had always worked more closely with the older man. There was not anyone else the prince was willing to trust around her. She was human. Fragile. He had a lot of enemies, whether he knew or had made them personally or not, and he was not going to let any harm become of her again.

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