Chapter Nineteen: Emma Endless
1220 Words
CHAPTER NINETEEN
EMMA ENDLESS
I had never thought I would be happy in faerie. Even for a moment. When I pictured my life there, I pictured it bleak. With me cast in the role of tragic prisoner. But up in the air, with Oberon, for a few, brief, moments everything seemed like it was falling into place. Like I could actually have a future here.
But the minute I allowed myself to feel that, it was the same minute that everything came crumbling down. As we flew, lost in each other, and the beauty of faerie, I heard a whizzing sound. A whizzing sound that, one second, was coming close to us. The next something sharp had pierced through my arm.
I hissed, and cried out, my arms letting go of where they had once been on Oberon’s neck. Before I knew it, I was toppling, toppling down, screaming bloody murder the whole way. I could see Oberon, frantically trying to fly towards me.
“EMMAAAAAAAA!” he called, his voice bellowing through the forest.
Finally, I landed hard, on the ground, and a piercing pain went through my back. I hissed again. “Ow, ow, ow!” I howled, through hot tears, only able to focus on the stinging, on the pain. Oberon was by my side now.
“No,” he growled, his eyes turning that deep, fall, red color that they sometimes did. There was an arrow piercing my arm. A f*****g arrow. Out of all of the things I’d expected when I’d left the human world for faerie, this wasn’t one of them.
Jesus, it hurt like a b***h.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
I tried to push myself up, but my back seared with pain. Helplessly, I shook my head. He bent down and examined the arrow. It was tipped with a golden sun ornament. “Solis,” he hissed, “I should have known that he would do something like this. Damn it!”
“Can’t you just…I don’t know…wave your hand and make it better?” I asked weakly.
He looked grimly down at me. “Oh, my sweet, if it were that easy I would. I most definitely would. But there are certain things that are even beyond my powers. I was not made to fix things.”
Gently, he put his hands in underneath me. “We’re going to have to fly again. Do you think you can bear it?”
I grimaced. “Don’t have much choice, do I?”
He shook his head. “No.”
I was in his arms once more, only this time, I was tying to ignore the pain. It hurt so badly. All the way down to my toes. Although, I supposed, the one consolation was that my toes did hurt. If my toes didn’t hurt, then I would have a problem. A worse one than a stabbed arm.
We flew back to the palace, as quickly as Oberon’s wings would allow. “Help!” he called the moment we landed on the balcony. “Someone, help. Get a Godmother in here, quickly! Help!”
Autumn appeared, as if by magic. She gasped when she saw me. “What happened?”
“We were attacked!” he hissed. “Get a godmother, now. Your Queen has been shot. This will not stand. Have them meet me in my chambers.”
Even though I was still focusing on the searing pain, my head was still clear enough that I focused on the words his chambers. My husband’s chambers, the place that I had spent zero-time in. It was a silly, irrational, thing to worry about but I needed everything that I could to keep my mind off the pain.
Otherwise I would be consumed by it, and only it.
Tears streaming down my face, I clung to Oberon, who clung to me, and did not let me go until he placed me down in his bed. His bed, where he slept. Even while certain I was going to die of the pain coursing though me, I still had time to register that I was in my husband’s bed.
“This-isn’t-exactly-how-I-pictured-myself-winding-up-here,” I manage to hiss out.
Oberon squeezed my hand and kissed it. “Nor I, my sweet. Nor I.”
There was a flurry of activity then, and a severe looking woman, wearing a white robe, with ebony skin came to stood over me. “This is the patient?” she said.
Oberon nodded. “My wife. Your Queen. Godmother, can you heal her?”
“We shall see. Now, I am sorry your highness, but this is the point where you leave. I need you out so that I can do my work.”
“Oberon, no….” I didn’t want to be left alone with a strange woman that I didn’t know trying to figure out what was wrong with me.
“I stay,” Oberon ordered.
“Your highness---” Godmother began to protest, but one, withering look from Oberon silenced her.
She pressed her mouth into a thin line. “Fine,” said Godmother, “fine.”
Oberon stayed. Godmother had a bag on her person, from which she took out four, blue stones. She placed one on either side of me then at the bottom of my feet. They hummed, as if alive with some kind of energy which knowing faerie they probably were.
A warm heat spread over my body, soothing the pain, along with a blue light. “Well?” I whispered. “What’s the verdict.”
One of the stones turned red. It was the one on my righthand side.
“Your majesty….” Godmother’s eyes softened, her gaze saddened by whatever the stones had told her. “It’s your pelvis, it’s fractured. It’s an internal wound, and one I’m afraid I cannot fix.”
Oberon narrowed his gaze. “Can’t, or won’t?”
“You know as well as I do that I am no god. I cannot simply create new bone. Worse, the dart from the arrow was tipped with Absinthe. She’ll go mad, and likely kill herself.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it!” Oberon barked harshly. “We’re having an awakening ceremony.”
Godmother looked startled. “Your majesty, surely you must be joking. Everyone knows you made a bargain with the girl---”
“I am not. Arrange it, Godmother. That’s an order.”
He stormed from the room, leaving me in his bed alone.
Godmother looked at me helplessly. “Your majesty, sleep is what you need. I’ll handle the king.” She took out a vial from her bag, giving it to me. It was silver, and shimmered. “Drink this.”
I hurt so much, and was so confused, that sleep sounded like bliss. I downed the potion, which tasted metallic, and I drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
- Writer
