Glass Dominion

Chapter Seventeen

Vanya

Once, everything was peaceful, like a calm creek steadily streaming ahead, trickling over its bed of rocks. Strange, I thought, because it's so calm, yet that completely changes when you realize that you can still drown in that calm creek.
I refused to believe that this Helunai was a strand of Mortala power. Mortala power was capable of nothing but corruption, Helunia's purpose was said to be the exact opposite of that.
I felt my eye twitching, as it did when I was awake, due to lack of sleep. Which I hadn't gotten, not for a while, but nobody else knew that.
I'd tried but had spent more time trying not to fall asleep but to stay asleep. Eventually, I learned that there was no use, and it was the same with eating food. It was challenging to keep anything down like my body couldn't handle it. But I fought with a little more resilience to keep the food down. I could function with little to no sleep, but I could not function without food, even if it made me sick to my stomach.
A constant ache throbbed in my head that would not go away no matter how many herb-infused teas I drank or how much sage I cleansed the air with.
Something inside of me had shifted, though I wasn't sure what it was yet. I had better intuition, almost as if I knew what was going to happen before it happened.
The possibilities overloaded my mind, and it was all so jumbled up I didn't know what to make of it half the time. All I knew was that my intuition had been enhanced. Enhancement was a trait of Mortala power, except with Mortala it was their will that was enhanced which caused their ability to manipulate. Still, I refused to believe that Helunai was a strand of such power, if anything, it seemed to be the counter.
Help. There it was in the back of my mind, and I knew it was coming
"Do you need help with that?" Startling me, Niko slid into the kitchen quickly.
"Sure," I answered.
"Okay," he said eagerly.
He sat down at the dining table with me and helped put together the cheese sandwiches we'd managed to get our hands on the ingredients to make.
That intuition thrummed against my mind again. The thing that scared me the most about it was that I knew that the power wasn't something that could be harnessed. It wasn't like what everyone thought it was. And that made it worse because that meant that it'd already been inside of me. Just like Mortala power.
"Are you okay?" Niko asked me, both of us just noticed I was staring a hole through the table.
"I'm fine," I griped.
"You don't look fine," said Niko, studying my face. I didn't bet it was a pretty sight. My skin was broken out, my hair was always a mess, and my eyes were glazed over.
"Thanks," I said plainly.
We finished making our sandwiches. I put all the ingredients up and then sat back at the dining table with Niko, who'd already scoffed down half his sandwich.
"Glad to see you're feeling better," I noticed, taking the first bite of mine.
We finished the rest of our lunch in silence, or Niko did, at least. My head had never been louder. I had thought about telling someone about it; at first, it wasn't that bad. But all it seemed to do was get worse, getting louder with every passing day and more complicated to understand. It all sounded like jibbered nonsense in the back of my mind.
"Hey, where are you going?" I asked once Niko jumped up and hurriedly tried to head out the door.
"Going to play with Gill and Teddy," he answered. "Is that okay?"
I nodded my head in answer.
I collected the dishes and placed them in the tub that I would have taken down to the well to wash if it was full. However, due to the lack of residency in our cottage, many dishes weren't being used.
I had always firmly believed in fate, that things happen for a reason. I never stressed when less-than-fortunate things happened. I always knew that when one thing happened, it was only a tiny piece of a bigger plan and a bigger endgame coming into play.
My head rang like crazy with things I couldn't decipher, not until it wanted to be deciphered. Nolan, was all I heard, plain as day, as if I'd said it out loud but really I hadn't.
"Hey, are you okay?" the voice snatched me from my lost, chaotic daze.
I turned around quickly to see who'd come through the door unbeknownst to me. Nolan ran to my side when my eyes refused to fixate on him, grabbing a rag from the dining table on his way.
"Here, your nose is bleeding," he held the rag to my nose and then helped me get seated. I took the rag from Nolan's hand, and he sat down across from me and leaned on the table in concern.
"What's been going on with you, Vanya?" Nolan asked. He looked a little disheveled, even for him, and I almost wanted to return the question.
"What's been going on with you?" I decided to return the question. The morsel of a mustache he had frowned with his cracked lips.
I didn't expect him to take my question seriously, but I should have known. Nolan liked everyone's regard to be on him, any excuse to indulge in a conversation about himself.
"I..." He struggled to gather his thoughts. "I just haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Remember I told you about what happened with Amelie and that high and mighty, awfully handsome bastard?"
"Christian?" I asked, knowing who he was referring to, I just wanted to say his name, something Nolan was trying to avoid doing.
"Yeah, well, something happened," said Nolan.
"I knew it, he beat your ass, didn't he?" I wanted to laugh, but my head hurt too badly even to try.
"He didn't beat my ass," he shrieked, offended that I wasn't taking his side.
"No, but he should have."
"I was drunk."
"Drunk words are sober thoughts," I stated.
"I thought he was going to try and kill me." Nolan went on.
"Gods, you're such a little bitch," I grumbled, a bit tired of the pity party he was throwing for himself.
He stared at me, jaw dropped in shock. "Says the bitch."
"I hope a bug flies down your throat right now."
He quickly shut his mouth. "That's not actually what happened."
I sat quietly, waiting in anticipation. "Go on," I urged him to continue.
"Before going to Amelie that night, Christian came to me. I thought it was to greet me, to have a casual conversation, but no, that's not what happened at all," Nolan ran out of breath while explaining, having to pause so that he wouldn't get too light-headed.
"He looked me in the eyes, and his look changed to threatening, which was a side of himself I knew he wouldn't dare show when Amelie was present. And it was so intense, I felt so mesmerized by him. Which is not normal because you know as well as I do that I deeply despise him."
I wasn't even going to lie, if I could sleep, I would've fallen asleep while Nolan was taking his sweet time to get to the point, taking every detour possible.
"And then grabbed me by the arm and told me... he told me to stay away from Amelie." He sat back in his seat, leaving it all out there on the table.
"Wow," I said in a dull tone. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Because," he leaned onto the table yet again. "Because, after that, I wasn't physically able to go near Amelie."
That itch of intuition began to stir inside of me again.
"So I think he's got to be some kind of witch—or wizard in this case. Helunai is real, right? Maybe he put a spell on me," Nolan continued with his assumptions.
"Or he's Mortala," I muttered, but it was loud enough to drench the room in complete silence. But it was quickly interrupted by a banging on the door.
All I knew was that something deep inside of me whispered, willingly, over and over again.
Nolan jumped, but I got up quicker than he did. "Take care of Niko," I told him.
"What?" Nolan asked, utterly confused.
"They are here for me. I'm being taken in. Take care of Niko." I looked back at him, "For Amelie."
I opened the door and stepped out onto the front porch, where two warriors stood before me.
"We are here-" The warrior started, but I interrupted.
"I know," I stated, putting my hands out in surrender.
If I could have seen their faces, I know they would have had a look of bemusement about them as they approached me slowly.
"Just don't knock me out," I requested. They took me by the arms, and we headed off the porch.
I stood no chance against them, but my intuition was speaking. I knew what I needed to do.