After the masquerade: The prison Healer

After

She was screaming.

Falling.

He had to catch her, but her couldn't move. He had to catch her.

No. No!

She was walking into the crematorium, pale and trembling. He was too far away to offer words of comfort, too far away to place a gentle hand on her shoulder. At least she had the amulet, which he was sure would work.

Smoke started rising.

Ten minutes past.

She didn't come out.

He watched helpless as she fell through the air, her body smacking the icy water of the abandoned quarry with a sickening splash.

He couldn't do it.

He couldn't let her die.

Ignoring Tipp's screams, the Warden's yells, he dove in after her. The water was as cold as death, wrapping its arms around him in a bone-freezing embrace. He used his water magic to propel himself forwards, his mind in a panic.

He had to get to her.

Before it was too late.

Relief hit him when he finally spotted her, but it quickly turned to mind-burning fear as he created an air pocket around them and saw her clearly.

There was no rise and fall of her chest.

There was no warm, living flesh.

Because there was no pulse.

He was too late.

She was dead.

"Kiva!" Jaren sat bolt upright, franticly swiping his sweaty air out of his face, gasping for air. He had to get to her. He had to save her. He had to- 

"Jaren! Calm down!" Jaren froze at the familiar voice, his cousins face peering through the gloom. 

"Ca-Caldon?" His ears felt as if they were stuffed with cotton, his vision swimming in and out of focus. He blinked his way into near-clarity and squinted into his cousin's cobalt eyes. "What-where are we? What happened?" Jaren whispered, his anxiety spiking when he realized couldn't remember anything, didn't know where he was, but he refused to let it take hold. He couldn't lose it. 

Caldon sighed and sat down next to him. Jaren noticed his eyes were heavily bagged, his face a map of lines. He looked as if he hadn't slept for weeks. As his eyes adjusted, Jaren noticed he was in a small, dimly lit room with barren walls. He was lying on a creaky bed, a thin but warm blanket draped over his legs.

The boys sat in silence, Jaren leaning heavily against a wall. Sleep fought to take him, but he needed answers. Growing impatient, he looked pointedly at the blurry outline of Caldon. Caldon sighed again, and began to speak in a quiet, soothing voice. "Zuleeka betrayed us." At those three words, Jaren's world fell away, memories flooding him.

 The masquerade. 

The river room.

 Kiva. 

Kiva. 

Not just had Zuleeka betrayed him, but Kiva too. Jaren blinked back tears as a burning, potent mix of betrayal and hurt threatened to burst forth from him. Caldon noticed the white-hot pain carving his features and wrapped his arms around his grieving cousin. Jaren barley felt it, a numbness beginning to spread outward through his body as he remembered.

 Kiva was a Corentine. 

She gave Zuleeka the amulet.

 She told her about his wielding of all four elements. 

And Naari.

 Naari was attacked, and he couldn't do anything to save her, not with Zuleeka's own magic holding him in place, his powers unable to react to the assault. Then Zuleeka had stabbed him with the Eye of the Gods. His magic was gone.

Screaming inside, he pushed Caldon away and tried to summon it, tried to let it burst from his hands, but nothing happened. Caldon closed his eyes and bowed his head. Biting his lip hard enough to draw blood, Jaren desperately tried to coax out a flame, a flower, anything, but it was if a part of him were missing. His mind told him he still had magic, but even as he tried, nothing happened. A tear trickled down his cheek, but he angrily brushed it away, lifting his shirt to sight his wound from the previous night, but he saw only a faint scar. 

"Kiva healed you." Caldon said quietly. At the mention of her name, another wave of raw pain washed over him, but this time an inkling of anger crept through. It grew with the pain, the hurt, the betrayal, his mind a stormy sea of emotions. 

How could she? How could she had done that to him?

 He had opened his family, his home, his heart to her. Jaren scrubbed angrily at his welling eyes and pushed away his lingering hurt and fatigue. He wouldn't let himself think about Kiva. His shredded heart couldn't handle it. "You still haven't told me where we are." He didn't recognize his own voice. 

Blank, emotionless.

 All a ruse to try and keep everything he was currently feeling from rising to the surface. Caldon raised an eyebrow at the sound of his voice but answered, "After the...attack..." Jaren indicated him to go on, his face hard. Caldon continued, somewhat cautiously. "We're at a safehouse, hidden deep inside the Crying Woods. We're still in Vallenia, we couldn't leave. Not with you and... what happened to Naari." Jaren braced himself as he whispered "Naari..."

Caldon wouldn't look him in the eye. "She's...That night...Zuleeka did something to her. It's hard to explain. But she's here, you can...you can see her soon."

His words comforted Jaren, even if his cautious tone was less than reassuring. Jaren was becoming more and more drowsy by the second, barely able to keep his eyes open. He slumped against the wall. "Rest up, mate. We'll talk again soon." The rest of Caldon's sentence was swallowed up by his mind as he fell gratefully into the arms of sleep.