The Princess and the Warlock

Chapitre Quarante

My tears halted in a moment, as if the water was frozen by magic, waiting to thaw.

There was a time when I thought that magic was dead. King Faber had practically instilled it into me as I was growing up that it was--he'd slaughtered all of the warlocks; magic no longer existed. The charred trees on the edge of the Wildwood were no longer magical--they were merely burnt, dead, just as everything else that laid behind their shadows.

Obviously, I quickly realized that King Faber was more of an idiot that he deemed himself and turned his words away, though it was many years later did I finally witness magic before my very eyes. When Kaius first appeared in the clearing that day, that was the first time I'd seen magic.

And right now, I wondered if I was witnessing my last.

Kaius was looking at me with an expression that was sorrowful and wary, the mixture of the two looking strange on his face. He didn't say anything; he didn't move his hand from my bandaged one, fingers curled over where I was gripping the frame.

His head was lying to the side on the pillow next to mine, his white hair pressed down. His eyes, the strange blue and white mix, were holding my own.

Incredulity was building up inside me, making headway on the sorrow that had been overwhelming me seconds ago. My mother, in her last moments, had a moment like this--a startling clarity in her mad ravings. Was this mine? Though, how much clarity could I have, if I was imagining the dead?

"Have I died?" I asked the image of Kaius, a phrase that sounded funnier than it truly was. "Has a dimkain found me already? I don't think I've been here half an hour."

For a moment, Kaius' image didn't move or speak, just gazed at me with the same anguished expression. Too sad, I thought, for him to be wearing. Surely I should be remembering him happy, not wearing the weight of pain.

The fingers that had been gripping my own moved up to brush across my cheekbone, wiping at the sheen of tears. I startled a bit at the sensation; strange that this image could touch me. Maybe I was already gone. "You're not dead," Kaius said, his voice soft and melodic and the same that I'd heard before. It'd been on repeat in my head, nonstop, an echo that threatened to drive me insane. But this was different—this was outside of my head, tickling my ears. "Not you and not I."

I smiled at him, but it was one that held too much water, his figure melting away to the rivers in my eyes. "You are dead," I told him gently, as if careful not to upset him. "I killed you. I stabbed you and you were gone." Gone, gone, into a pile of ash, dust, nothing.

"You stabbed me," Kaius repeated, agreeing, and withdrew something from his side with his free hand. "You stabbed me with this."

In his grip was the Tempest Stake, swirling black lines, sharp point and all. I looked at it strangely, wondering why I was hallucinating that as well. Kaius I could understand, but I was imagining his murder weapon as well? Strange.

I took a glance at Kaius' clothes, realizing for the first time that he was dressed, and in something other than the last thing I'd seen him in. There was a dark gray tunic that I hadn't seen before covering his torso, loose-fitted and long-sleeved. It had a slight V down the front, exposing a thin strip of his smooth, bronzed chest underneath.

Kaius moved his gaze from mine to glance at the Tempest Stake. "You did stab me, but it didn't kill me. The second you laid the tip along my skin, I absorbed the magic it possessed."

I reached up and covered my fingers over the backs of his own, feeling how warm they were. "Your skin is warm," I said, almost dazed, "for a dead man."