Shadow of a Shade

Chapter Thirty

Addiane's head was alternating between feeling as if it had been stuffed with cotton and as if it had been set on fire. She couldn't move, and everything else ached dully as if she'd been thrown against a wall.

Every once in a while she would hear quiet conversation around her, but when she tried to focus on it the pain in her head would triple and she was forced to slide back into her cloudy silence.

The strangest part was that for three days she felt like she was floating, fully in the air and rocking back and forth.

Well, she thought it was three days anyway. It was very hard to tell time when one was in a coma, with no real sense of when days separated from one another.

Finally, after what felt like weeks of silence and darkness, Addiane got her eyes open.

There was a stone ceiling above her, and she was vaguely aware of a familiar smell. It felt as if something was constricting her head, but she was too weak to lift her hand and try to see what it was.

Not knowing what else to do, Addiane took a deep breath and began to try to heal. It took her an alarming amount of time to even reach the energy she could use for magic, and she silently wished that Naegling was somewhere nearby. After ignoring the magic in the stone for so long, she could finally use it for something and it was nowhere to be found.

She finally got ahold of it and began to whisper healing spells, trying to fix whatever she could figure out that needed to be fixed. Spell after spell, until she couldn't focus anymore, then she fell into darkness again.

When she opened her eyes once more, there were several people standing nearby and talking quietly. Addiane tried to move, but again felt as if all of her limbs had been weighted down.

For a few minutes she laid there, trying to catch anything that the group was saying.

Finally someone's voice raised, and the sound clicked in Addiane's mind.

"Murtagh?" She croaked weakly.

Her voice sounded like that of an old crone's, an old woman who had spent too much time around a campfire and breathed in too much smoke. She was surprised Murtagh could even hear her, but she heard a shuffle and then his face appeared in her field of vision.

"Hi, little sister." He smiled a little. Adidane could see dark rings around his eyes.

"Haven't been sleeping?" She chuckled weakly. For a moment she attempted to lift a hand and push back the strand of hair that was hanging in his eyes, but the effort of even getting her arm an inch off of the bed she was lying in exhausted her and she gave up.

"Eragon and I have been taking turns watching you... how are you feeling?"

"I'm exhausted and I can barely keep my eyes open... what happened?"

"Well, uh... I killed your mother." Murtagh smiled weakly.

"I did kind of see that... I mean, everything was fuzzy, but I could see that, sort of."

"You know, what you did was crazy. The amount of power it took to even keep you on your feet with what she did, I don't think I could do that."

Addiane smiled weakly, shifting her head a little as Eragon also came into view.

"I'm glad you pulled through, Addiane... we were worried. We couldn't tell what toll the blood loss had taken while you were out, and we finally had to fly you back-"

"Wait, back? To the..." She blinked a couple times, trying to figure out what the world was. "The Sanctuary?"

Eragon nodded. "Your brothers went home, but we told them that once you were well enough we'd give you leave to go visit them and the rest of your family..."