Regina's Queen - OUAT Fanfic

CHAPTER NINE

Regina roused slowly out of a deep and dreamless sleep. She stretched languidly, turning her head to blink sleepily at the clock. 

10:46 am it proclaimed.

Odd, she thought. The room was very dim if it was that hour of the morning.

She turned her head the other way and realised that the thick curtains were tightly drawn. Exhausted as she had been after her ordeal, she couldn't remember closing them, but she was grateful that the sunshine hadn't had the chance to wake her. She was stiff from sleeping so soundly and sat up leisurely with an indulgent yawn. She felt better - much better - than she had yesterday, and her lips curved into a smile as she counted approximate hours of sleep in her head. Eighteen hours, more or less. That'll do.

Feeling refreshed and ready to face her problems, she slipped out of bed and padded to the window. She pulled the drapes open to let in the daylight, but, immediately, her spine stiffened and her nostrils flared. It hadn't been her that closed the curtains, after all. The tell-tale scent of honeysuckle and apple blossom filled her nose, and she ran a finger along the edge of the windowsill, feeling the protection spell with yet another layer of bristling power added. 

At least, now, she knew what it was. Or rather, who it was. 

The Red Queen. 

Still, after hurling fireballs at each other in her Vault the other day, she thought adding an extra layer of protection was an odd thing to do. And she still couldn't figure out how the woman had done it. She'd never heard of someone under-laying extra tiers to a spell that had already been cast. Doing it together was one thing, or casting more than one spell over another, but to embed layers within a spell that was already created...? 

She shook her head in bemusement and made for the shower. In the bathroom, she finally realised that she was still wearing the same clothes she had gone to Granny's in days ago, and wrinkled her nose in distaste as she quickly peeled them off. The hot water soon streamed over her, washing away the stiffness that teased at her muscles, and she took her time beneath the powerful torrent as her thoughts drifted back to her encounter with the Red Queen.

The nil effects of their respective magics had been startling, and Regina stifled a shudder as she recalled the horrid sensation of being hit with a fireball. Even though it hadn't harmed so much as a hair on her head, it had still scared the wits out of her. And then, there was the matter of the rest of their encounter... 

She could still feel the after-effects of that unknown, frighteningly powerful magic that had nearly torn her apart. Despite the steaming hot water, her blood ran cold at the mere memory of it. She was relatively sure that she'd almost lost her life that fateful morning in her Vault, which incidentally was supposed to be her 'safe place'. The thought did not sit well with her. 

She mulled it over. How did a screaming fireball flung straight at her heart have no effect whatsoever, while an invisible, unfathomable magic almost tore her in two from the inside out? Nothing in her vast repertoire of spells and enchantments even hinted at anything of that nature being possible... And if the Red Queen's magic in the form of a fireball hadn't so much as singed her exterior, how had the same magic affected her from within her core? Regina didn't think it was possible to fake a fireball, so the two things together didn't make sense.

  "It wasn't my magic. It was yours... My magic cannot harm you."

The Red Queen's words echoed melodiously in her mind. Regina replayed them a couple of times, trying to fit them into the puzzle. The Red Queen seemed to have proved the latter statement with her fireball stunt, but what did she mean by the former? Certainly, Regina didn't recall cursing herself, and her magic definitely did not attack its wielder of its own accord.