What Blooms At Midnight

Six

"You think it wise to start him now?" I cannot keep the concern from my voice as I try to process what Alister has accessed from the through workover he's given my recently discovered other half... My terribly sweet... Terribly ill... Jasper Jones.

"I think if we don't intervene on some level another episode could be fatal for him. He isn't well, Edmund." Alister addresses me just as I feel. Not the eventual King I am known to be... Just a man trying to figure out how to protect his beloved from harm, "I'm not saying you should turn him any time soon... I don't think he'd survive it if we tried to right now... But I do think it best that he starts taking in small doses of your blood- just one to two drops to start, we'll build the dosage as his heart heals it'll enrich him... Make him stronger... With your blood's encouragement, his body should heal itself enough to survive the change. I know that it's soon, but one more bad patch of stress in his current state could rob you both of a beautiful future together."

His words threaten to steal my very future as they steal my breath away... I
Just the thought that I could possibly lose my Beloved just as soon as I've found him devastates me in such a profound way that I cannot begin to explain my emotional upset.

"We... Isn't it wrong of us not to tell him that the medicine... That the medicine is coming from me?" That if things go smoothly with his family tomorrow when they come to call as they're about to be instructed to we'll be feeding him a steady diet of my blood until his heart is strong enough to let him survive his eventual turning into one of our kind.

"The doses he'll manage to have between now and when his family arrives won't be enough to make him dependent on you just yet, it'll only serve to ease his discomfort and help him recover a bit faster than he would on his own." Alister's words reassure me as he speaks of the dependency that is known to happen so very quickly when a vampire finds they've been blessed with a human another half instead of one of our own kind. In order to make the shift into the ranks of vampire, our Beloved must consume some of our very essences... Small doses of our blood over time. The amount and the course of time over which it's fed to them as individual as each couple that it takes place in...

It normally results in a very clingy mortal half, our blood calling out to the rest of our beings, unsettled with the separation from our nearly unaging bodies... While I would be glad to have Jasper driven mad every time he's not nestled safely in my embrace I do not wish to cause him any distress, especially given that his family may not give their permission for my Beloved to be moved into the Palace immediately upon Alister's recommendation so that he may be under my soon to be brother-in-law's direct care... And also to have direct access to my old veins, Royal blood so much more potent when fresh from the source.

"You're sure, Alister?" Jasper's safety isn't something I want toyed with... He needs to be properly seen after and I need to be properly assured... At least once more.

"Your Highness. You called for me because I am the best. Are you going to trust me or should I call for the second-best Doctor here in the Palace?"

....
Jasper
....

It's easier than expected to ignore the hushed voices over by the door as I rest my eyes. Prince Edmund and Doctor Alister had bid me let myself sink into my exhaustion telling me to listen to my body's need for sleep... That they would wake me when the tea arrived, and that the maid they had called for would be back with it for me soon. 

It's a little hard to process the fact that I"ll be receiving real medicine so soon... Even if it is just something slipped into some tea to ease the ache underneath my collar bone.

I'd been given an herbal salve by the last Doctor... It hadn't worked very well and only ever ended with my eyes burning from the smell and my chest feeling just as pained as before it was applied, only greasier... I look forward to being given something that I'm hoping will actually work... Surely they wouldn't have faulty treatments here within the castle itself.

Honestly... Even if the tea is nothing but tea and the idea of medicine planted to soothe me it would matter not, my very soul exhausted enough to disengage reality entirely in it's an effort to focus on the softness of the bedding I'm currently swaddled up so safely in... Bedding that I hope I get to stay in tonight... I'll have been happy just to have had any time in the soft sheets and thick warm blanketing at all... And I'm sure that it's an experience that I'll let myself dream about for the rest of my days however few may be left for me.

When my heart eventually takes me from this world I'll be able to claim that I've been a guest of Prince Edmund in the Palace and that he himself laid me in a bed softer than anything I've ever touched in all of my life... And that is more than most people who live in old age will ever have the satisfaction of saying.

I may not be able to run a farm or work the land... I may not always be able to control my fate or how my heart reacts to stress... But I can say that I've napped in the presence of a future King and for some reason that's comforting... I'm not sure if it's because that Prince is Prince Edmund or if it's because he saved me from Annabeth's stampede... But I feel at ease, and maybe slightly joyous that Annabeth was spooked when she was... I wouldn't have ended up here otherwise with said Prince's gaze meeting mine every time I manage to open my eyes...