To the Waters and the Wild - ch. 19
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I caught up to him in the corner just beyond the entrance to my rooms. He was lurking there in a manner that did not promote confidence. Not that he was crouching or slinking at all. That would be beneath his dignity. But the way his back stiffened slightly when I appeared through one of the back entrances that Kit had shown me, meant that he did not expect me there and no doubt did not want me there.
“Ah Sarah. A pleasure as always.” He quickly reasserted his veneer of aristocratic sangfroid.
But I was in no mood to deal with his word webbing.
“Save it Morgan.”
He curled his lips in condescending amusement at the little mortal who dared to use that tone and to address him without suitable title.
She on the other hand was carefully pulling her power into a sharp coil around her hand. He would underestimate her would he? Well, it was only logical after the manner in which she acted. Oberon had told her to hide whatever she could, to let only the smallest power needed to survive and appear worthy be present in her day to day workings. Obviously the prince had taken her high position to be based on other merits.
Idiot.
His power was no longer the fresh green that she was accustomed to in the fey. Instead it was the red tinged green that she had seen in all the things that had gone wrong. A fey gone bad, not just unseelie, but truly evil in intent.
Too late she saw it. Despite the smallness of his power, she saw that it had been a mere decoy in his plotting. He had woven a web around her that quickly trapped her and she was thrown into the dreaming.
Darkness, and then a bright light in the distance that quickly solidified. It seemed the dreaming was the room I had lived in as a child.
Normalcy, the most tempting of dreams.
I remembered the walls covered in books and bright poster. They were still there, just as the scattered paraphernalia on the desk in front of the mirror. My mother calling me to dinner from downstairs, and the smell of pork just out of the oven. But most of all it was the feel. The feel of not having to worry, no responsibilities, and of being taken care of.
After some ten years suffering the travails of the real world and having to worry about my own survival, it was as if one of my subconscious wishes to return to life as a child had come true. A wish I hadn’t even known I held.
And… it was hard to desire otherwise. Oh, I still remembered what I was supposed to be doing in Faerie, still felt the anger at Morgan. But somehow it felt less urgent, as if I had all the time in the world and so, I could wait for the years to pass once more.
It was…nice.
Somehow, I could let the lethargy sink in. I could forget everything.
I could forget Daren.
Daren…
Daren would die. His green eyes fading from the brightness of life. His hand reaching out to me.
“Precious.”
No.
I couldn’t let that happen.
I might want my childhood to return, but it was an ideal childhood, not the reality. Then, I had been suffocated. Spent my hours devouring stories and dreaming of other places. And now that I had found it, I couldn’t let it go.
My surroundings shuddered, whipping in and out of focus as the compulsion broke. The web thinning.
Shattering.
The backlash caught Morgan by surprise, throwing him backwards, away from me. Of course, like a cat, he landed on his feet. He landed in a crouch far removed from his dignified posture of before. His fox-like trait was becoming even more prominent.
Sharper, with that kind of animalistic intensity that meant predator was sighting a prey that it wanted in its claws.
But I was not prey.
As the webs had thinned, the power that he had allowed to thin to early in his underestimation of me was not sufficient to protect him.
He shouldered the blast I shot at him, barely dodging from a full on assault. Instead the shot only managed to hit his right shoulder, taking out the nerves of his arm and keeping his usual sword arm out of commision.
Unfortunately, he could fight just as well with his left.
I might not survive this. The thought drifted through my mind as I drew my own blade to stand in a loose, ready position.
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