Private Tales The Ways of Magic

[Thallan]

Thallan looked over to Raea when she spoke up, and his gaze paused on her injuries. He stepped over to her, inspecting to see how bad they were. Raea looked as if she might collapse any moment, so Thallan directed her to a chair. He squatted by her side and took her arm, inspecting the wound at her shoulder.

"That is a great question, Raea," he replied after a moment. "Have an answer, Shae?" He didn't even deign to glance over at the noble fae woman as she got dressed.

"Maybe they wanted to prove a point," Shae said, her voice small and tight.

"Hmm." Thallan still did not look at her. He moved to pick up his tunic that been discarded onto the floor and walked back over to Raea. He tore of a piece of it and tied it around Raea's shoulder to slow the bleeding. "Tell me exactly what happened after I left, start to finish. Don't leave out any details. We could use this information to catch the ones that got away and punish them. Isn't that what you want?" with his last question, he finally looked at Shae.

She was fully dressed once more, and when her eyes meet Thallan's, there was something like anger in her gaze. He knew it was not directed towards her 'attackers', but rather towards Raea for having the audacity to still be alive. Thallan found himself glad that Raea was still alive, if only to get on Shae's nerves.

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

Her features tightened at his examination, as though she were a piece of meat. A rather diced up piece of meat, as it turned out; she bunched up some of the too-sheer fabric and pressed it into her ribs with a damp squelch and a sharp wince at the pain.

"Consider their point made," she gritted out as Thallan worked on the wound in her shoulder. She was not about to let him strip her naked to deal with the slice across her chest, though. "Even if all they proved is that they bleed." That I do, too. That I am woefully unprepared to deal with whatever mess he has gotten me into.

Even though the whole situation had kindled a foreign feeling in her: hope. She still knew less about herself than she had this morning, but one thing was certain. Her fae ancestry was no longer in question, even if every other detail of her life was.

"You can't expect me to just...just speak those words in front of everyone, can you?" Shae murmured to Thallan. The heat in that momentary gaze at him was there and gone quickly. Raea could feel the insincerity radiating off the woman. She didn't know if this was a play or not, but she could tell that the Lord of the manor had his own doubts.

She disliked this noblewoman intensely, but she didn't know how best to handle this situation. She herself didn't believe that what she was saying had happened... but...

"Where," came an icy voice, filled with arrogant command, "is my daughter?" The voice came from outside Thallan's room, directed to whomever might be outside this room.

Raea pressed the cloth into the laceration harder, face paling further with pain and, paradoxically, clearing her head.

 

[Thallan]

Thallan stared hard at Shae. "Yes, I do, Shae. Especially considering your life was not the only one in danger. Raea was the main target here, no matter how much you try to make it about you. Besides, I don't trust you, and I don't trust your story, and your hesitance to share only increases my distrust."

He spoke firmly and calmly, anger only flickering in his eyes, never entering his voice. Self-control was something he was very good at, even when faced with someone he quite disliked as he was now.

Shae continued to glare at him, but she at least gave up the puppy eyes. No one had believed her anyway, not even Elasha.

Shalyr announced his presence at the door and Thallan sighed. There were too many people here each with something to say and he was getting a headache. "We're not exactly hiding her," Thallan replied to Shalyr. "But there are some questions we need to ask her before you wisk her away," Thallan turned to Shae now. "We're listening,"

Shae huffed a short little sigh that did not fit with her act of being the poor, sad little victim. "You left the room after Raea screamed in the hall, and you had not been gone long before two of the men came in here. They- they stripped me of my clothes, and-" Shae stopped to bury her face in her hands. Thallan had seen the expression on her face before she had and he knew she was trying to hide her lie.

"And then they left you here," Thallan finished for her. He could practically smell the words on her that she had been about to say.

Why try to hide something like this? Pretend to be violated when she wasn't really? Was it for more attention? Or was it a setup? Had Shae been involved? He would not put it past her. She was a scheming bitch.

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"Not a scratch on anyone but me," Raea said in a flat voice. She fixed Shae with a pale-eyed gaze, raven hair standing out more starkly for the bloodless quality of her skin. "Stripped you naked and did it gently," she added in a quiet voice.

Shae hadn't a single bruise on her, not one scratch or cut. If they had stripped her, she hadn't fought them. She smelled bullshit beyond the simple fact she did not trust the abrasive woman.

The noblewoman said nothing. Sometimes it was better to not speak and hold your ground; they could not force her to say anything she did not want to after. Not especially with Lord Shalyr standing on the other side of the door. The only thing certain in that case was that she, Raea, would probably not survive the battle between the two males.

Blood seeped between the fingers pressing her bunched up gown into the wound in her chest. Staring at Shae and feeling the stinging pain of that bite, she realized that the woman in front of them was far, far more dangerous than she seemed. She was certain, then and there, that she had something to do with all of this.

But what?

 

[Thallan]

Thallan could tell Raea was doubting Shae's story (if it could even be called that) as well. He knew her eyes also found the lack of bruises or marks on her suspicious, especially considering how blood-soaked both Thallan and Raea were.

"And you didn't fight them? Not at all? You've got no bruises and you're not bleeding, you look perfectly healthy to me," Thallan walked up really close to Shae, leaning up into her face. "Do you want to know what I think happened? No, what I know happened? I left, you knew who the assassins were, and you stripped yourself naked and screamed, waiting for someone to come in and see what an awful thing had supposedly been done to you. Because if you hadn't known the attackers they would come after you as well, wouldn't they?" He paused for a moment, and he could see the truth reflected in her eyes. But he wanted her to say it out loud, so her father could hear that he had a fool and a terrible actress for a daughter. "Isn't that the truth?"

Shae glared at him, and he could tell she did not want to answer but no answer would be just as damning as saying yes.

"Good Gods, Thallan, how can you treat her like this? A guest in your own house has been harmed!" Shalyr spoke up, stepping to his daughter's defense. So he was a fool too.

Thallan turned around slowly, his eyes a cold green, so different from his flaming hair. "It's Lord Malwyrth to you. And you know just as well as I that no harm was done to your daughter. You want to see harm, look at Raea," he said calmly, "let none of us pretend to be so stupid as to believe Shae's poorly thought out story."

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"Poorly thought out, and with an accomplice willing to defend her," Raea said after a moment. She had turned to look at Shalyr with weary and wary eyes.

The Lord bristled at the accusation. "You think I have something to do with this?" He shifted on his feet, visibly agitated by the words. He looked to the Lord of the house, to Raea, and back again with barely concealed malice gleaming in his eyes. "If I wanted to kill either your or Lord Malwyrth, I wouldn't have sat at your table and broke bread with you. There would be no charade."

His voice was steel, unyielding and clearly offended by the very aspersion of ill intent.

"And that goes for my daughter, as well."

"I do not know what happened," Shae said finally. There was a look of confusion splayed across her face that was being replaced with dawning realization. Her previous story might have failed but if this were acting it was quite convincing acting. "There were those men and then..," She trailed off. "What you say is true...isn't it? They didn't do anything to me and yet... yet I still think, believe, that they did."

"Why would they accost you? The only person here to have so much as a hair on their head harmed was me," Raea said. "If not for Lord Malwyrth here..."

She shuddered, and swayed woozily with the motion.

 

[Thallan]

Thallan agreed with Raea, both the things she said, but he did not have to nod or voice his assent. He glanced to his mother, and he could tell his mother agreed with them too. She had seen too much of what men were truly capable of, and what women were capable of too.

Now Shae was playing dumb. A silly trick to play, considering the previous act she had just played. He wondered who she thought she was fooling.

He was distracted for a moment when Raea swayed as if about to topple out of the chair she was sitting in. He returned to her side and knelt by the chair. "Do you want me to bandage the wound on your chest?"

He guessed if he just stripped her of her bloody nightgown and did it without asking she'd give him some more blood of his own to think about.

Shae huffed from behind when he didn't pay her any attention, something he guessed only he and Raea would hear or notice.

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She outwardly bristled at the question, even if the concern - late though it was - pleased her. Even if she had no idea why it pleased her; Thallan was an odious man, entirely too enraptured with his own greatness. He had never missed an opportunity to remind her how poorly she performed in...well, in anything it was she had done.

And yet she had remained under his roof.

She glared at the man. "I have some decency," she said shortly as she glared at Shae. "I will be fine," she said a bit too quickly. She stood to leave.

Or tried to. Standing quickly, her head swam and for a moment everything faded and her eyes went distant and then rolled into the back of her head. She dropped like a sack of bones, falling across the Lord before gasping and coming back too with a dazed look to her eyes and a bemused expression on her face.

Touching Lord Malwyrth sent a jolt through her like lightning. After a beat of her heart, she managed to fall back against the chair, sitting on the floor and staring at the blood-smeared Lord with wide, half-lucid eyes.

Shae had schooled her face to a smooth, blank mask, Lord Shalyr coming to her said while staring daggers at Thallan.

 

[Thallan]

Thallan raised an eyebrow at Raea's response just as her legs gave out from underneath her and she fell forward into Thallan's chest. His hands immediately came up to grip her upper arms, steadying her. She pulled back and sank down to the floor.

"You will not be fine if you just continue to lay there," Thallan replied coolly, as if her stubbornness didn't irk him one bit. He bent forward and scooped her up into his arms. "Seeing as how your daughter is apparently unharmed, I will be tending to Raea's injuries since they seem a bit more pressing. I'm sure you can handle Shae," Thallan said to Shalyr.

Elasha moved over to Thallan and left the room with him. Thallan brought the two women to his bedroom. He laid Raea on his bed, and his mother immediately descended upon her, tending to the girl's wounds. Thallan locked himself in his bathroom so that he could bathe and change while his mother removed Raea's nightgown and cleaned and bandaged the girl's wound on her chest.

Shae's room was a bit down the hall, but he could still hear faint echoes of her voice. If he hadn't been so completely out of it, he would've tried to eavesdrop, but instead he filled his tub up with hot water, stripped off the remainder of his clothes, and sunk into the water with a sigh. Flakes of blood that had begun to dry floated up to the surface of the water, tinting it red.

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She gasped at the sudden motion, unsure whether to be outraged or thankful. She settled on the former while secretly feeling the latter. Her ghostly complexion a stark contrast to his coloring, she settled for glaring at him as her blood stained his skin and dripped on the floors.

"Good of you to care now," she managed, partly out of irritation that she was being treated like a doll and partly out of irritation that she actually felt like one. Fragile and held together with bits of string, hopes and prayer.

Elasha fussed with her as though she were her own daughter, wincing when the totally ruined clothing came away to reveal a long slice starting left of the left side and slicing up through her breast clear to the bone. If the assassin had struck her an inch lower, she would have been dead. As it was, it was not something that could simply be bandaged.

The Malwyrth woman shook her head, hurried off to get a needle and thread. "This will leave a scar," she said when she returned.

Raea bore the treatment with as much grace and dignity as she could muster. The experience was punctuated by gasps of pain when Elasha's needle had to slide through a sensitive stretch.

While she lay with her eyes on the ceiling she had nothing to do but examine her thoughts. The fragments of whatever it was that the assassin had broken had begun to melt away. What was left was a tangled mess of memories. Rather, pieces of memory surrounding holes that yawned like the gulf between stars.

Sitting on the edge of the bed while the matron of the house cleaned up some of the mess, she couldn't help but look at her hands, at her reflection in the mirror. The raven hair was as much a shock as features as strange to her as any passersby.

Who was she?

 

[Thallan]

Thallan spent a good deal of time in the bath, until the water grew cold. Finally, he got out and dried off. He had a few nicks across his body that he hadn't noticed before, but he didn't bother with them. Realizing he had forgotten to bring a change of clean clothes to change into, he tied his towel around his waist and stood close to the door, listening to the other end to see if he was safe to come back into his room.

On the other side of the door, Elasha tended to Raea. She had been gifted with healing abilities, which was rare for the family she came from. It had proven itself helpful numerous times, and was doing so now. Elasha stitched up Raea's gash across her chest, her fingers gentle and light, a faint golden glow following her work. Raea would find that once Elasha had finished, the pain had been significantly dulled. All that the girl would be suffering from now would be blood loss.

Elasha disappeared for a moment to retrieve a clean nightgown and a robe for Raea. Wrapping the shell-shocked girl in the robe, Elash knocked and then opened the door to the bathroom, startling Thallan who was standing right behind it. Thallan glanced at Raea over his mother's shoulder and then stepped aside so Elasha could lead Raea into the bathroom. Another bath would be drawn to clean the rest of Raea's body. The door shut behind the two women.

Thallan moved into his room and put on a clean pair of pants. Still not bothering with a shirt, he sat down at the foot of his bed, rested his elbows on his knees as he thought.

He had been right about Raea being Fae, and he wasn't surprised by that, but he had been surprised by the attack in the middle of the night. He was certain Shae and her father had something to do with it, but what? Why were they targeting Raea and trying so hard to not look complicit? Could it be connected to how Raea had been glamored? Who had it out for her?

He tore a hand through his still damp hair.

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She had stood in silence and sat in silence, searching through the shattered remnants of her mind for answers she did not know if she could find. Everything that had been certain had been upended weeks ago. The tenuous certainty of even the day before lay broken and bleeding on the floor of her bedroom upstairs.

"I don't understand," she said as the bath was drawn, the ruddy water Thallan had left behind replaced with clean water, steaming and filling the bathroom with the scent of roses. It would have been something that calmed her, but her nerves were broken now. It was easy to sit in the room, bleeding and numb. For a time, it was easy.

The silence of Elasha's ministrations had only given her time to ask questions in the confines of her own skulls.

She looked to Elasha as she stripped, ashen skin smeared with dried blood. "Help me understand," she said. "Why did Thallan bring me here? Why are people trying to kill me? What is going on?"

 

[Thallan]

Elasha helped Raea shed the robe and get into the fresh bath. It smelled like a garden in the bathroom, a soothing scent that would ease the nerves.

"I do not understand much more than you, dear," Elasha replied sympathetically. The poor girl was going through so much. "But I do know that Thallan brought you here in order to protect and help you. We knew you were Fae but we didn't know how or why."

She was quiet for a moment as she stood by the tub, ready to help Raea should the girl need it at any time. "I do not know why those men tried to target and kill you, but I would guess it had something to do with who glamored you and wiped your memories in the first place. The closest you can get to any answers are digging deeper into the memories you have regained."

Elasha did not have the answers Raea was looking for, and she wished she did.

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"There is nothing in there but pieces," she said in a low voice. The scent was soothing, and the nearly uncomfortable heat of the water worked its way into her flesh and bones and made her feel drowsy. As if she needed any help with that.

"Regardless," she said after a time. The water had taken on a pinkish tinge from blood. Wasn't the first time she had bathed bloody water, though usually it was someone else and not her own. "He brought me here to protect me, but why?"

Why indeed? A chance encounter in a village she happened to be passing through. Aside from the cutting criticism of her form - then and since - he had not really said much to her. She had caught him watching her from a distance from time to time. Been invited to meals with the family even though she was of no relation in any way.

She could admit to herself, in the privacy of her own head at least, that there was something there. She could have left at any time and yet...

...and yet, here she was. It made no sense. Thallan was so full of his own importance and conceited enough that her back stiffened half the time he was around her. The fact that he was worse with others simply muddied the waters even more.

"If not for you, I would have lost my mind a month ago." Her eyes cut toward Elasha, tired... and thankful.

 

[Thallan]

Elasha was quiet for a moment. "Perhaps you should ask Thallan that question," she replied finally. Elasha was no fool, she had seen the glances between the two, right behind the enormous tension whenever they were in any room together.

"I am glad that I could be helpful," Elasha said, and she smiled. She got Raea one of Thallan's extra towels and would help the girl get out of the bath, wrapping the towel around her.

Her wounds would heal, and so would her mind, but it would all take time. Already, Raea looked much healthier now that the glamor was broken. She was beautiful, in fact, something Elasha knew Thallan had noticed.

"Do you want rest now, or would you rather talk to him?" Elasha asked.

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"What, so he can mock me about some trivial detail again?" She bristled a bit, but only a bit.

She searched the glittering fragments that swirled in her head, but nothing made any sense. She could catch pieces but they were shorn of any context; a beautiful woman without a face whose fangs gleamed with poison; a scrap of parchment with elegant words scrawled upon them and no memory of what they said. Startlingly, she could remember Elasha, but not why.

Underpinning it all was a pressure that was growing, pressing against her mind incrementally. She realized it had been there for a long, long time. It was nauseating and seemed to thrum through every fiber of her being.

There was so much she didn't know or understand. She had avoided learning anything of the Fae out of stubborn pride, refusing to believe what either of her hosts had said about herself. Now that... whatever had happened, she found herself even more confused. She felt she should know, but understanding remained just out of her grasp.

She climbed out of the tub, huffing in irritation. Her skin pebbled in the cool air.

"Sorry." She accepted the towel with good grace, and the help too. She still felt weak and unsteady. At least it didn't hurt. Still, another new scar to add to the others on her pale skin. "I still...have trouble accepting it..."

 

[Thallan]

Elasha could not help her faint smile when the mention of Thallan ruffled Raea.

"You do not need to apologize. It has only been minutes since your glamour has been broken- I would not expect you to have accepted it and figured it all out by now," Elasha drained the water in the tub and straightened up in the bathroom (Thallan had left it in a bit of mess, the silly boy) while Raea dried herself and donned the robe once more.

"Do you want to return back to your room? I can get you a clean nightgown."

Meanwhile, Thallan lay on his bed, on top of the blankets, staring up at the high ceiling. His arms were flung wide on either side of him. On impulse he suddenly sat up and left, walking down the hall. Shalyr had returned to his room and Shae was in hers, and Thallan made sure both rooms were locked from the outside. He would not play their little game.

He returned to his room. He heard the water draining in his bathroom and knew Raea had finished her bath. He could hear the two women talking but he did not focus on their words. That was their business and if they wanted him to know what they were saying, they would say it to his face. He resumed his position on his bed and continued to ponder the ceiling.

There was a long road ahead, and it was hidden by fog.

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"I am going to lose my mind," she replied sullenly. "Knowing there is something I should know but can't remember..." She clenched her fists at her sides. "It is like opening your mouth to speak and forgetting what you were going to say. It's..."

Maddening. That what it was, it was maddening. Walking into a room and forgetting why you were there, words forgotten but with the intangible ghosts left just on the cusp of understanding. The glittering shards in her head hinted but did not say and they showed images that meant nothing, shorn of context as they were.

"Yes. No. I mean, yes, something not stained in ... in blood," she said. Suddenly she felt overwhelmed by revulsion, and she immediately tugged the shift free and threw it on the floor before taking a few steps away from it. The scent of blood, sharp enough to cut through the floral scent, made her queasy. The heightened senses were unfamiliar and strange and expected and rational all at the same time.

Seemed bathing in the blood of strangers never really acquired the status of normal.

"I need to speak to Thallan," she said in a low voice tinged with distaste. "But not until I have something to wear. I am not going to..." she trailed off, flushing nearly as crimson as the roses she smelled of. She was not some hussy, like Shae. She wasn't about to march into a man's room and let him ogle her.

 

[Thallan]

Elasha nodded. "Wait here, and I shall fetch you something to wear."

Thallan glanced up when his mother exited the bathroom. She left his chambers, but Raea was still in the bathroom. He glanced between the door Elasha had just left through and the door of the bathroom which Raea was behind.

A few moments later, Elasha returned, a nightgown folded over her arm. That made a lot more sense. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it. Gods, he needed sleep, but his mind would not shut down.

Elasha returned to the bathroom with a nightgown for Raea. It was thicker and not as sheer as the one she had gotten bloody and torn. Elasha was not about to let Thallan ogle this poor girl.

"Are you ready?"

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"Yes." No. She slipped the gown over her head even as she answered. The heavier cloth was welcome this time, even if the fabric was tight across her hips and chest. Maybe not so welcome, actually. Elasha's ministrations had prevented her from bleeding out and mended her to a point, but her ribs ached as though no healing had occurred yet.

When the door opened and they exited, she stopped just inside the room and fixed Thallan with a cold eye. She couldn't hate the man for not allowing her to be cut down under his own roof... but she still couldn't understand why he had bothered.

Some Fae game, perhaps. Even if she, too, was of the fair folk... well, he had been born and raised to their cruel games. She had not.

Lies. She blinked as an image of his face, framed in fiery locks, flickered. Some grand place - a palace, perhaps, or a manor with all the floors carpeted and walls hung with grand pieces of art that she couldn't recognize and didn't have time to in any case. Attached to the jagged image was a single, sharp emotion.

Frustration.

She stared at him with a mixture of confusion edged in anger.

 

[Thallan]

Thallan was sitting up, his gaze still on the bathroom door when Raea opened it and stepped into his room. She was clean, wearing one of his mother's nightgowns. In her unglamoured form, Raea had a larger chest and larger hips than Elasha, but Thallan pretended not to notice the way the gown hugged her curves. He had no business looking and it would do him no good, anyway.

There was a flicker of confusion in her features as she looked at him and he wondered what she was remembering or thinking.

"What do you remember?" It was rather a silly question- he guessed she most likely would not be able to remember much of anything yet. It would take time and mental focus to piece together what had happened in her past.

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"Nothing that makes sense," she said. Definitely anger more than confusion. Something about Thallan stirred that flame more easily than anything or anyone else ever had. She wanted to grind her teeth and only just managed to control the wild emotion that swelled in her breast.

If she didn't know any better, she would have accused the Lord of manipulating her via magic. She felt inexplicably bound to this male, and even the thought of that ratcheted her anger up another notch.

Her hands itched for something to grasp, and without thinking about it she reached to her waist and grasped at nothing with both hands. Blinking, she realized what she had done, and tried to cover the movement by bunching up the fabric at her hips in her hands.

"I only just recalled a place with carpeted floors and ridiculous opulence everywhere. It could be anywhere in this Fae world of yours," she said in a cold voice. She deliberately said nothing of his appearance in that memory or whatever it was. "I wonder why you even care. Why did you pull me into your world, Lord Malwyrth?"

It couldn't be coincidence or mere happenstance that they had crossed paths again. Whatever the fragmented memory showed, it definitely indicated that she had been at least aware of him before. But why?

 

[Thallan]

"I thought as much," Thallan said softly. He could not blame Raea for her anger and frustration in her situation, but he did think it being directed at him was a little unfair. Not entirely, but still.

"You know, being cold, stubborn, and just plain mean will get you nowhere. A less kind Lord would kick you out of his home." Thallan said dryly, rubbing his face. His dark red hair hung down his back, nearly dry from his own bath a bit ago.

"I suggest before you throw accusations around you figure out your past as much as you can, and then you can decide if such harsh words are truly warranted or not,"

Thallan stood from where he'd been sitting at the foot of his bed, crossing his arms over his chest. "This is not only my world, Raea. It's yours, now, too,"

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"I never begged to be here to start with," she replied, standing straighter and taller. "And I never made an accusation beyond you pulling me from the life of a wanderer. You know, where no one was trying to kill me unless I did something to deserve it."

Bitching and splitting hairs about a life that wasn't a life at all. She colored at her own inner chastisement. A month or two before, she had accepted as a simple truth that she was one foot in the grave and she would die any day. She had shown heroism in the face of extreme danger and...

And it meant nothing. Fearlessness when you didn't fear death because you knew it was stalking you closely was no courage at all.

"I still don't understand why. Why, Lord Malwyrth? Why invite a glamored mortal into your home? It surely isn't because your mother suggested it."

She was looking at him quite directly now, pale eyes rooted on him. She wouldn't admit it aloud, but he was handsome. In an arrogant, immortal way of course.

Of course.

 

[Thallan]

"Would you believe me if I said I didn't have a good reason? If I said I did it off a feeling?" Thallan replied, not reacting to her earlier words. The only thing killing her was herself. Her true self, hidden within the folds of her mind.

Her eyes were locked on his. Even though she had barely been in her true skin for a few hours, already life was returning to her features. Her light eyes glittered with frustration and something else he couldn't name- or perhaps something he didn't want to name.

"And keep my mother out of this. She has been nothing but pleasant and helpful to you," he replied, his voice a little more snappy than he meant. It had been a long evening and even he was struggling to keep up a bright, playful attitude. Especially when his conversation partner was so grumpy and stubborn.

"I think we both ought to get some sleep. We can deal with this in the morning when our minds are refreshed,"