Heart of Thorns: a Between the Worlds novel Page 3

  Her mouth snapped shut on the words as the door opened back up and the nurse walked in carrying a small syringe balanced on her clipboard. Oblivious to the tension in the room she smiled at Allie, “This will just take a second. It’s a fairly small draw, and then I’ll run it to the lab. You don’t have a problem with needles do you?”

  “No, I’ll be fine,” Allie said, frustrated that she was suddenly worried about the results. She looked resolutely at the wall and mumbled inarticulate responses to Hannah’s reassuring small talk as the nurse quickly got set up to take the blood sample. Bleidd stayed next to her, his hand on her shoulder, but she was surprised to feel the worry and fear radiating off of him. He can’t really think I might be pregnant? She thought her own unease growing. This is ridiculous. One nurse asks if it’s possible and suddenly he’s freaking out, as if it couldn’t have happened at any point in the last several months.

  She forced herself to ignore him, the same way she ignored the pin prick of the needle. As soon as the tube was filled the nurse had it labeled and was heading to the small lab, promising to be right back with the results. After a tense couple minutes, Hannah returned shaking her head. “Nope, you were right. Definitely not pregnant. I’ll get you scheduled with x-ray.”

  Allie threw a dirty look at Bleidd, highly annoyed at letting him get her worked up over nothing, only to catch him looking almost devastated by the nurse’s words. What the Hel? she thought truly puzzled now. First he’s lecturing me about why I shouldn’t risk having a child with him now he’s looking like he was really hoping to find out I was. Elves. I give up on ever understanding them.

  **************************************

  Several hours later the car was pulling up to the curb in front of the house. Jason had left the porch light on, and even though it was far past dinner time Allie suspected the food would still be waiting. For a moment she wished there was a nice way to skip it, but since she was the one who had asked him to hold the meal for them she didn’t see any way out of it.

  Bleidd walked her up to the door, holding her arm as if she were an invalid, and she fought back her annoyance. She couldn’t blame him, after the train wreck that the clinic visit had turned into but it was grating on her nerves. It also reminded her far too much of returning home after she’d been poisoned a few months ago, and that was definitely not something she wanted to be thinking about.

  As they reached the door she noticed a plain white envelope sitting on the welcome mat. Bleidd leaned over and scooped it up, then unexpectedly opened it. She felt his emotions swing wildly from a dull exhaustion to near-panic, before he stuffed the paper into his pocket.

  “What is it?” she asked, her heart racing as she unwillingly channeled his fear.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, his voice emotionless, his emotions still twisting.

  “Don’t worry? Bleidd I can feel how upset you are, what is it?”

  “Enough!” he yelled, slamming his hand into the door frame. The move was so fast and unexpected that she flinched back violently, her mouth going dry. She could feel him struggling to control himself. He reached out slowly and stroked her cheek, his remorse washing over her, replacing his anger “I’m sorry Allie. Gods, please I just can’t explain this tonight, alright?”

  She nodded, not trusting her voice. Before he could say anything else Jason opened the door peering out uncertainly and she realized he had to have heard the disturbance. “Oh good you guys are finally back, I was getting worried. Well, I’ve been worried, I mean more worried…”

  “Yeah Takada we get it,” Allie said, cutting Jason off before he could really get going.

  He smiled looking relieved and stepped back so they could walk in. “So how’d it go?”

  Bleidd was a wall of silence so Allie took up the narrative as they headed towards the kitchen and the smell of dinner. “Well they got the glass out okay, no signs of any permanent damage, and my nurse was super nice. But guess who’s allergic to Lidocaine?”

  “No way!” he said, his eyes going wide. He reached up and pushed his hair out of his eyes, and Allie noticed his hair and Bleidd’s were the same color. Weird, she thought I’ve lived with them both for years and never realized before that they have the same hair. Except for length…

  “Allie?” Jason prompted, and she shook her head slightly.

  Wow I really need a nap. Or I need to seriously pull some energy from Jess or Bleidd – well Bleidd since Jess is still gone… That reminded her of their earlier conversation and she suddenly decided that one way or another she was going to show him tonight that he was being silly thinking there was any risk with them sleeping together. With an effort she forced herself to focus back on Jason. “Yeah, sorry, it’s been a really long day. Anyway, yeah they gave me some Lidocaine for the pain and pulled the glass out which wasn’t so bad actually, then I started getting itchy and hives….that was a bit scary.”

  Bleidd made a noise in the back of his throat which she assumed was either agreement or annoyance at her understatement. He had been in a near panic until the medication they gave her to counteract the reaction had kicked in, and in a very strange mood ever since. “Anyway. I guess I’m pretty loopy right now. Between everything else, the pain medication, the stuff they gave me for the reaction, and the heavy duty anti-biotic they gave me in case it gets infected…I feel like a walking pharmacy.”

  “Wow, you really are having an epically bad day,” Jason said sympathetically, shaking his head slightly as they entered the kitchen. “What’d you do, break a mirror?”

  “Ha! I wish, I actually know a couple ways to fix that sort of thing,” Allie said. She started to walk over to the counter but Bleidd pushed her gently towards the table, so she sat instead. “It’s not really as bad as all that. I mean the glass missed the bones in my hand and didn’t hit anything important. The doctor even said it was amazingly lucky that it hadn’t damaged anything. They didn’t need to do anything to it but some stitches on each side.”

  “I guess that is lucky,” Jason said uncertainly as Bleidd brought over a plate of food and set it on front of her. The last thing she wanted to do was eat but she dutifully began taking small bites without letting herself think about it. “So they said everything looked okay then?”

  “Yup,” she said around a mouthful of chicken. “I have to go back in a few days and they’ll take a look, make sure there’s no sign of infection, check the stitches. But they said overall no permanent damage, I’ll just end up with a nifty scar.”

  “Another to add to the collection,” Bleidd said and Allie looked away, not wanting to think about the number of scars she’d accumulated since the spring, or more distressing the number of injuries that had been healed without leaving visible scars behind. She felt a surge of anger at him, even as a thick silence fell over the room. “What is wrong with you?” she thought at him before she could stop herself. “That was just mean. You think I don’t know how many scars I have now?”

  She saw his hand twitch, almost dropping his fork before he recovered and continued eating. “How many times do you think I can sit by and watch you almost die Allie?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she thought back fighting to keep up the pretense of eating as well. She was aware of Jess listening in on the conversation, and felt even more annoyed, knowing that he was far more prone than Bleidd usually was to worry about her well-being. “I did not almost die today. I cut my hand, and I had a minor reaction to a painkiller.”

  “You could have-“ he began, his fists clenching around his silverware, but she talked over him.

  “No I could not have. I’m asking again, what is wrong with you tonight? I have never seen you this on edge before. And you were in a weird mood before I hurt my hand.”

  “Is there something that merits my immediate return?” Jess finally added his mental voice to the conversation, and Allie had the impression of stillness and a dark room carried on his thoughts. He was likely in bed then, and supposed
to be sleeping; she felt guilty that they were keeping him up when she knew how hard he was working to track down the Dark Court agent that had been lurking in town. The last they knew he had slipped the border into the Fairy Holding and the Elven Guard was on high alert and doing everything but searching house by house to find him. Despite the seriousness of this assignment Allie had the sinking feeling that Jess would abandon his duty and come back home if he were worried enough.

  “No Commander,” Bleidd answered stiffly, shooting Allie an inscrutable look. “I have just had a strange feeling all day, as if something bad were about to occur, but perhaps it was just some inexplicable foresensing of Allie’s injury.”

  “I did not realize that foresight ran in your line,” Jess said more calmly.

  “It was a gift my Grandmother had but it has not run true in her children. In more than a thousand years I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve gotten any sense of an event before it occurred.”

  “Ah,” Jess thought back, as if that explained everything, although Allie was still completely confused. She felt him pulling back then, doubtless trying to shut them out so he could get some sleep. She decided she’d had enough of the conversation herself, and purposely turned to Jason who was eating with his head down as if he wished he were somewhere else.

  “So Jason, how’s work going?” she asked, knowing it was a stupid question and not caring.

  He looked up and ventured a tentative smile. “Good. Quite since tourist season is over, but we put up a basketball hoop so we’ve been keeping busy playing really bad tournaments against each other.”

  “Sounds fun,” she said, meaning it. “I guess if you guys get good enough you could form a real team and play against the police team.”

  “Are you kidding?” he laughed. “Those cops take their basketball way too seriously. Us firefighters are purely casual players.”

  “Meaning you cheat,” she said, giggling.

  “Meaning we cheat like crazy,” Jason agreed.

  They both laughed and Allie finally felt the residual knot of tension easing. A moment later, to her surprise, Bleidd reached across under the table and squeezed her leg with his hand, his fingers gentle. She could feel the apology in the action, even if she knew he wouldn’t say the words. She reached down with her good hand and laced her fingers through his, squeezing back slightly.

  She appreciated the gesture and she wanted him to know she accepted the apology. But as her injured hand began to throb, she also found herself wishing he could be less high maintenance sometimes.

  *********************************

  Jessilaen, Commander in the Elven Guard stationed at Crannuiane Outpost, sworn guardian of Queen Naesseryia’s realm, lay alone in a non-descript room missing his home. It was a strange feeling and not one he was used to. In all his years of service to the Queen’s realm he had often been sent out on these missions and he had always looked forward to them, to the distraction and novelty they represented, but everything had changed when he met Allie.

  When he was parted from her now he felt as if everything in the world was duller, less interesting. Colors weren’t as bright, music wasn’t as beautiful, the substance of life was simply less. Intellectually he understood that some of this was a side effect of Allie’s nature and the bond she’d created with him; as a Bahnvanshee she absorbed his emotions – the positive ones by preference – and so subconsciously she amplified his feelings when he was around her. He didn’t believe she was even aware of the effect she had on him, and he had decided not to tell her, fearing that if she found out she would severe their bond. She had threatened to do as much in the past when she feared she was unduly influencing him, and he could not bear the thought.

  But he didn’t believe her amplifying his emotions was all of it; even before they had been joined he had noticed that life was better when he was with her. It was the reason that he had made the choice to court her so soon after meeting her, because he found that she haunted his thoughts even then. No, it is more than just the way that she affects me he thought to himself, shifting in the bed it is everything about having her in my life. If this is not love then I do not know what love is.

  He lay in the rented room knowing that he should be thinking about the pursuit of the Dark court agent who had fled into the Queen’s realm. Yet he had to struggle not to reach out to Allie in his mind, to hear her voice and feel her presence. Their conversation earlier, terse as it had been, was like a light in an otherwise gray day. It was good to hear Bleidd’s voice as well he thought, realizing that he missed the other elf that Allie had bonded to, and bonded him to, nearly as much as he missed Allie. I would not have thought it possible but he has come to mean as much to me as she does…does he realize that, I wonder? Perhaps I should seek to show him that I take his court just as seriously as I do Allie’s…. It was foolish of me to worry that I would be jealous, even now, that he is with her when I am away for so long. I am glad they have each other, I just wish I could be with them as well and not chasing shadows that we are clearly not going to catch…

  Indeed so far the pursuit of the second agent had proven largely fruitless. After Jess had killed one of a pair of Dark court elves sent to capture Allie because of the knowledge she possessed about a dangerous and rare dark magic the second agent had fled. Bleidd had been confident at the time that he could easily track down the second agent but neither of them had anticipated that the agent would realize as quickly as he had that something was wrong. By the next night when the Guard tracked him to the motel room the two agents had been lairing in the second was in the wind. They had spent two months and more chasing him around Ashwood, or rumors of him, only to eventually learn from a captured Dark court lesser Fey seeking to mitigate his own sentence that the agent had slipped the border back into the Queen’s holding.

  That bit of information had cost several Border Guards their heads and had Jess’s brother Zarethyn in a rage for days. The Elven Guard and the Border Guard were entirely independent of each other, and while theoretically they should be allied in protecting the Holding the two agencies often clashed, the Border Guard finding the Elven Guard pretentious and arrogant and the Elven Guard feeling that the Border Guard were lazy and incompetent. Zarethyn, captain of the Elven Guard, had a long running political vendetta against Allairian, the Border Guard captain, and he had used this incident to its fullest.

  Unfortunately for Jessilaen that meant that once the dust settled, and the Elven Guard had finished the royally sanctioned executions, he had been given charge of two squads and sent into the Holding with orders to ferret out the remaining agent. He knew his brother had given the assignment to him believing that he would be the most strongly motivated to succeed at it, and Jess was loathe to confess that the exact opposite was true. As much as he knew that he should want the threat to his home and his love ended his heart was not in this pursuit, and everything he did now he did by rote to fulfill his duty.

  He knew of course the threat the Dark court represented and the importance of weeding any of their agents out before they could gain a foothold in the Queen’s realm. In some other Fairy Holdings, particularly the larger ones, there was sometimes a significant Dark court presence, enough in at least a few Holdings that the Dark court held sway entirely. From a purely political standpoint if the Dark could gain enough positions of power to overcome the Bright court in the majority of Holdings then there was a real risk of the entire balance of power shifting into the Dark. The Bright dominated because after the Great War that followed the Sundering, the event that had united the two worlds, the Dark court had been decimated in the fighting. As a result the Bright court had the greatest numbers and held the most political influence, so they had been able to seize control. This shift had allowed the Treaty to be signed and peace to be found, but the Dark court had never accepted either. The risk of allowing the Queen’s realm to be overtaken simply could not be allowed.

  Having heard Allie speak of what it had been
like for her to grow up in the Dark court, Jess knew that the Dark could never be allowed to rule here. And yet, no matter how important he knew it was to find this agent, all he wanted was to return to Ashwood. As each day went by with nothing but hints and rumors to follow he grew disheartened. In truth if he didn’t have those moments when Allie reached out to him, and more importantly when he was able to connect to her while she and Bleidd were together and take what vicarious pleasure he could from their union, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stand the separation at all.

  He dared not tell anyone of his unhappiness when he was separated from her, not even Brynneth who was his friend and the healer assigned to his Guard unit. He was unsure what would happen if anyone found out, but it would be nothing good. The Bahvanshee were greatly feared for the effect they were known to have on their victims, and while Jess in no way thought of himself as a victim, he wasn’t certain that his brother and his friend would agree. Not if they thought that his feelings for Allie, his need to be near her, were rooted in anything other than genuine love. Oh no, he had little doubt that Zarethyn in particular would not hesitate to see Allie as an enemy if he thought for an instant that she was a threat to Jess. So he suffered in silence and did his best to conceal the way he was feeling and throw himself into his duties.