Chapter 37

Diana POV

I had been sitting beside Ida for days. I didn’t even know how many since I couldn’t see the changes in the sky from our underground room. She just laid there, sleeping off whatever had happened. I kept recounting that day in my head. Trying to figure out what was missing to piece everything together and make sense of things.

After Gideon had been done with his training with Ida, he found me with news about Alexander. We were both worried about the time it took him to finish his job in Maple and come here. Each day, the shifter would try to get some intel on Alexander’s status with the warehouse and come let me know. I used it to calm Ida when I sensed she became nervous.

“It’s happening tonight.” Gideon had said to me.

I had been glad. If Alexander’s job were to end that day, he would start making his way back to Ida. Ida’s concentration had become worst with each passing day. To my understanding, once you had found your mate, it was challenging to be away from them for long periods of time. Not to mention that the females go into heat to speed up the breeding process. Ida had said that she didn’t feel that unusual, but Gideon, with all the other shifters, had had to excuse themself from her presence for a couple of days. Apparently, she smelled extremely enticing to other male shifters when she reached her heat cycle. Once it passed, Gideon returned and had started combat training with her.

After he had told me about Alexander, we had felt the ground shake, and we had looked at each other in confusion. Earthquakes in Perch were infrequent if they even happened at all. Gideon shot up from his seat. His eyes were worried, and I had noticed his stance; he was ready to pounce.

Something hadn’t felt right. I could feel intense energy coming from the land above, something I had never felt before. My mind had screamed at me to find Ida and fast. I had grabbed the shifter and made my way through the tunnels, following the buzz of energy. We had taken the tunnel that led outside toward the hot spring, and Gideon made us halt when he saw the sky completely clear as if it had still been illuminated by the sun.

A small crowd had gathered near the edge of the forest. They were looking at the light that shot out from the tips of the swaying trees.

“That’s where the pool is. Ida is supposed to be there!” I thought that was what Gideon had said. I couldn’t hear anything over the strong vibrations of magical power. It was almost making me deaf.

I had started to run, making my way over there, a couple of shifters and rebel leaders following me into the bright-lit forest. Small strands of my hair were whipping my face, making it hard to see with all the wind we faced. As I ran, I had kept hitting strange, small floating pebbles that hovered maybe three feet from the earth.

Once we had reached the spring, I saw Ida hovering over the water. She was completely naked, and her body shimmered with an array of colours. Her red hair was whirling in a spiral on top of her head. Ida had transparent-looking wings sticking out of her back, batting slowly in the air and keeping her steady in place. She looked like the drawings of Faiths I had spent most of my childhood looking at in the Arcane Library. She was magnificent, and I knew that the energy I was hearing and feeling came from her.

I sucked in a breath when I had noticed a body sprawled in the pool further away from her. I called out her name, wanting to calm her down and subside her magic. Whoever had been in the water with her would need to be rescued. When she had finally turned to face us, her face was blank, and her eyes were completely white. She was a far cry from the girl I knew. She was a shell, housing something not of this world.

Gasps were coming out of many bystanders.

“Balance must be restored,” had shouted multiple voices within Ida, “what was taken must be reclaimed.”

The voices almost seemed ethereal, and the words resonated inside our ears. The sound of it was so strong and clear that it had forced me to cover my own with my hands out of fear of it piercing my eardrums.

Ida’s head snapped back, and the light that emanated from the water vanished, plunging the forest into darkness. The floating dirt also fell on the ground. I had heard her body hit the surface of the pool and screamed at Gideon to go grab her.

Someone else dove into the water to retrieve the other body. I didn’t know how long that person had been in the water or if they were still alive.

Gideon dragged Ida’s unmoving body to the ground, and I had quickly thrown a towel over her. He smacked her back several times until she retched all the water she had breathed. Her eyes sprang open. They had returned to her standard hazel colour. The relief I felt was short-lived. She clawed near her neck at the same time as she made a blood-chilling scream, and that’s when I noticed that the scar where Alexander had bitten her was turning an ugly red colour. I had felt my blood drain from my face. If her mark was becoming red, something grave must have happened to Alexander.

Gideon howled once he saw the scar, and I saw Ida sag, her back pressing deeper against the shifter’s chest when she lost consciousness.

We brought her back into her room, and there she stayed, with me monitoring her while she recovered from whatever had taken hold of her. At one point, she was boiling. I had never touched someone as hot as her. I had asked to get a tub filled with snow and made her freezing compresses to bring her temperature down. It isn’t recommended to do that when someone is feverish, but she was beyond the fever line where I thought she would die from the heat. Eventually, her temperature lowered, but I still monitored her, making sure she wasn’t in harm's way, and I looked at her mark, noticing that it no longer had that blood-red tint to it, but it was still pinkish.

I returned to my chair and sat, crushing some leaves in the mortar I held between my thighs. I needed a nice cup of tea to clear my head.

There was a soft knock on the door. It wasn’t Gideon, or else he would have simply strolled inside the room. I set down my stone bowl and answered the door. It surprised me to see Nimu. He was dressed in a black robe that touched the ground and hid his tiny, frail body. He was much shorter than I thought. It was the first time I had seen him standing. Whenever we would find him, he would always be either sleeping or hiding.

“How is our Aeternum doing today?” He hummed while circling me to pass through the door.

“Why do you keep calling her that?” I closed the entrance hurriedly and went to the foot of Ida’s bed.

Nimu hovered his hands over her stomach, and pale green light illuminated the room. I stayed close in case things went awry. Nimu didn’t always have his head on straight, and I didn’t know what he was capable of.

It amazed me to see him working on Ida. If his milky white eyes didn’t betray his blindness, I was sure he could pass as someone with perfect eyesight. He moved as though he could see everything. He twirled his hands and pressed them gently over Ida’s arms. His green-coloured magic seeped inside her skin. If my memory served me right, green was the colour of healing, health, and renewal in the wielder's energy wheel. He must have been a healer in his younger days.

“You ask a question you already know the answer to. Why do you think the hot spring only responds to her?” He cocked his eyebrows at me, then returned his gaze over to Ida, focusing his magic on the task he had taken on.

“Because she is part Faith? But that makes little sense. How could she be? We know King Cardinal was a magic wielder, not a Faith. And Queen Alayna was human.”

He smiled at my answer and pressed his hands over Ida’s temples.

“Things are not always what they seem, Healer. There is a prophecy that foretells the world will come crashing down and that what he calls the Unnaturals will cease to exist. Doing so will destroy the delicate balance that the Aeternums created. This world needs shifters, needs magic. If they were all to die, so would the moon that harnesses its powers from them. The Earth would move and change our climate, seasons, and entire way of life. It has already started. The temperatures are dropping; Winters take longer to turn into Spring. Eventually, we will experience a freeze in the likes we have never seen before. Most of the people will die. The only thing that can stop it, according to this prediction, is an Aeternum born of this world.

“Unbound, she will be the most powerful being Airedah has ever known, maybe even more powerful than the Aeternums themselves. Unfortunately, she will be a target, which I assume is why they bound her magic—to pass her off as a normal wielder. Tell me, what were the colours of the energy she was displaying when you found her in the spring?”

“All of them,” I replied a little breathlessly, remembering the scene.

“Even black?”

I wasn’t sure I had seen that colour. Frankly, I was so in awe and in shock at seeing Ida that way that I couldn’t tell for certain if I had seen it. But thinking of it, I wasn’t even sure if black was in the colour wheel.

“I’ve never read about wielders having black energy. What is it?”

Nimu paused and took a step back. He rubbed his old arthritis-filled hands together, then sat on the floor with his legs crossed and dropped his head on his hands.

“Black is the rarest of colours. Black is power and control, but it is also death and destruction. There are usually six colours that wielders can possess: white for purity, green for healing and hope, purple for wisdom and enlightenment, yellow for logic and creativity, blue for harmony and faith, and red for bravery and strength. Typically, that colour will define the sort of magic and character a wielder will have. It is not uncommon for some to develop abilities outside of their predisposition, but they mostly stick with their strengths. Aeternums have all six of them, including the seventh—black. The fact that this young woman harnessed the magic of the spring and displayed every colour possible for a wielder confirms she is indeed one, and I think she is whom the prophecy foretold. What troubles me, however, is what made her feel in such danger that even though bound, she could summon such power to save herself?”

“You think she was protecting herself?”

“I may be old, and sometimes my mind wanders, but I do not think. I know so. The girl had a broken nose, did she not?”

She did. I had reset it and stopped the bleeding once we got her back in the room. Ida now sported a black and blue mask around her eyes. But that could have happened when she exerted too much power or when she fell into the water. There were so many boulders sticking out, she could have hit herself on one of them. If what he said was true, I would have to ask around to know what happened or wait until Ida regained consciousness.

“Will she wake up soon?” I asked Nimu sorrowfully.

“She will. Her current ailment is not her own, but rather to whom she is attached. She willingly stays in this state to give all her energy to that other person. I hope that my surge of healing energy sufficed to heal the other through her. I don’t even know if it is possible, but anything could be probable with her. Unfortunately, my magic is not what it once was, so I am uncertain if I was of any help.”

Nimu’s legs cracked when he tried to stand up. I winced at the sound, thinking that the weight on his legs might cause them to break, but they didn’t. I helped him out and offered to bring him back to his room. He politely declined but thanked me for the offer. I watched him waddle his bent frame until he turned a corner and was no longer within sight, then I returned into the confines of the room.

I thought about what he had said and went to check on Ida’s mark. It was still a pale shade of pink, but it seemed to fade to its regular moon white colour.

I prayed to the Faiths that Gideon had found Alexander in time. I just hoped that whatever situation Lord Alexander had gotten himself into was now resolved and that he was somewhere safe. He would need to get back to us, to her. And if Ida had indeed defended herself, we may well need to leave Starling Castle on a moment’s notice.