Chapter 19

**Merianna**


I gasped and all three onlookers suddenly dove for me as my legs gave out from under me. Nelia was closest and cushioned my fall by pulling me into her as I fell. She fell with me and took the brunt of the butt plant. She yelped with the impact but didn’t curse like Nana was doing now.

Thyrion was there in a flash and carefully gathered me into his arms and lifted me off of Nelia. “You okay?” He asked her.

Nelia stood up and rubbed her bottom with a wince. “That’s going to leave a bruise.” She said and then looked over at me. “Are you doing okay?”

I was shaking, trembling. It felt like I was having one of the worst flues to be recorded in history. My body was running through a series of flushes and chills, and my heart was suddenly hammering a mile a minute. I was too busy drawing air into my lungs to answer them right then.

“Put her back in bed.” Nelia ordered and Thyrion didn’t waste a minute. Before I knew it I was back in bed with the covers pulled up to my stomach and Nelia immediately started examining me. I closed my eyes as the sensations ran through me. I had the insane urge to puke but I knew nothing would come out if I did.

Thyrion placed a hand on my cheek while my eyes were closed. “She’s burning up.” He said and brushed my damp hair off of my sweaty face.

I could feel Nelia’s energy seeping into me and taking control of the surging energy coursing through my body, making it slow down and adjusting my body to receive and change with the surge. Finally I could open my eyes again when my energy felt like a lukewarm stream flowing through me, making the external fever die down.

“Thanks.” I said in an exhaled breath. And when I exhaled it was like everyone else also exhaled and relaxed.

“We would have to go through a couple of more sessions like this, but not a lot. Your body is already adjusting astonishingly well as is. Look.” She said holding up one of my arms for me to see.

I looked and gaped at one of the sunburn marks on my arm fading and becoming normal skin right before my eyes. I looked back up at her, sure that her healing magic was doing that.

She just shook her head already knowing what I was thinking. “I’m not doing this, this is your own energy going to work here.”

I felt flabbergasted. Not in all the times that I can remember do I remember my energy automatically healing my injuries without being directed and focused into doing so!

My thoughts turned back to earlier. I honestly don’t know for how long I was asleep but seeing as Nelia had looked like she had just been woken up out of a deep sleep and still had on the same clothes she had on when they were de-spelling me, I can’t imagine that I’ve been out for more than a few hours.

Now that I didn’t have that coating over my energy anymore, I felt more … volatile. I didn’t know how to explain it, where at first I always felt fine and normal like any other person, now I suddenly felt that, deep beneath my skin there was a pool of lava that was just waiting for a chance to erupt.

I frowned and closed my eyes, trying to get the image of this energy in my mind’s eye. At first I just saw the back of my lids but the more I focused the more I was able to see. My energy sparked to life in my eyes, silver, silver energy that was the perfect mix between light and dark. This was the energy that I was most familiar with. The energy that everyone at the Order got to know along with me. When I focused deeper my senses brushed up against something much bigger. I gasped and quickly pulled away from it layering everything back. I opened my eyes and saw that Nelia still had her hands on me and was still adjusting my body.

“Everything okay?” She asked.

I nodded at her, trying to get my heart back under control. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Thyrion was watching me carefully like he knew that I had noticed something that I was hiding and didn't want to share. He gave me a look that said that once Ara and Nelia were gone and I had food in front of me, I had no choice but to spill my guts to him.

I felt a niggling of nerves at that but I had no idea why I would feel like that. I didn’t feel nervous about sharing anything else with him. Heck, I didn’t even blush when I found out that he stripped me while I was out of it!

After a while Ara yawned and said that it was the middle of the night and she wanted to go back to sleep and see us fresh in the morning. Only then did I really look at the windows, and noticed that the curtains were drawn. I gazed up and noticed a ball of light in the middle of the ceiling slowly oscillating but glowing like its own perpetual sun, casting everything in light. Oh yeah… then I remembered how Noch and Fog had teached me how to make one myself.

Yeah… those were the good old days, when I made orbs that sometimes exploded in my face, and at a point I got good enough that I made destructive orbs that exploded on purpose and chased Noch all over the castle to try and hit him with one. Hurdling one explosive after the other. Man did I get chewed out by Fog for it afterwards. He wasn’t too happy about the holes in the yard… or the holes in the walls…

After Nelia was finished and said goodnight, it was quiet in my big room. I looked around me at all the little things. For how long have I been gone from the Order where everyone thought I was dead?

My most read books were stacked in the big book shelf on the far wall, my crystals were still organized the way I like them to be, my desk still had piles of loose papers scattered around the top with a quill still stuck in a fresh ink bottle and a whole bunch of other quills and scribers stuffed in a cup with a broken handle decorated with small chipped pieces of crystals and beads on strings hanging down. It was like centuries of absence never happened.

My bedside table still had a book laying idly on top of it at an angle like I had just put it down. The tablecloth under the book was still white as snow with my first impatient attempts at cross stitching still peeking out from underneath the book.

My wardrobe was even still hanging slightly open because I once busted the lock when I was in a hurry to get my gear on. And the fruits of my throwing knife practice were still plain to see on the other wardrobe door that could actually still stay shut.

“It’s like I never left…” I breathed.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that.” Thyrion slowly walked back over to the bed, grabbing the plate of beef stew on his way. I sat up and accepted the food from him. Once that smell hit my face my stomach growled again and I took the most delicious bite of stew that I could remember. I moaned my appreciation and dug in with gusto. Thyrion seemed to have snagged himself an apple from the kitchen and was munching it while I was digging in.

Once I couldn’t take another bite I fell backwards onto my pillows in exhausted bliss. “Thank you! That was the best plate of stew I’ve ever eaten in my whole existence!”

Thyrion chuckled and took the plate from my lap and put it on his bedside table with his skeletal apple. “Noch whipped that up two days ago. One of the wonders of being able to do kitchen magic is that your leftovers never go bad even if they stand outside for weeks on end.”

“Wow, I have to say, he really has upped the game. In the past his food was really good, but now it’s fantastic!”

Thyrion didn’t say anything after that. He just sat there and looked at me stoically like he was waiting for me to say something. I wanted to relax and sleep but the silence in the room wasn’t exactly the relaxing type, and Thyrion didn’t crawl into the covers next to me like he usually would.