Chapter 109: Breaking Fever
For four days, Evanna lay in bed in her feverish state. Arawn was there, only leaving her chambers when it was essential. He never told Rina or Haryk that Evanna’s state was linked to her being a half-breed. However, he suspected Rina was quite aware of her condition, there were no other explanations for her illness, and he refused a physician to come see her. He explained that rest was all she needed.
Arawn watched over Evanna a lot over the four days. He did not interfere with Rina, who would help wash her and change her clothes. The prince would leave and see to himself in that time and making an appearance briefly to have breakfast with his father. But as soon as he finished his meal, he left instantly, leaving the king to stare after him perplexed.
The prince worked from Evanna’s bed-chamber, and by the fourth morning, he was accustomed to it, leaning against the headboard of her bed looking through some scrolls. Evanna was curled into his side, tugging at his shirt with a creased forehead and muttering in Muranthian. Over the past few days, he comforted her when she had nightmares, cooled her down when she was overheated and tried to speak softly to her when she was half-conscious. She was going through a mixture of sweats, chills, nightmares and bizarre dreams.
Arawn speculated about the bizarre dreams. He gazed down at her, dropped the scrolls on the sheets and caressed the top of her head, her forehead relaxed, and as he stared at her beauty, he was reminded of the time he went through the ’change’. Although it was over two hundred years ago now, he still remembered it well. How would he forget?
Unlike Evanna, his gifts erupted through him aggressively and in the middle of training. He was sparring with Garrett at the age of 9; though they were nothing like the warriors yet, they were still prodigy’s in fighting for children of their age. Arawn barely blocked Garrett’s training stick when an intense fire rippled from the bottom of his spine and to his skull. He screamed and backed away from Garrett.
Guards jumped forwards, initially thinking Garrett had done something to the crown prince, but when they looked at Arawn, they knew instantly what was wrong. He gripped his head, his fingers going through his hair as tears came to the child’s eyes. Behind his back was a dark mist escaping Arawn’s being and forming into the shape of an adult man. He screamed out, and the black smoke was sucked back into him before he collapsed.
It took him two weeks to get out of his comatose state. The ’change’ was different in every elf, but the more powerful their gifts are, and how many they have, depended on how painful and how long the elf would be going through the pain of awakening their gifts. Arawn did not get feverish but became chilled, something he did not mind, and it was soon apparent that another gift of his was the elemental use of ice. Before the prince was taught how to use his powers, he was already unknowingly using his icy gift to keep himself from burning up.
While Arawn was reminiscing about his time as a child. Evanna was lost in the depths of a bizarre dream. One seemed to speak to her in a foreign language, but she understood it clearly, yet it was not making any sense. It was as though the words were jumbled up floating across her mind. She was standing in Arawn’s bath again, but it was dark with no lights or starlight; instead, the tree she saw before was glowing.
Like the princess did before, she walked towards it. This time the water weighed heavily on her legs, making it hard to get closer to the tree. But the harder it was, the more panicked she was in trying to touch the tree. Evanna looked down and realised the warm bath water had turned to a black sticky substance, one that kept her from moving much further. When she glanced up again, the glowing tree had darkened, the leaves had died and fallen on the sticky liquid, and it began to shrivel up, a crack forming in the middle of it.