“Sleep, my darling,” Romulus said softly. “All will be well when you next wake.”Chapter Twenty-SevenCharity opened her eyes and stared at the beams in the ceiling, taking stock of her body. She didn’t ache anymore. Not even a little. When she wiggled her fingers, then her toes, she didn’t immediately feel tired. The stresses of the journey had finally worn off. She felt…whole. Finished.
The deliciously earthy feeling washed into her from Devon, and she took a deep, smiling breath. Like a stream, their magic coexisted, moving and drifting as it would.
She startled when she met the brown eyes of a woman who squatted on top of a desk against the wall. Kairi and Hallen were nowhere in sight.
The middle-aged woman crouched like a mad thing, watching Charity with one eye squinted and the other wide open. Her fingertips, sporting long nails, some badly chipped, dangled between her legs, barely touching the edge of the desk. She wore pink clogs, sockless, and flowing red pants.
“Hello,” Charity said, rising to her elbows. They sank into the fluffy bedding. For the third time in the last two days, her head didn’t immediately start swimming.
“Hello,” the woman mimicked, and tilted her head to the side like a bird. The light from the open door shone through her fiery halo of hair. “You have met my nemesis.”
“Hmm, mhmm.” Charity nodded, because what else could she do? The lady looked like a villain from a comic book.
“She has steered you true, but you will think it false,” the woman went on, and tapped her nails on the polished wood. “It will make for a standoff I have been anticipating for decades.”
“Ah.” Charity nodded again.
“I miss getting out. I don’t get out much anymore.”
“Oh. Is that right?”
“Yes. I wish to see the world with my own eyes. I wish to meet my nemesis.”
“Right. Where’s…ah…where is Kairi?”
“She stepped out to get you some spring water. I told her you’d be absolutely parched upon waking, and that you wouldn’t wake for some time. She believed me…because she’s crazy.”
“Yes.” Charity rose to sitting. Her head was still in the clear.
A pulse of her magic surged through her body then the room. Almost immediately, it bloomed and then drifted before dissolving slowly and flowing out the window to the world beyond. Only a soft pulse of her magic remained, humming within her.
The woman smiled. “You are delightfully pure, like the spring water you will soon suck down. Untouched by customs. Unconfused by expectations. Your purpose is crystal clear, and you will prosper because of it. Down with the woman.” She raised her fist.
“In the last few days, when my magic surged, it took a second for everyone to help me…direct it. Although it kinda feels like dissipating rather than directing, in some ways.”
“Yes. That is because they did not know it would happen.”
“I see.”
“Care to go for a stroll?”
Charity stilled. She’d been recovering and confined to the bed for a week and a half. A week of that had been necessary. The last couple days, however, she could tell she was being babied. It was a first in her life. She didn’t much like it. But she was in a new place where she wanted to be accepted. She didn’t dare refuse their care. Not even when the care was left to a crazy woman who either didn’t know, or didn’t care, what seats were for.
“Sure.”
Charity slowly pushed the covers off her legs, eyeing the fire-haired woman warily. Moving ever so slowly, she turned and dragged her legs over the edge of the bed. She paused and smiled good-naturedly at the woman.
“Lovely weather, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes,” the woman replied. “The best I’ve ever seen. Even better than yesterday. Which was also the best I’d seen, only not anymore, since this is the best.”
“Yes.” Charity stretched her arms. “Where is everyone? Apart from Kairi, obviously.”
“On the battle yard. Should I take you?”
Charity froze, then tried to act nonchalant. This woman was definitely crazy, and unlike everyone else, she didn’t seem to have Charity’s best interests in mind. Charity was ever thankful for it.
“Yup.” She stood up, not the least bit dizzy. In fact, energy practically bounced around her body. She scarcely remembered how good it was to feel…well, normal. “Your nemesis. Tell me about her.”
“You’ll want to get dressed first.” The woman jumped from the desk with grace despite her age, then walked across the room with a strangely jerky gait, almost like she was walking for the first time. It was the oddest thing…
After dressing in loose pants that felt like cotton, a tight black shirt, and strange bands that wrapped around her middle—Charity was taking a leap of faith regarding the fashion in this place by accepting the advice of a whack-job—she followed the woman out of the four-bedroom, two-bath “bungalow,” as her guards called it. It was only temporary until they could find something “more suitable.” These people were cracked. They clearly had no idea what she’d been brought up in.