No Solace (The Flames of Retribution - Book 1)

Chapter Nine - Dr. Larimar

I blinked a few times as sleep dissipated, my vision fuzzy. As the world began to come back into focus, the blurry face of the person waking me resolved into the visage of the doctor. 

It took me a minute to remember who the man was. He was sitting back from me at a respectable distance, his expression a mixture of wariness and concern.

I didn't bother to analyze the reason for that, instead, I scanned my unfamiliar surroundings. In the place of the cage that had been my home for weeks, I had been laid on a comfortable bed in a small room. The walls were a dark wood, and the floor consisted of smooth, copper tiles. The only light came from a small lamp beside me and the window next to the bed. I tried to speak, but all that came out was an exhausted whimper.

The doctor quickly turned towards the bedside table and grabbed a glass of water. He looked at me with that same intense gaze he had in the ship.

"How do you feel?"

It took some time to gather enough energy to formulate words. Finally, I managed to croak out what I thought sounded like, 'my head hurts' in the hopes that he would understand. The doctor looked hopeful, which confused me.

"Here, drink this." The doctor held the glass of water closer so I could grab it.

"Thenkuuuu..," I mumbled, accepting the glass and gulping it down.

The man stood and walked over to the window, where he looked out with his hands behind his back.

"Where am I?" My voice sounded gravelly even after the drink.

The doctor left his place at the window and refilled my glass, and I finished it again with greedy swallows.

He set the empty glass on the table and replied in a way one would when dealing with a dangerous and frightened animal, "You are in the palace infirmary, and my name is Larimar."

I processed that sluggishly, my reason and senses still not working well. I nodded at him, then when my brainstem connected finally, my eyes widened at the news. I was in the palace infirmary?? "How... How long have I been..."

My voice trailed off as I noticed my hand which, while still thin, was not the skeletal claw it had been on the ship. I stretched and clenched the hand a few times, not able to believe it was mine.

"Four months," Doctor Larimar replied.

I lowered my hand slowly then gazed up at the doctor with bewildered eyes. "Four months?"

The man continued to look down at me with that strange expression. "Do you remember anything that happened?"

I remembered the doctor staring at the magicore before I passed out, but nothing more. "No."

My birthday had come and gone.

I blinked, then noticed that the hard, irritating feeling of the lenses was no longer in my eyes. That meant the doctor could see their color clearly, and he was looking straight into them with concern.  The man rubbed his eyebrow then sat in the ladder backed wooden chair beside me. "How long were you using the cradin berry tincture to hide your eye color?"

I didn't want to answer that, so I jutted my jaw out in obstinate rebellion. The truth of the matter was that I started having the tincture put into my eyes by my mother since my birth, and my father continued the practice after she died. It became a conscious choice to continue it when I learned that the mages were kept separate from their families once identified.

The doctor had pulled out a pad of paper and a pen, writing notes it seemed, regarding me. "You obviously know what I'm speaking of, and despite the fact that you hadn't used it in weeks, I was still able to ascertain the traces of the potion in your blood. The cradin berries used to be simple strawberries but mutated during the cataclysm. They suppress magic, and a gifted alchemist can direct them to conceal all sorts of bodily secrets."