Shyshaker Princess

Chapter Twenty-Five - Twin Hearts Fading

*(Header Photo is Kilchurn Castle in the UK - something about the light on the water reminded me of Ellesmere, or at least how it looks in my head!)*

Part Two: Temperatures Rise

Chapter Twenty-Five

Twin Hearts Fading

POV - Athlaya Hawmere

The bolt of pain lanced through Athlaya's spine in a swift blow that shook her from her sleep. She jolted upright, her hand flying up to clutch at her throat as she struggled to choke down the scream that threatened to bubble up and awake the entire castle. She panted heavily and looked around.

She was completely fine.

Her room was still her room. The ashes of the fire had burned low, but still some embers clung on through the night. Dragging her blanket with her, Athlaya curled up in from the embers and set about relighting the fire, she shackles scrapping against her skin painfully. 

The cold would not leave her bones, no matter the heat the glowing fire was emitting against her skin. She knew, as though it was the clearest fact in the world, that it was not her own icy coldness she felt.

Imogen Pendle was in pain, somewhere frigid and dank. Athlaya wished she had dreamt of the High Witch, to know if she was injured or hurt. Athlaya held herself close, her head in her hands.

Her heartbeat slowed, despite her panic. It slowed so much that Athlaya wondered if she could live without a heartbeat.

Thrum, thrum, thrum.... thrum...

She raised a hand and felt her forehead. She was damp, a fever forming.

Was she ill or was Imogen?

She wished her mother had told her of these matters before she died. How had it been for her and High Witch Selene? She had so few memories of the High Witch with her startling green eyes and brown skin. Later in her life, Queen Liliana and her High Witch had purposely kept their children apart. To what end, Athlaya did not know.

It was as though her very blood felt sticky in her vein, moving in clumps, causing pain in her long bones and chest.

She held out a hand for the fire. Her hand was close enough to burn, but still, she felt no warmth. Something was disastrously wrong.

She tried to stand, to move to the water jug on the small wooden table by the door but her ankles felt like jelly in their shackles. She pounded the heel of her hand against her chest several times as if her heart was no more than a jar of jam and her blood was a gloopy spoonful. She needed help, but could not stand.

If she called out there was as much of a chance that the Princess Caseryia would hear her as there was that a guard or another handmaiden would come running and turn her over to the King, claiming her illness was dark magic from Ellesmere.

She did the only thing she could think to and prayed that their connection was strong enough. She tried to think of her home to comfort her, to think of Imogen and her family, but here she met problems. Her siblings' names, their faces, were fading from her mind like water through her fingers.

She really and truly needed help and there was only one person she could begin to trust with this. For that, she needed to spark an emotive reaction loud enough for his Empath abilities to sense her.

Stuffing a wad of the blanket into her mouth, Athlaya thrust her left hand into the flames. The pain was unimaginable and she screamed into the blanket. She held it for several seconds before pulling her throbbing hand away from the flames.