Here's the next chapter! :D I hope you guys like it! :D Please vote and comment! :D I'm still dedicating the chapters to my loyal readers but sometimes my computer doesn't allow me to so please don't get mad at me! I'll keep trying to dedicate the chapters to my loyal readers so please still vote and comment! :D Picture of Cedric on the side. :)
Chapter 51
“It’s not your fault,” he said weakly.
“Hey,” Dahlia said, grasping his chin. “Do not go to sleep. Fight through the pain for Sapphire, okay? Don’t you dare die on her like this.”
She had subconsciously put a little charm into her voice. Fortunately, her words did the trick. Tamarak shook his head a little to wake himself up, nodded and forced his eyes open.
“Okay,” he said; his voice was slightly stronger now.
“Good,” Dahlia said, still dabbing at the edge of the wound.
“Um, Dahlia?” Tamarak asked, looking at the first aid kit.
“What?” she asked, still concentrating on his wound.
“Does that look like antibiotics or cough medicine to you?” he asked.
Dahlia looked back into the first aid kit. Inside the box were several bottles of medicine with human labels. But the liquid within the bottles didn’t look mortal; they were sparkling and bright pink, purple and yellow.
“I am such an idiot,” Dahlia whispered. “Where else would Dad hide them but in plain sight? I didn’t even look at the medicine because I was so focused on the bandages!”
“The bandages,” repeated Tamarak slowly. “Dahlia, those bandages are like the ones that Mitchell gave us. They’re the magical ones!”
“Oh my goodness,” Dahlia whispered. “CEDRIC!”
Cedric stumbled back into the room, tripping over his feet as he raced back. He grimaced barely managed to regain his balance.
“What is it?” he asked grimly. “You screamed like a banshee!”
“I was an idiot!” she said. “Tamarak found the potions in the first aid kit! Where better to hide them but in plain sight?”
Cedric grinned. “Well, which is which?” he asked, picking up two of the three bottles.
“Don’t ask me,” Dahlia said, unscrewing the lid of the last and sniffing its contents. “I have no idea how to identify any of Jared’s potions, much less Varmer’s.”
“Luckily for me, I do,” Tamarak said, grinning as he held out one hand for the bottle that Dahlia had. “After years of living with a healer, I tend to spend a lot of time with her and thus with a certain potion-maker called Jared.”
Dahlia laughed, handing Tamarak the potion. He glanced at the bottle and swirled its contents around before dripping a little onto his hand and tasting it. He didn’t grimace at the taste; he smiled instead and handed the bottle back to Dahlia.
“Drip that over my cut,” he told her. “Carefully. Don’t let any of that liquid touch you at all.”
“Why not?” Dahlia asked, looking at the pink potion.
“Because it’s not meant to be drunk or touched by anyone who isn’t injured,” Tamarak said. “It is like- shoot, what’s that word- um… help me out- the thing that happens to humans when they drink too much medicine.”
“Humans become addicted,” Dahlia suggested. “Or they can have an overdose.”
“Yeah, an overdose,” Tamarak agreed. “That’s what will happen to you if you let that liquid touch your skin. I don’t really know the consequences; neither Jared and Sapphire didn’t tell me.”
“Okay,” Dahlia said, breathing heavily as she rummaged in the medicine kit. “Can I use a dropper to distribute the medicine evenly?”
“Nope,” Tamarak said. “I doubt the dropper is made of diamond and even if it is, they made a point of telling me that it will heal the first thing it can touch apart from the bottle that it’s put in.”
Dahlia nodded and then carefully began dripping the pink potion over Tamarak’s exposed cut. He grimaced the entire time, but Dahlia didn’t let it affect her; she had to force him to go through this in order to be healed. When she had finished dripping the potion one way, she tilted the bottle up and squinted at the wound.
“Uh, is that enough?” she asked.
Even as she spoke, she realized that it was enough. Tamarak’s wound had completely sealed over and looked how it should be; a scab that was a few days old.
“Should I put more?” she asked.
“Nope,” Tamarak said. “Gosh, I hate the feeling of new skin growing that fast. It itches like crazy. And nope, that’s enough. Give me the purple potion bottle now.”
Cedric handed him the other bottle while Dahlia screwed on the lid of the first one again. Tamarak sniffed the potion sceptically.
“Okay, this one is nice,” he said, smiling. “It’s an antiseptic. We probably should have used this one first, but it doesn’t make much of a difference.”
He carefully pulled the medicine cup off the top of the bottle, poured out a cupful of the potion and gulped it down.
“Now the last one,” he said, holding his hand out to Cedric.
Cedric gave him the medicine bottle with the bright yellow potion inside it and took back the purple one. He screwed the lid back on and put it aside with the pink potion. The yellow potion also looked unfamiliar to Dahlia, but Tamarak easily recognized it. It was probably one of those side effects from dating a healer.
“This one is a… a painkiller,” Tamarak said, pleased that he had remembered the human word for it. “I don’t need it at the moment but now that the wound has sealed, can you use the cloth tape and fix some of those bandages to my skin? The bandages grow into the skin and dissolve in it as you know.”
Dahlia nodded and started pulling out the bandages. With Cedric’s help, she managed to press the white healing bandages to Tamarak’s skin and tape them down. It took several tries, but they managed to get Tamarak taped up.
“Thanks, guys,” he said when Dahlia had finished and cut the edge of the cloth tape with scissors from the medicine box.
“No problem,” Cedric said, sighing with satisfaction as he rocked back on his heels and dropped his hands.
“Guys, you can shower in my dad’s room,” Dahlia said, relaxing and taking all the medicine out of the box and setting it aside.
“Sure, after we’ve just taped me up,” Tamarak drawled sarcastically, but there was no tone of anger in his voice.
Dahlia blushed. “Okay, you can take a nap in the spare room. I’m going to shower.”
She left the living room, pushing open one of the doors that evidently led to her bedroom. Tamarak staggered to his feet, with Cedric’s help, managed to get to the spare room and collapsed on the bed. Cedric headed off to the room which he had been ransacking to find the potions to take his shower.
Apparently, the house had been vacant for some time. Dust covered most of the furniture except those which had been covered with white cloth. The house was a quite small, single storey bungalow. The small living room had a television with no connection to Astro and two couches. Pictures of Dahlia and her father over the years adorned the walls. There were three bedrooms in the house; the master bedroom, Dahlia’s room, and the spare room. Two bathrooms sat at the front and back of the house and there was a small kitchen with, sadly, no food.
After her shower, Dahlia returned to the main room. She had bathed and had changed into a midnight-blue sweater and a clean pair of jeans. The clothes that she had on were a little small, but it made her look prettier than ever for they clung to her shapely figure.
Cedric had finished showering, too. He was sitting on one of the sofas; he had pulled the dusty white cloth off. He glanced up quickly when she entered and his jaw dropped.
“Hey,” he said, picking his jaw up off the floor.
“Hi,” Dahlia said, forcing herself not to comment about it or walk away. “How do you like the house so far? Apart from being dirty, I mean.”
Dahlia joined Cedric on the couch, curling and leaning against the armrest. Cedric stared into the empty fire grate. He was actually quite handsome, Dahlia realized. As she studied him, it suddenly dawned on her that she didn’t know anything about him.
“What?” he asked, turning around and seeing her expression.
Dahlia hesitated. “How did you learn that you were a magician?” she asked, curiously.
Cedric looked surprised at Dahlia’s question. After all, they had known each other for six months and she had never asked. He chewed his bottom lip, wondering whether he should tell her.
“Is it very bad?” Dahlia asked. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Nah, it’s okay,” Cedric said, laying his hand over hers. “I’ll tell you if you want to know.”
Dahlia looked down at their joined hands. Even though she had broken up with Troy, having Cedric hitting on her felt a little like cheating. Besides, she didn’t like him as anything more than a friend. He was like an older brother to her. She pulled her hand away as subtly as possible, not wanting to hurt him or to lead him on. Cedric’s expression didn’t change but she felt bad regardless.
“Well,” Cedric said, trying to cut through the tension that seemed to be working its way between them. “My parents abandoned me and my siblings when we were children. I was very young.”
“You had siblings?” Dahlia asked, surprised. “I never heard about them before. Are they also magicians?”
“I suppose so, but I don’t know,” Cedric said. “I had three siblings and we were all quite young.”
“What happened to them?” Dahlia asked, hoping that she wasn’t hurting him by asking all these personal questions.
“Well, my parents abandoned me and my siblings at an orphanage,” Cedric explained. “My older sister looked after us as best she could, but things weren’t working well. The people at the orphanage disliked us because we are… different. And we were extremely difficult to place.”
“What does that mean?” Dahlia asked.
“In adoption terms, that means that to adopt one, you have to adopt all four,” Cedric explained. “I think the orphanage people were just hoping that my older sister would become of age so that all of us could leave the orphanage.”
“Then what happened?” Dahlia asked.
“My two younger siblings were adopted by some couple who lived in Moscow,” Cedric said. “They left me and my sister behind in the orphanage.”
“How did they do that?” Dahlia asked. “I thought that you were a package deal.”
Cedric sighed. “My sister cut a deal with them. She was much older than me; she could see that her chances of being adopted at eighteen were very slim compared to my younger siblings who were two and four years old. I was nine, still legible for adoption, but much more difficult to place than my younger brother and sister. The Russian couple couldn’t adopt me because they didn’t have enough money.”
“What did you do?” Dahlia mused. “Weren’t you angry?”
“Of course I was,” Cedric admitted, sighing. “Then my sister and her boyfriend eloped and left me at the orphanage.”
“Why?” Dahlia exclaimed. “Surely she loved you! Why did she want to leave you behind at the orphanage after she had gone to such lengths to protect her other brother and sister?”
“Yes,” Cedric sighed. “But she loved her boyfriend more. She knew that I could protect myself and that I wasn’t hopeless. I think she wanted to find out what it would be like not to be a big sister every minute of every day.”
A small silence fell on them and they sat there quietly. Dahlia fiddled with a strand of her blonde curls, a sure sign of her distress.
“Then what did you do?” she asked.
“I ran away,” Cedric said flatly.
Dahlia stared at him. “What?”
“I ran away,” Cedric repeated.
“You were that unhappy, huh?” Dahlia asked.
“Yeah,” Cedric muttered. “Then I ran into Ella and Olive when they were on a scouting mission. They brought me back to the immortals’ palace to get claimed and live there.”
“Wow,” Dahlia said. “Apparently all magicians have hard lives.”
Cedric smiled. “You didn’t, not really, anyway.”
Dahlia shrugged. Cedric turned towards her until his knees brushed against her. Her breath caught at the back of her throat. But Dahlia didn’t want Cedric this way.
“Dahlia,” Cedric said so softly and with such emotion that made Dahlia freeze even though she knew that she should push him away and reject his advances; she didn’t want him like that and she loved Troy.
Before Dahlia could bring herself to run away, he gently brushed his lips over hers.