Page 21 of Eight Embers

Delaney whips her sweatshirt off quickly, baring both of her arms as she makes herself comfortable sitting on my lap sideways.

We all draw in a gasp at the same time because there’s something disgustingly wrong with some of her marks.

The ones she had before she came to my realm are all normal looking, but the ones my goddess gave her look like they’re full of toxins. They’re dark and the veins under them are sickly and evil looking, branching over her arms like sharp worms.

“I guess we found our problem,” the nurse mumbles, and then she excuses herself to collect a doctor.

Delaney looks to me, absolutely panicked, and I don’t blame her. “What do we do? What’s happening to me?”

I only know that I have to get her better, so that’s what I tell her. “We’re going to figure it out. There are things I’ve been afraid to tell you about…my home. I was hoping the blessings our goddess gave you would be genuine, but…it’s kind of looking like they’re not.”

“A goddess did this? Why?”

I gently hold her face, brushing her tears away. The tears burn my skin, because unicorns are only supposed to feel happiness, but it keeps me alert. “I want to hope her intentions weren’t to poison you, but…gods and goddesses are known to be dramatic.”

She buries her face into my neck, terrified, so I hold her. Because…she’s my mate.

A knock sounds on the door before the same nurse returns with someone in a white lab coat, introducing themselves as the resident doctor on campus. Can’t say I commit their name to memory, because I just can’t look away from the poison that seems to be seeping through Delaney’s arm.

“I don’t want to alarm you both, but I think we need to take every precaution we can in order to help you get well, Ms. Duncan. These marks on your arm, can you tell me about them? I haven’t seen conduit marks on that arm, and I have never seen them in this style. Are they tattoos that you got from an irreputable source, perhaps?”

How bad is it that I’m wishing Delaney had gotten tattooed by a dirty needle? I trust in the power of medicine to cure that.

I have no idea how to cure dirty magic.

Delaney looks to me because she doesn’t remember. Of course, she doesn’t.

“Um, well, I’m not actually from here. I come from a different realm, which likely sounds a little crazy, but, well, a few weeks ago I was at home when a searing agony began to pulse through my chest, and then I was teleported to the home of our goddess. You don’t know her name here, but she is The Fairyunicorn Goddess.

“She brought Delaney into our realm, Glittertopia, to ask for her help in saving it. Then she gifted Delaney marks from there, and I believe her intention was to gift her mates from our realm, so she’d have a vested interest in saving it. I just…”

The doctor’s face turns into a subtle look of horror as she looks at me. “Tell me I’m jumping to the wrong conclusion here.”

“I could be wrong, but I think the goddess tied the fate of the realm to Delaney’s magic. So the realm fails, Delaney fails. That’s…the only thing that makes sense.”

“If that’s true, then I don’t know how to help you, Delaney. We could put you into a medically induced coma to try and put the spread of this decay in stasis, but if this is truly an act from somebody divine, then anything I do won’t change a thing. I don’t want to just send you home, but I need to do a bit of research and see if anyone else in the medical field has experience in this.”

“I would probably be better off with my parents. One of my fathers is a poison master and another is a potion master, and my mom is, well. My mom is. If anyone can figure this out, it’s probably them.”

Delaney’s phone starts ringing and when she pulls it from her pocket, I see that it’s one of her dads calling, and from the tone I hear, they’re panicking.

Delaney doesn’t have good news to tell them, but I think she also doesn’t want to do it over the phone.

She grabs my hand, lacing our fingers together as she squeezes. I squeeze right back, feeling some kind of way about being her support right now. I don’t have a phone with which to text her mates with an update, but I have a feeling we’re probably just going to leave the infirmary anyway.

The doctor leaves as Delaney explains to her that her parents are on their way, but the nurse makes sure we know to stay put until someone comes to discharge her.

Delaney’s phone conversation isn’t very long, and it’s far too quiet in the room when she hangs up, but it’s the perfect amount of noise for her head to rest on my shoulder.

“I’m scared.” She laughs in a sad, deranged sort of way. “I’m broken and I don’t even know who I’m sitting on. I know you said we were mates, but…I honestly don’t know your name.” She squeezes her eyes shut and covers her face in embarrassment, but we can’t have that.

I peel her hands away and wipe her tears once more, continuing to ignore the way they burn my skin. “Saladriel. Don’t feel embarrassed about something you can’t control. About you and me, you should know—”

The nurse waltzes back in, interrupting me, and I lose the nerve to tell Delaney we’re only semi-friends.

“You can drink this as a tea every couple hours to try and stall the poison, and it should help with the lightheadedness you experienced as well. If somebody from your group could just update us when you have something to update us with, we’d be very appreciative. It’d be nice to have some sort of idea what to do on the off chance…another student gets poisoned by a deity.”

It sounds absurd, but the reality is far from amusing, so none of us laugh or even smile. Also, one of my worst fears is about to come to pass; I have to share one of the deepest held secrets of my people if I want any hope of saving this woman I didn’t ask for but might actually want.

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