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He shook his head. “Far more damning, you’re physically endangering someone I consider important to me.”
She looked at him. “Who?” She shook her head as it came to her. “You can’t mean the infant? She’s a stranger to you! She can’t-”
“I watched her grow, and I witnessed her birth. She’s part of me! Of course, she’s important to me. She’s my daughter!”
Mab looked at him with a strange, angry and anxious expression. She finally shook her head. “You’re lying about her importance to you.” She gave her head an angry shake then pushed the thoughts from her head. “No!”
She slipped from the bed and pranced over to her closet to find a gown. “It is so refreshing to go without a glamor and look this good!” She stepped out of the room.
Henry looked across to his… daughter and his heart began to pound. He had to save her. She couldn’t die! Not when she was just born. Not like this!
Gritting his teeth, he began to pull on his bindings with everything he had. He recalled Sigrid saying he didn’t know the limits of his strength, so he fed that into his efforts and every muscle bunched and strained.
He was almost at his limit when he heard it. A high pitched creaking. With renewed energy, he threw his head back and pulled just a little harder. His muscles were beginning to tear, but still, he strained with everything he had.
The frame suddenly failed with explosive force, and splinters flew outwards from the shattered pillars. Henry fell forward onto the mattress and scrambled to get to his hooves to catch Mab’s old body as it fell from the dying vines. The damage he’d caused sent a cascade of failure through the entire bed frame. He gently lowered her to the mattress. Her blue eyes were fading, and the lost look in them tore at his heart. He began to cry as he rested his forehead against hers.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?!” Mab screamed as she returned from the powder room. She cursed as she stepped on a sharp splinter.
Henry ignored her as he pulled at the healing spell. He needed his daughter to live. To get better. She needed to be young again! He wasn’t a wielder. He could pull the energy to him, but he didn’t know how to shape it. He needed help!
His body bent backward in agony as fire raced over his nerve endings. He screamed and almost lost consciousness. The pain ended, and he looked over his shoulder to see Mab grinning as she shook her tingling fingers.
He glared at her. “Monster. You’re a foul monster.”
Mab’s new face contorted with rage before she hit him with another bolt of pain. He grit his teeth and tried to endure it but ended up screaming once more. He threw his hands up to block her, and the space between them ripped open.
The rest of the magic bolt went through to the other realm and played harmlessly over the beautiful glass surface of Xiong’s back. He had no nerves to carry the fire. He could store the energy though. He was getting quite good at that in their new home.
Xiong turned and looked at the surprised face of the woman. He felt the familiar mind of the one who saved him nearby. Henry reached out to it to commune and Xiong instantly picked up the situation. He was saddened that the child was in danger. He looked to the green-eyed woman and released some of the energy he’d saved to give it back to her. She flew back to crash against the wall and slump down to the floor, her ankle bent at an unnatural angle. Xiong realized he’d given the energy back harder than she’d given it to him though he still felt flush with the delicious energy. He bid farewell to the sad one who released his grip on the gate once more so he could concentrate on saving his child.
As it closed, Xiong wished him luck. He recalled his children and knew how special they could be.
Henry felt a spark as the gate closed and he tapped his horns against Mab’s old body. That draining sensation came back then it grew stronger and stronger. He looked up and saw a thick rope of silver light emit from his horns and splash across the room. He tried to aim it, but it swung wildly. When it struck his daughter’s true body, Mab screamed as she woke. The silver rope suddenly split and its other end snapped to the other half of the magic spell, Mab’s original body.
Mab looked down at herself as she began to grow younger. She screamed as she dropped below 25 and the effect accelerated.
The doors to the room exploded inwards, and a huge Ogre rushed in only to stop in shock at the scene. He didn’t know what to do. The sounds of battle entered the open doorway. He glanced nervously behind himself.
“HELP ME! I’M YOUR QUEEN!” Mab screamed before her body dropped more years, taking her into her teens.
A mental push accompanied the command so the Ogre couldn’t resist it. In that moment, he saw the bright new future the Fae healer had given him stripped away but he was powerless to stop it.
He rushed across the room and picked up the Queen as he ran. The guard didn’t slow, even though the silver beam was ripping years from his body as he ran. He tucked the Queen against his body and leapt against the fifth story window, crashing through to fall into the garden below. He rolled midair to protect her and land on his back.
The silver thread broke the moment they passed through the window, and the entirety of it snapped back to focus on Mab’s old body. The years peeled away turning into decades and soon centuries. Wide blue eyes stared up at him as he struggled to control the flow, but he quickly realized he couldn’t slow it down much less stop it. Mab’s body became younger and younger as Henry desperately tried to pull away physically. If he couldn’t prevent it, she was going to regress into nothing.
He managed to stumble a few steps away from the bed when he heard a noise behind himself. He just had time to turn to see Baba dropping the body of an Ogre over his horns. The massive weight crushed Henry to the floor and broke the thread of magic. The dead weight atop him absorbed the energy and winked out of existence in a silent implosion. The corresponding sudden expansion of the vacuum slammed Henry violently against the floor.
Henry lay there slipping in and out of consciousness as Baba walked past him. When she came back into his view, she was holding a baby girl. She set the baby on the floor next to him and whispered words that tickled and teased his hearing. Henry hissed as his right hand flattened on the floor, and the fingers splayed. He couldn’t move anything but his eyes, so he watched the baby’s tiny right hand do the same thing on the floor next to his. He looked up at Baba as she knelt next to them.
“Ba… ba?” he gritted out.
She looked to him, and her eyes held a strange mix of emotions. He thought, hoped, he saw compassion in there, and maybe even love, but it was gone before he was sure. “She’s still dying. She’s a creature of the Wild Magic trapped in an old realm body. You can’t help her but I can. Hush now.”
Baba pulled her ornate scissors from the pocket of her apron and opened the blades as Henry’s eyes widened in terror.
When she slammed the points through their hands into the wood floor, she severed his right ring finger at his palm, and the baby’s as well.
Henry tried to scream, but he couldn’t draw a breath in his frozen state. His eyes went to the baby and saw she was wailing silently as well.
Baba pulled the scissors free, wiped them on her apron carefully and put them back into her pocket. Then she gently lifted both fingers and switched their places. His finger was bigger than the baby’s entire hand.
He watched in horror as she whispered some words he couldn’t quite hear, and the pain began again. The tiny finger was connecting to his severed knuckle and growing to fit. Nerves linked up, tendons reattached, veins reconnected, and sensation returned with a vengeance. He saw his severed finger was shrinking and binding itself to the baby’s hand as she struggled to cry. He tried, but he couldn’t move to protect her.
The magnitude of what Baba was doing exploded into his consciousness, and he struggled to speak. The ring! He had to stop her from putting his curse on the child. It wasn’t fair to her! He locked eyes with the crone, and for the briefest moment she appeared to be considering his plea for her to stop this madness, but she looked away.
When the baby’s finger had grown to fit his hand, he was shocked to see it looked like his old finger, minus the ring. Baba whispered again and lifted the baby in her arms. The witch touched his horns, whispering once more, words that sent sharp pains through his brain, and the subtle draining sensation stopped. She turned away and walked a short distance before pausing to look back at him.
“Goodbye, Boy,” she said with sad eyes.
“no… please… don’t take her…” he managed, but Baba stepped back into the shadows and was gone.
The moment she was gone the binding on his body released, and he screamed. All the pain, rage, horror, sorrow, and frustration burst forth as he could no longer contain it. It was too much. His mind finally shied away from the onslaught, and he passed out.
A small mercy.