The brothers just stood there in mild shock as she frantically looked around. "Is there a way to bolt these shut?"
"Why," Callum worried. "What's wrong?"
"We need," she commanded, "total secrecy before I tell you that. Now help me." They boys, now both substantially more worried, quickly showed her the bolts hidden in the design of the doors and locked themselves inside. After the mighty THUD, Rayla asked, "Is there any way they can hear us through the doors?"
Ezran shook his head. "I tried to eavesdrop on Dad once, but I couldn't hear a thing with those doors all the way shut."
"And the windows? Walls?"
"Everything's secure. Rayla, what is it?" A thought struck him and Callum's next words came out with a squeak. "Am I dying? Is this some weird disease I caught in Xadia? Am I going to start turning into a tree elf for real?"
That paused Rayla's panic and she looked at him as if he'd grown a second head. "What? That's crazy. Humans don't turn into elves. And you're not dying, it's actually the opposite." The silence hung between them until suddenly, Rayla's cheeks turned slightly pink. "Um, do you remember that talk we had the day we left the Silver Grove?"
"Do you mean the one about you being a ghost or the one about…" Callum went bright red.
Rayla nodded, her face turning even pinker. "Yeah, that one. It, uh,…" she played with her hair and looked at him with a slightly pleading expression, "might be truer than I thought." Callum sat down hard on the floor, eyes wide and slightly glazed over.
Ezran looked between the two, one blushing furiously and trying to hide behind her hair, the other looking one step from fainting. "What are you too talking about, what's wrong with Callum?"
"Well, I don't know for sure," she finally mumbled. "I only know one other person this has happened to, but some of the symptoms match and I can't think of anything else it could be." Then she tucked her hair back behind her ears, stood straight, and looked Ezran right in the face. "I think Callum's pregnant."
His first reaction was to laugh. "Okay, good acting guys. When did you plan this one?" They didn't laugh with him, or even smile. Rayla just kept staring at him. "Come on, Callum's a guy. Yeah, he's going through something right now, but we'll find the real answer eventually."
"Ez," said a quiet voice from behind him. He turned around and saw that Callum had moved out of his shocked stupor and was standing with his head in one hand. "She's not joking." Still not looking at his brother, he walked to the doors and unlocked them. "I'm going for a walk, I need some time to think." The doors swung shut behind him.
Rayla watched him go, then turned back to Ezran and almost flinched. The look on his face would have made Sol Regen run for the hills. "Explain," he commanded.
Outside on the battlements, Callum pressed a hand to his middle and looked out over the forest, trying to remember that conversation two and a half months ago. Rayla had said mages who used Primal magic sometimes ended up like this, but the knowledge had been squirreled away in his head. They'd still been basically on the run, so there hadn't been a lot of time to think about it before they reached the Storm Spire, and then the battle and everything else had happened. Okay, he probably could have tried to learn more from some of the delegates, but how would he have even brought up something like that? "Hey, happy to meet you. By the way, are any of you pregnant mages," he said to the empty sky. Then he snorted to himself. Yeah, that would have gone over real well. But if he looked at his symptoms objectively…
King Harrow used to joke about what Sarai's pregnancy with Ezran had been like. "She hated that she couldn't train with the troops," he had once said, "but no one wanted to risk her fainting or getting dizzy during a spar." He grinned at a younger Ezran then, ruffling the mass of hair. "You really wore her out in the beginning."
If I was a girl, I might actually believe this was real, he thought to himself as he laid both hands on the edge of the battlement wall. But I'm not. It could still be something else. It had to be, right? He was a guy to start with, which should make this impossible, but okay, he'd seem magic do some pretty strange things. Second, he'd never even dated someone, let alone done…that. The thought made him blush to the tips of his ears and he shook his head to remove the images that popped up. Not being a virgin kind of came before being pregnant. Thirdly, he was only fifteen! He'd been practicing magic for less than a year. Rayla had said it took years for this to happen, and that was to elves who'd had magic since they were born.
But what was he going to do, if it was? He didn't know anything about babies or kids in general. The only kids he knew growing up were Ezran, Claudia and Soren. Two of those people were older than him, and Ezran looked after Callum almost as much as Callum looked after Ezran. He would barely be sixteen by the time the baby showed up. That thought made his head spin and he quickly sat down.
"Callum!" Feet rushed toward him and soon Ezran was kneeling next to him. "Are you okay?"
He smiled at his younger brother, but didn't think it looked very encouraging if Ezran's concerned frown was anything to go by. "Not really. What did Rayla tell you?"
"Everything, I think." The young king sat down next to his brother and they both leaned back against the wall. "About her guardian Ethari, mostly. I think he's the reason she knows anything about this." Then he smirked. "Though, I did get her to tell me about that conversation you too had."
Callum went slightly red and coughed into his fist. "Oh yeah, very funny, until it turns out it might be true." The silence returned. Ezran ran a finger over the stones underneath his leg and looked up at his brother. He wasn't as pale as he had been when he fell, but he still didn't look too good. The faint smudges under his eyes were more pronounced now and his posture slumped against the wall. "Hey, Ez?" The king looked away, hoping his brother hadn't caught him staring. "You know that trip we were talking about, back to Xadia? I think I'll take a detour to the Silvergrove. I need to talk to Rayla's not-dad about this. Maybe he'll be able to tell if I'm…" The silence stretched. "And I can start learning about the Moon Arcanum too. Multiple arcanums might be what we need to get through to the elves."
Ezran nodded, then reached out and hugged his brother. "You better send me letters, even if they have to be magic arrowed to me."
"I promise." And the two walked along the wall and back into the castle proper.
So, yeah. The boys have been exposed to the idea, and they have plans for how to find out more. Please Review!
