It's days before Santana opens her eyes, grimacing in pain as she notices that her arm is in a thick splint. She blinks a few times trying to place where she is, but the scent of her mate is enough to cause her to relax and she immediately begins to look for her mate.
With a bit of a groan, she manages to sit up, half expecting to see her mate by her side sleeping and waiting for her to wake up, but she is alone. She frowns, but making the expression simply causes the pain in her head to intensify, it felt like something was missing, and more importantly it felt like something was wrong with her mate.
She practically falls off the bed, grimacing, as she glances down at her body there was dressing on her hip, and she was tempted to see the damage, but right now she needed to find her mate. She needed to make sure that she was okay, and then she would find out who had attacked them and make certain that they paid in blood.
She drags her body to the door and opens it a crack checking to see if she was being guarded, and almost immediately two guards turn to look at her, there was sorrow in their eyes, "Where is she?" she manages to croak out.
"Your highness, you need to rest—"
"Where is she?" Santana repeats.
One of the guards looks at his companion, "Go and get a maid and the healers, and then inform the royals that she is awake, they will need to question her."
"Question me?" Santana frowned, they couldn't possibly think that she had anything to do with what had happened.
"About what you witnessed, your majesty, no one thinks that you had anything to do with it," the guard clarifies immediately. "But, it's been two days since the wedding and the princess is missing."
Santana's eyes widened, "What do you mean she's missing?"
~ O ~
Mike was the only elf that she had ever trusted, and that was only because he had become family by marrying her sister. If he hadn't she was pretty sure she would hate all elves, and would have done anything to find an excuse to go to war with them and raze their forests to the ground. The shifty bastards, she couldn't remember much from her wedding. She remembered how beautiful Santana looked, and she remembered grabbing her and protecting her with dragon wings—but after that, her memory went hazy.
But what she did know was that she was starving, and that she was currently in what appeared to be a magical circle, her arms were bound behind her back, and she'd been on her knees for what felt like days. She was also naked, but that was the least problematic part. If they had hoped to humiliate her by stripping her down, they clearly had no idea who she was.
She tests her magical binds for a moment but grimaces when they tighten around her wrist, well she wouldn't be able to break out of this with her strength which meant that she'd need to think her way out of this mess. She relaxes for a moment, even though she had the worst headache, she needed to figure out a way to get back to Santana.
She shifts, leaning back, the first thing she needed to do was get comfortable and then she needed to figure out who was stupid enough to capture her. Then the next thing was to learn guard rotations, and steal a sword. Once she had a sword, she would just have to kill everyone involved. Then she was going to insist on redoing her damn wedding. Santana deserved the best. She just needed to be patient, she needed to regain her strength and then she would strike.
~ O ~
"This would be far easier if you just allowed me to use memory magic on her—"
"Absolutely not!" Judy snapped at her mother, who looked slightly annoyed at her tone. But she didn't care, her mother didn't truly care about mortals, she knew this because she had thrown Charlie off the top of the palace to see if she could fly at an early age. She had nearly lost her daughter, the idea of allowing her mother to use magic that was considered forbidden in the kingdom to access her daughter-in-laws memories, was not going to happen.
Santana frowned, "I don't remember anything after the explosion, if using memory magic will help—"
"See, she's consenting to the procedure, I'll be gentle," Artemis says with a smirk.
Before Judy can once again rebuff her mother, Ra's al Ghul steps forward, "Your majesty if I may? I believe my skills should be the first line before we resort to magic, especially one as dangerous as what your mother-in-law is suggesting."
"You're going to torture her? Why? We all saw the green fire, it was the elves! I mean, I'm never going to let her live it down that she got captured by fucking elves."
"Kara, please," Lena said, taking her by the arm. "Now isn't the time."
"Of course it is, if he hurts her, whenever she escapes the elves, she'll go on a rampage and she'll probably blame me for not stopping it—"
"I'm not going to torture her, I doubt she has anything to do with it, and I've found that information given under duress are rarely accurate. Please have a seat your highness," Ra's began motioning for Santana to sit. "I'm going to need you to close your eyes, and I don't need you to try and remember what you saw, you're a beastkin, your other senses are sharper. So let's focus on the last moments of your ceremony, tell me what you smell, what you heard."
Santana did as she was asked, Charlie had been missing for nearly a week, and the capital was still locked down. No one had been allowed to leave, and she could imagine that tensions were rising. "I smell her, she's wearing a bit too much perfume, it smells like roses, but it's not as overpowering as the first time we went out."
"What do you hear?" Ra's questions her.
"Quinn was muttering something under her breath, the priest was saying something, I honestly can't remember, then explosions—it smells like wood, and I smell panic and fear then a loud sound, more than one—then it smells like fire, and it hurts, it's so hot—and then it suddenly feels cool—like a breeze." Charlie had protected her, she could remember that. She smells like a dragon—it's not the same. It's different—then blood. I smell blood. Lots of blood."
Judy gasps, Charlie rarely ever got seriously hurt, sure she bled, but and did things that were bordering on idiotic at times, but it sounded like it was a grave injury.
"Anything else?" Ra's questions gently.
"The forest, I remember seeing a light—and I heard steps and a language that I couldn't make out, but there's a ringing in my ears so I can't make out the words and then nothing. I don't remember anything, just pain and blood and—"
"She's not in the kingdom anymore," Brittany speaks up. "It sounds like they had this planned for far longer than we anticipated, and it explains the secondary explosion, it was a teleportation circle. A very rudimentary one. And it explains why we haven't been able to track her, someone must be using very powerful magic to keep her shielded from dragons."
"Once again, I'm telling you that it's the elves." Kara insisted.
"We can't go to war with the elves with no evidence," Russell said with a frown. His daughter was strong, and he suspected that if they weren't using magic, she would have contacted them to let them know exactly who had attacked them. "And why would the elves launch an attack when there were several members of royalty within the church? Their crown prince was there and I hear that Queen Cersei is very fond of her eldest, putting him in danger? Even if it was eleves, it might not be anything related to the royal family."
"Then what do we do?"
"We wait, my sparrows are all searching for her as we speak and have already left the kingdom. But we must allow the honored guests to return to their kingdoms, we can not keep them hostage for much longer. Charlie's relatively intelligent at getting herself out of situations that are deadly, she might rescue herself." Quinn spoke up.
Santana's eyes snap open and she attempts to get up but the pain in her hip is crippling and she lets out a grunt of pain as she's forced to remain in the seat, by Ra's. "We can't just hope for the best!"
"Santana, we aren't even sure if she's alive—" Frannie began.
"She is," Quinn and Santana both say at the same time and immediately look at each other.
"Charlie's still alive, I can tell you that much, but where—you're mate-bonded with her, shouldn't you know exactly where she is?"
"It's not the same bond that I would form with another beastkin, it's different, I can tell she's alive, but anything else and my head just hurts—like I'm not supposed to look for her."
"Now can I use—"
"Mother!" Judy snaps at her mother, this had been an attack. "You need to get better Santana, your injuries were severe, we'll find her."
Those words aren't a comfort to Santana, she needed to be out there, her mate was in danger, and it seemed that people were content to let Charlie figure it out on her own. Her mate was smart, but she wasn't that smart, not when magic was involved.