Chapter 19.
"Well?" Max's face shows complete anger but also a little bit of confusion.
"Max it's not what you think" I cast a quick glance at Danahi who seems to slowly be recovering but hasn't bothered making any moves or saying anything.
"Ha, yea nice line Ve." He says, narrowing his eyes at me. This is what I wanted to avoid when I got with Max again. He definitely has a knack for being extremely jealous.
"I'm serious Max, this…this is…um" my failure to come up with a complete sentence makes Max a little bit angrier.
"Dave. My name is Dave." Danahi finally picks this moment to speak at. Nice timing, Dave.
"And you're in my girlfriend's room why?" Max asks defensively.
"Oh I'm just a friend of the family. I work with her mother at court and needed to talk to Vienna." He says, with just a little bit of an arrogant tone, just like anyone who works at court. I raise my eyebrows at him but he doesn't see. Max looks at me expectantly.
"He wanted to talk to me about mum, she's having trouble at work and doesn't know how long she will be there. Dad wouldn't tell me anything and that's when Dan…Dave showed up." I wince at my stutter and I see Danahi clench his jaw. Max looks slightly more convinced though not completely.
"And where exactly do you work at court?" Max asks Danahi.
"Sorry nope, can't tell you that." Danahi says in an even tone. Max looks slightly frustrated again.
"Why not?"
"Well if I told you that I'd have to kill you" Danahi says with a wink. Oh he's making a joke. To my surprise Max gives a little laugh and comes to stand beside me.
"So you're not here to sleep with my girlfriend?" Max says bluntly and I nudge him slightly. Danahi' look in incredulous. If only max knew.
"No sir, you can keep her. Anyway Ve, I gotta go but you should talk to your mum yeah?" he says. Playing along with his charade I nod and he heads out, leaving Max and I alone.
"Well that was awkward. Sorry, I didn't mean to be intrusive or anything it just didn't look all that good when I walked in, I'm sorry." Max says and he walks towards me and I folded into his arms.
"It's ok" I say. When truthfully, it's not. I wish I could tell Max about what's going on. I need to tell him. I remind myself to bring it up with Danahi next time I see him.
The next few days pass uneventfully. I haven't seen Danahi, he has probably retreated to a dark corner in case anyone else is looking for him. I want to ask him about that, why he is always paranoid, looking over his shoulder at the world and why he froze up when Max walked in. Max and I are ok for now, but for some unknown reason he seems more distant since seeing Danahi in my room.
I wonder if he didn't completely buy what Danahi and I were selling. I frown at the thought, I know I was lying but he is supposed to trust me. Maybe I'm just being a hypocrite.
That night I'm lying in bed, thinking about the last vision I had, the day Danahi and Max met. I analyse every part I can trying to figure out how I went into the vision. I try to replay every single moment before I went in. I was trying with Danahi but it wasn't working. I got frustrated and started yelling and then was pulled into the vision. But nanoseconds before I was pulled in, my anger levels changed, it was all consuming, pure rage, and then I was pulled in. I wonder if that's it. I mean it wasn't like that before, I never got angry when it happened, the visions just came at random intervals. But lately it seems like I've been getting angry right before it happens.
I sit up in my bed and take a few deep breaths. Ok, let's try this way. I try to think of moments, when I was in complete rage, and why, and how it happened. My first immediate thought was of my father. Which is surprising. I mean I'm angry at him for shutting me out of his life so much, he hardly accepted me as his daughter, it was like I was born out of only my mothers joy.
Its almost as if he didn't want me. He ignores me, he accepts everyone else, his whole family except me. I always seems like I don't matter to him but I need him, he is my father and yet he wasn't. He was never there for me during times I struggled, my mum was.
He left me to my own vices when he left me here, at this school, and then he hardly makes an effort to contact with me. Whenever I felt I needed my father, he was never there.
Without realising it, I've dug my nails into my palm, through the skin and my hand is bleeding. I stare up at the wall in front of me again, mulling over my realisation. Blind rage consumes me. How could he do that to his own daughter? I dig my nails in further and my vision tinges red and then I'm thrown out of my room and into another. I did it. I'm in. I brought on a vision.
I glance down at my hands again, even in here they are still bleeding. I crunch up my hand and try to calm my raging mind. Now I'm in, I don't need to be so angry. I close my eyes and try to match my breaths to every third heartbeat. Eventually my anger diminishes and I can survey my surroundings. The house is on fire. When I first entered the house was intact, like brand new. I realise it must have changed while I had my eyes closes.
I swivel around and notice that my visions always begin in the big room and I'm always alone, except this time I'm not. The man and woman are here with me. The man stands at the library door, he keeps glancing between the woman, who is writing furiously on a piece of paper, and back through the library. The house looks like it is early stages of a fire. Few plumes of smoke rise around the room and fire only licks one side of the room.
"Louella we must hurry!" Louella is the woman writing, it must be. But why would she be writing at a time like this?
"Louella please!" he voices again, his face is strained with complete worry for her.
She suddenly shoves the paper into some kind of book and holds it close to her chest. She concentrates on that for a moment before she swifltly moves around the room and then she is back to her husband
They both stare at the loud crashing at the door, ready to face the problem at hand.
"Ambrosius" she whispers. She looks to her husband and suddenly, a loud crash echoes in my ears and the door vibrates like something is smashed against it. With a few more gigantic creaks, the door flings open and people flood in. There is no mistaking that they are Guardians. All wearing red dots on their collars. Royal guards. Is this how the last moments of the Nesahlas were spent?
At his exact moment I'm flung out of the vision and back in my own bed. I get out of bed, coughing and spluttering over smoke I can no longer see, though I still feel it. I claw at my throat trying to get fresh air but it doesn't seem to come. I rush to the bathroom and take a large gulp of water. Eventually, after a few more coughing fits, my airway clears and I lean against the wall and sink to the floor. That was more intense than any other vision.
I note with slight satisfaction and pride that I got into a vision by myself. I can do it. I remember my hand again and walk back to the sink to clean it. They are only small, fine cuts that my fingernails had marked me with. Nonetheless I clean my hand and put some antiseptic on it. Once it stopped bleeding the cuts are barely visible. I sink back against the cold floor and close my eyes for a moment. What I perceive as a few moments turn out to be the rest of the night, no more light spills through my window, it's now completely black indicating a new day is starting.
I pad back to my room and get dressed. I need to see Max to find out what's going on with him but the urge to see Danahi, is greater. I need to know he is ok.
I leave my hair out today and it sits with a slight wave to the middle of my back. My green blue eyes stare back at me desperately. The world is starting to be a confusing place.
I'm disrupted on my way to class when Danahi peeks around the corner and pulls me towards a dark part of the quad.
"Where have you been?!" I ask reverently.
"Well I've been making sure your shipment is going to plan trying to make sure your boyfriend didn't out me and people weren't here to kill me. Good enough for you?" he says with sarcasm.
"I've been looking for you for days, I needed to talk to you!"
"Well I'm here now. By the way you're not going to class, you're coming with me!" he says in his automatic cheery way and pulls me away from my original course further.
I follow Danahi to wherever he is taking me, which turns out to be just at the edge of campus.
"So what exactly are we doing out here? It's not some witchy ritual that requires animal sacrifice and blood and stuff is it?"
"Actually that's exactly what this is." He says with a straight face. Are you kidding me?! "Actually I'm joking, though we are here to learn magic." Oh thank god. I relax slightly though my interest is peaked when he says magic.
"What sort of magic?" he gives me a smirk when I ask.
"The witchy kind." He says mysteriously.
He sets up what looks like some sort of alter on the grass, complete with silver chalice cup thing, a medieval looking knife and a few other assortments.
After that he explains what the different herbs and oils will do and how they work together. He explains simple spells but doesn't demonstrate a thing.
"So when exactly are you going to show me how to do this stuff?" I ask hopefully.
"Well, I thought I'd wait for a special moment" a special moment? He suddenly shifts and pulls something else out of the bag he brought with him. What he brings out makes the world completely stop. I stare at it with wide eyes. Finally.
In Danahi hands, he holds a brown leather book. My book. All of a sudden, whispers intrude my mind and rush around but I can only concentrate on the book. It's finally here. Taking my eyes off it for a split second, I glance up at Danahi who is surveying me intensely, making looking to gauge my reaction. He smirks a little and then I reach out the grab to book from him.
The world seems to move in slow motion. My hands reaching for the book, and closing around the edges. Then a blinding white light protrudes through my mind and the flashes start. Though it doesn't completely start until Danahi' hands let go of it. I see flashes of Louella, a baby, I see more of the items that Danahi has laid out in front of me. Memories flood through of what I thought of my father earlier this morning. Though it's all more intense this time. More consuming. Anger floods through every crevice in my brain, taking no prisoners. Whispers grate everywhere, all weaving through one another so I can't understand anything being said. It's all consuming. The rage continues to pour through me, though this time I can't seem to grasp any sort of happiness I had. It's all rage, pure, blind rage.
Abruptly everything stops. The whispers stop, the visions stop. Everything does. Except the rage. It burns through me. I look back at Danahi, who seems to be the only person who I can't be mad at. I think of every other moment of my life, my father's inconsideration, my mother leaving me, Max leaving the first time, every single person in this school and throughout my life flows through my mind and I place the cause of the anger within them all.