Who: Ellie Morgan and Rana Mistry What: Honestly, it's not as if they haven't (re)met this way before... Where: The Reincarnate Clinic When: Tuesday, October 4, 2016; afternoon Warnings: Language, mostly. Brief references to violence and sex. They're Blood, it's part of the package. Status: Complete
Ellie knew that you couldn't save everybody. Everyone had told her that, including Jaenelle, who had learned it the hard way. That didn't make it any easier to see people getting sicker and sicker and not being able to do anything about it. She'd been in Kaeleer, when the virus had come around the first time, two years before. She hadn't seen what it could do, then. This time it was worse, they said. People were getting sicker, faster, and there wasn't much you could do sometimes except just make them comfortable so that they could go in peace. Ellie was good at that. She'd sat at a few bedsides, held a few hands, crooned songs of gentle death in a language that nobody but her understood. After, she got up and she moved on to the next person that she could do something for. There wasn't any time to stop and mourn the ones you lost, not while so many were still sick.
She’d been able to take off school for it, at least. Her professors probably shouldn’t have let her do it, not really, but it was really very hard to argue with Ellie Morgan once she made up her mind about something. She hadn’t had to make the sun stand still for them, at least. She’d just managed to persuade them that, since she was pre-med, and this was a medical emergency, it really was almost like class. She’d just have to turn all her homework in, still. She hadn’t had time to do a single bit of it, since she’d started.
It hadn't taken long before she'd started wearing her Jewels openly. No one was going to ask why she had that strange necklace on. Nobody really knew what they were, just stones in a gold setting. She hadn't quite drained the Black yet, she'd been careful to use only dabs of power, when she knew that something was a lost case. It was a hard call to make, but Ellie was a Healer. Part of that was knowing how to make the hard calls.
She didn't know most of her patients. It was better that way, because that way she could stay objective. She could know when she had to admit defeat and let The Darkness claim them, knowing that they wouldn't even rise demon-dead. If it was someone that she loved... there was only so far that you could be objective.
The next one didn't sound familiar at all, and she would have definitely remembered the name if she'd heard it, or seen it, before. It was pretty. Not that she'd tell... him? She checked the chart, saw that it was a man, and was even more determined not to tell him that his name was one of the prettiest she'd ever heard. Males could be so touchy about things like that. Instead, she walked in with a smile on her face. "Rana? My name's Ellie, let's take a look at how you're..."
There was something familiar in that room. Something that made her stop, eyes wide and sapphire blue, before she even finished her sentence.
There are times when life throws you a curveball and all of a sudden you end up in very unexpected and unexplored territory. That had happened to Rana Mistry about 24 days ago. The strangest thing about it was that he had always assumed that anything likely to knock his life off the tracks would be dramatic and yet while the change in him was dramatic, the way it happened was not. There were no lightning strikes. No descent into a pit of madness. No violent catastrophe. Yet his life was now irrevocably different.
Lucivar himself had a flair for the dramatic. It was probably an inborn thing for Warlord Princes. Even the slightest provocation could lead to them trying to hurl themselves at a perceived enemy until one of them was dead. So far Rana had mostly kept that side of his new personality in check. It had involved isolating himself often. Inexplicably spending less time around his mother who certainly couldn't deal with a Warlord Prince riding the killing edge if someone looked at her the wrong way. Turning down shifts at his jobs. But so far he hadn't murdered anybody over a minor insult, so the measures he was taking seemed to be working. The isolation had given him a chance to practice some basic craft and the sight shield he was using to hide his new wings.
The isolation was not enough to keep him from becoming ill. At first he put it down to the few times he had been at the gym, working with the kids class who were always great vectors of almost every contagious disease going, but it soon became apparent that it wasn't the flu and honestly, his bloodwork came back showing absolutely everything was out of range. Thanks to his new Eyrien heritage it seemed that he probably wasn't going to get a straight answer from a human doctor anymore. What he wouldn't give for Janelle's instincts. She could always read a patient like a book and knew exactly what tonic or healing web would be needed. He figured instead he could take it easy for a while and let his body fight the disease. That was three days ago before the headlines started appearing about a second reincarnate virus hitting global populations.
After that it seemed only sensible to submit himself to the reincarnate clinic he'd heard about in what he referred to as his “welcome pack”. By the time he got the his head felt like it was packed full of buzzing gnats and he was fairly sure he'd emptied the contents of his stomach several times over after using the MTN to travel across continents. He couldn't keep his sight shield up consistently and his skin was somewhat ashen and horribly clammy. Once he was triaged and assigned a room he was left alone, unable to get comfy, for what felt like hours. It could have been mere minutes but given the way his head thrummed with an oppressive tension that threatened to burst his head open like an exploding beetle, he really didn't think he was a good judge of time any longer.
Finally the door opened and he forced himself to shift around so he could see who it was. He winced as he moved awkwardly and thrust an elbow into the joint of one of his wings then glared sulkily at the person who had come to interrupt his mood. It took a few moments to get through the groggy feeling and actually register what he was seeing. A few seconds more to open his senses a little more and confirm it. Blood sings to blood. He blinked wide golden eyes, then started laughing until it ended with a hacking cough.
“Mother Night. It's good to see you, Cat.” He whispered in a voice that cracked on every other word.
It wasn’t as if Ellie hadn’t thought about what it would be like to meet someone Jaenelle knew. Well, meet them outside of Kaeleer, because there were plenty of people that knew Jaenelle, and that Jaenelle knew, that she’d met while she was there. None of them actually knew that Ellie and Jaenelle were separate people, or anything, so she wasn’t sure that actually counted. Oh, and she didn’t have to worry about how that was all going to fit with her life outside of being a reincarnate, which was much different than Jaenelle’s had been. Being born into a family that, like Freddie had reminded her even though she’d been acting kind of like an idiot, would always love her and accept her just how she was, even if what she was ended up not being completely human, or the sort of thing that was always comfortable to be around.
She’d thought it might be sort of… odd. Not that Ellie had a problem with odd, in general. There was a lot about her, and her family, that was more than a little bit odd. It was just, when Jaenelle had her Papa, and Lucivar, Mephis, Uncle Andulvar, Prothvar… she hadn’t really had any other family, at least not family that knew her, and that didn’t try to change her. There’d been plenty of room for all of them, even though Warlord Princes could be a little snarly and possessive about their Queens, with anyone outside of the Court. Ellie didn’t need a family. Her family was perfect. They weren’t Blood, but they didn’t mind that sometimes she could get a little snarly and possessive, herself, even if they didn’t know why it was so important for her to call them hers. She’d worried that, maybe, if Jaenelle’s family showed up, there wouldn’t be enough room for them and Ellie’s family, both.
Seeing this complete stranger who was Jaenelle’s brother in that bed, sick, made her insides seize up like someone had grabbed them with a giant fist and squeezed, just like it would have if it had been one of her brothers who had been laying there.
“You prick.” Ellie reached up, one hand closing around the Black Jewel she wore, the other going to toy with her hair before she remembered that it was scraped back into a tight braid so it wouldn’t get in the way while she was tending to patients. “You weren’t supposed to come back to me like this again.” Okay, so the first time it hadn’t been Lucivar’s fault any more than it was Rana’s now, but still, there were only so many times that one of their males should come to them with something that could kill them, before she’d even gotten the chance to properly make them hers.
Ellie stepped into the room all the way, over to stand by the bed. She was supposed to take his vitals the normal way, the right way, so she could record them on his chart. Instead, she laid her wrist against his forehead like she would have if it had been Freddie or Walt sick and needing to be taken care of, frowning. She’d do the right thing in just a moment, once she’d had the chance to fuss over him the way she wanted. She should probably turn him over to someone else, let another volunteer check up on him. There was no way she was going to do that. He was hers, and she was going to take care of him herself.
It was strange how quickly someone could adapt to having this second mind in their head. Thoughts and feelings that were his, but not his, rushed through him in a confusing swell of emotion. He had found his Queen after just a month, there would be no need to wait through centuries of torment this time. She was pretty too. That thought made him angry. Or was it just Lucivar that was angry? That was the problem with two minds in one brain, it became difficult to differentiate who was having the thought since the brain seemed to process them the same way.
Rana found himself defensively pointing out to himself that he could find a girl objectively pretty without wanting to do anything because of that. The anger in him subsided a little, though he remained tense. Wary. Janelle was here and he was bed-bound. He should be on his feet, protecting her. It was likely that he would have tried regardless of how terrible he felt had a male walked into his room. It was a truth Rana could feel in his bones. He may have only just met this stranger who he already accepted as his sister but he would give his life to stop her being hurt. The surety of that knowledge left him feeling a little unbalanced.
To distract himself from that he shifted himself again, being careful this time not to lean on his wings which felt heavy and cumbersome. Additional limbs that were being weighed down by fever. He wouldn't really want to get rid of them as they already seemed like an integral piece of his being but he did imagine how much better he would sleep if he didn't have them getting in the way. The beds were clearly not designed for winged humanoids. He didn't complain when the girl placed her wrist over his forehead thigh he could have told her that he was burning up.
Lucivar smiled at the snarly Healer with Rana’s teeth. “Didn't want you getting complacent, Cat.” He responded tartly and rolled into his belly. An act that he regret immediately. The movement made his head throb something in his stomach shifted in a way that suggested the contents didn't want to stay put. What could possibly be left in there at this point he didn't even know. He groaned, closing his eyes to shut out the light that wasn't helping his head any. This was just pathetic. He'd been in worse shape before. Well, Lucivar had. If he just grit his teeth and got on with it the sickness would probably pass, burned out by his Jewels, there had been no real need to come here even if he'd thought it prudent at the time. It wasn't as if slime mold had eaten away his membranous wings and he'd managed to rip his body apart on the Run this time. It was just some kind of persistent fever.
He cracked one golden eye looking at his Queen beseechingly. “I suppose you'll have a tonic for this.”
Maybe Ellie had gotten complacent, after how well everything had gone with telling her family about the fact that she'd maybe not been completely, one hundred percent honest about who Jaenelle was and what she could do. Everything had been so quiet, before the virus had started. She'd been excited about going back to college, about actually knowing what exactly she wanted to do with her life, and not having to worry about anyone trying to go to war with them. The Resistance had been up to their usual tricks, that wasn't anything new, but Zach was getting better, and nothing had actually happened to Freddie, even if they'd tried, and even having a new brother wasn't going that badly, so far.
It wasn't like she'd forgotten there was a world outside of her family, and the people she saw every day in Camelot. It wasn't like she'd really forgotten that bad things could happen, did happen, had happened, to people she loved. Seeing her father still sad sometimes because her dad was never coming back, realizing that the shirts she'd stolen from his closet, from her oldest brother's closet, didn't smell like them anymore, never knowing for sure if they'd actually be proud of the woman she was growing up into, if they'd have been okay with knowing that she wasn't exactly human anymore... all of that was a pretty good reminder that the world wasn't a very nice place.
Ellie didn't have a tonic to fix any of that, and she didn't have a tonic to fix this, either. She wished she did. There was something about this virus, something that wasn't natural, something that she couldn't quite find the right brew to fix. She could make up a mess that would help with the fever, one that would help with the pain, but something to actually fix it... well, she hadn't really been able to test anything out, not completely. She wasn't going to try out something on a patient before she was sure that it would actually work, or at least that it wouldn't make it worse because it was something so completely not natural.
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, the look in her eyes saying more than enough about what she had to offer, as far as tonics went. Carefully, she set a hand down on Rana's back, between his wings, and rubbed as soothingly as she could. It wasn't going to do much. There wasn't much she could offer, except the kind of comfort that you could give with a little bit of touch. Well, a little bit of touch, plus a little bit of power from her Jewels to soothe the worst of it. "This is the first time someone has asked me for a tonic. Normally, everyone's a little suspicious when I try to give them one."
Of course, Lucivar would know that her tonics wouldn't taste bad, not like her brothers. Especially Zach, who could be ten times more stubborn and snarly about doing what was good for him than anyone else, and who always ended up needing it more than everyone else, for some reason. It was sort of a frustrating combination for Ellie, knowing that she could help if he'd just let her. Rana probably wouldn't even think of refusing as an option, though. Not with Lucivar along. "I can give you something to make it a little better. For a little while. It's just going to be normal medicine, though. I haven’t really been giving tonics out to official patients. I’d have to experiment, and it doesn’t seem nice to give them out to people when they don’t know what to expect." She’d given tonics to her family, of course, left them for them all the time, but that was different. That was when they were healthy, to keep them strong. Those were safe.
Somewhere deep within Rana a chill settled into his bones. When he'd originally come here he hadn't been worried by this virus that seemed to be specifically targeting reincarnates. He'd never really worried about anything medical before. If he got ill, he just waited it out and got better again. Okay, so maybe this was a little more serious than a cold, but the fact that Janelle couldn't heal it… that was a worrying sign. The fact that she was trying to soothe his aches and pains with little more than a pat was barely any comfort at all.
If there had been something physical he could fight against he would have jumped up and tried to rip it apart right then. A great weariness overcame him however and he just allowed this woman to feed some of the strength of her black jewels into him. That at least made him feel marginally better. Though he didn't feel like pointing out that it was probably prudent for most people to be suspicious of her tonics. If they had never had one before then they would probably assume that it would taste horrible and if they had...well.
“You mean no one in their right mind is choosing to drink something that kicks like a draft horse? That's a real surprise.” He might have continued his gentle mockery aimed at walking her away from the frustration of being unable to do anything but it was at that point he started coughing again. That, at least, gave him a bit more fire. He had no intention of going down without a fight. Once he was able to breathe again he pushed himself into his elbows, ignoring the discomfort in his back, and eyed the girl that housed Janelle.
“I don't have to be an official patient. I'll discharge myself.” He paused. It wouldn't really be his greatest idea. Even going back home, if he couldn't call a sight shield reliably he wasn't really sure how well his family would cope with what he was. It was all new and untested ground. At least they probably wouldn't be keen to set up another marriage straight away. “...so long as I don't have to go through that magical transport thing again. I'd rather take my chances with The Run and unpredictable winds. That thing made me sick as a dog.”
The problem with making sweeping statements like that was he was obviously going to go along with anything this girl demanded of him. If she wanted him to stay, he wouldn't argue. Well, that wasn't strictly true. He'd probably argue and see how far he could push his luck, but if she were adamant, he'd stay where he was and learn to live with it. He'd just much prefer to be out of bed and moving around.
“What did you say your name was again? I was distracted at the time.”
Honestly, Ellie thought she should probably be a little bit insulted that he was teasing her about her tonics. Maybe they did have a little kick in them, but they worked! Just... a little too well, sometimes. She'd mostly toned it down enough for her family, since they weren't Blood. They couldn't handle the whole thing, and they probably wouldn't drink anything that had her blood in it anyway. Not that they'd probably have guessed if she'd given them something with just a little bit of blood, but that wasn't the kind of thing that Ellie thought you should really lie about. Not with family, especially.
Out of everyone in the whole world, though, Ellie thought that Rana was the only one that could really comment on them, and that made it a little harder to actually mind.
Besides, it was much more important that he not check himself out. He could, of course, if he wanted to. He had the right to. But Briar wouldn't like it, and Ellie definitely wouldn't like it. There weren't any safer places that he could go, other than the Clinic. She couldn't exactly take him along to Camelot with her, which would be the only other place she'd feel safe with someone that she cared about being while they were sick, for her to take care of them. She shook her head, a strand of hair pulling free from the precarious ponytail she'd scraped it back into with the force of the movement. "No, you do have to be an official patient, because if you try to step foot out of here, I'm going to find someone to sit on you until you're better." Ellie would do it herself, but they were all pretty busy.
No, Rana was going to stay in the Clinic, on neutral ground, where he was safe, no matter what she had to do to make it happen. She definitely still had enough of the Black left to make a shield around the room that he couldn't get out of, even if he happened to have all of his Ebon-Gray strength left. Ellie hoped that he wasn't sick enough that he couldn't use it at all. Not yet. It could get that bad, but not yet. They were going to find a way to fix it before it ever got close to being that bad, for Rana. Ellie could make the world believe that the sun was standing still, if she wanted to. She would make him get better.
Oh. But first she should probably answer his question. "It's Ellie." She almost didn't tell him her last name. She didn't exactly know if he'd act weird, with her being a Morgan. Some people did. Anyone that came with Lucivar attached probably wouldn't really care about all of that. Lucivar wasn't really impressed by things like names, or titles. He wasn't even really impressed by power, even if he respected what it could do. Respecting what it could do didn't mean that he wouldn't still poke at it with a stick, though.
In the end, though, Ellie didn't want to lie to him. She'd done enough lying to family. "Ellie Morgan." Of course, he might still not even know who the Morgans were, or connect a single Morgan girl with the rest of them.
Rana took a moment to think about whether he wanted to be a brat and argue about staying as a patient. Perhaps if he’d been in better health, if it was just something broken instead of an illness sapping his strength he would have. It was always fun to get the females riled up. He blinked. That was a particularly ‘Lucivar’ thought. He didn’t have a huge amount of experience in riling up the women of his family himself, there had been occasions of course, but they were few and far between and they often didn’t work out well. It was strange looking at your own family through the eyes of someone else, but he suddenly realised that the blood ties his own family had would never be as strong as those of the SaDiablo family. There wasn’t the mutual understanding of the give and take required to have such a successful bond.
He sighed, deflating before he could get prickly about the whole thing. At least she wasn’t concentrating so much on the fact that she couldn’t cure the whole thing. He’d have to conserve his strength though. If it were something that she couldn’t cure and he became drastically ill, he was certain that she’d nearly kill herself in an attempt to save him. Memories of Jaenelle as a half starved creature after some of her most demanding healings sauntered across his mind. There couldn’t be a chance of that happening at the very least.
“Fine. I’ll be a good patient, if only because I imagine you’d be quite upset if I sliced a limb or two off of whichever unfortunate soul you were planning on getting to sit on me.” He half-joked. It was very possible that he would react badly to someone trying to restrain him, even without Lucivar, historically he hadn’t reacted in the best of ways when people forced him into situations he didn’t want to be in, so maybe it was a little bit of a warning as well as a joke.
Instead he concentrated on her name. Ellie Morgan. He rolled it around his head, aware that maybe he’d pass out soon and that he still wanted to remember it when he woke up next. Ellie Morgan. Not quite the same ring to it as Jaenelle Angelline, but then it had often depended on what mood he was in as to whether or not Lucivar had used Janelle’s actual name or the nickname he had given her as a child. This name didn’t feel the same though, perhaps just because he gave import to the name Jaenelle Angelline, but Ellie Morgan...well, that could have been anybody. He made a noncommittal noise then nodded.
“I’d say it’s nice to meet you, Ellie, but I mean, the circumstances are lacking.” He turned his head, eying her suspiciously. “Just don’t go wearing yourself out with all your patients. When this is over I’d appreciate an opponent that can keep up with me.” The fact that they had just met wasn’t going to stop him adding her immediately to his list of ‘family’, which therefore meant he needed to make sure she was able to defend herself with and without a weapon. Not through any fear that she wouldn’t be able to take care of herself, any fool that chose her as a target would get exactly what was coming to them, but his own desire to make sure he was protecting her as much as he possibly could.
Ellie eyed him, sapphire blue eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. He'd agreed much too easily, mentions of slicing limbs off aside. Of course he could do that, he was Lucivar. Lucivar could turn a man into shreds and barely blink over it. Whether he would or not was another matter, and if she happened to be the one sitting on him... well. It wouldn't have been the worst thing that Jaenelle had done to Lucivar for his own good. They weren't going to talk about that if Ellie had her say, though, and it almost definitely, knock on wood, wasn't going to be repeated. Luckily, in the world they were living in, the chances of her having to go to war all by herself to save everyone else, and lie to them all so that they wouldn't try to help and get their stubborn male selves killed in the process, were pretty slim. She wasn't going to count it off completely. That was how you ended up jinxing yourself.
Of course, that wouldn't matter if she couldn't save him, somehow, now. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to try something crazy on him, some kind of tonic that could fix him or could make it worse... but a healing web, if it got bad enough, that wasn't anything that could possibly backfire. Except on her, if it ended up eating up all of her strength before it could fix him. That would only be a problem if she burned through the Black completely, and didn't give it a chance to recharge, and refresh. It wouldn't be easy, and he'd probably snarl at her after she was done, but that would mean he was alive to snarl at her. She'd do the exact same thing if it was one of her brothers. More, if it was Freddie. If it was Freddie, laying there in bed, she'd have been draining herself already, trying to burn through it before it could weaken him too much. Maybe if she made that comparison, if she had to do something desperate here, everyone would be impressed by her restraint.
Probably not. Restraint and Ellie weren't really words that went together all that well. She'd just have to make sure that it all turned out fine, then, so that she wouldn't have to do too much explaining in the first place.
She knew that Rana was probably just trying to sidetrack her, a little, talking about things like training, and not wearing herself out so she could keep up. That was okay. Ellie would rather not talk about the fact that she'd met Jaenelle's brother and it was because he was sick. If she thought about it too much, it would make everything seem... wrong. Make her forget to be Ellie so much, and be more of Witch, which would definitely not help with the restraining herself and not wearing herself out so that she'd be in better shape if it got desperate. If someone really needed her. Witch wouldn't care about things like that. She'd care that one of her males was sick, and needed to be fixed, and it wouldn't matter if she drained the body, if she cracked the chalice, whatever she had to do to channel the rush of power that a frail human shell couldn't handle.
Talking about sparring was much better than that. Maybe it would distract him from how bad he felt, too, which was part of what Ellie was supposed to be doing, anyway. "Speak for yourself. I bet I won't have any problems wearing you out." Not that she wouldn't go easy on him, while they were both still recovering, him from being sick and her from the energy it took to be a caretaker for a clinic full of infected people. And unless he'd happened to bring along Lucivar's sticks, they weren't going to be fighting with any weapons they'd both be familiar with, anyway. Unless... "Oh! Maybe you can explain to my brother how to make Eyrien weapons. He likes to make things, and I'm not very good at explaining the tricky bits."
Staying still was really starting to grate on Rana's nerves. It wasn't something he was used to and being confined to a bed was practically an exercise in torture for him. If he had enough energy to get up he probably would have been pacing the room until he passed out. As it was, he had already begun to drum his fingertips on the side of the bed, the short staccato rhythm interrupted occasionally by the need to fidget. He could only hope he wouldn't be there too long. It might be enough to drive him insane or, he supposed since Lucivar was now present, into the Twisted Kingdom. That would be a rather unfortunate turn of events.
His fingers came to a sudden stop a low grumbling in the back of his throat giving voice to his displeasure at the notion she'd have a chance at making him stop a sparring session before she felt the need to call time. He doubted she had anyone training her in quite the same way Lucivar had run sessions which meant she was out of practice, and while Witch might have given him a run for his money that wasn't who he was dancing with right now. “Don't be an idiot. I'll burn through whatever this is in a day or two and then I'll drop you on your ass. I may not have Eyrien weapons but my sticks are close enough. You’ll work it out.” The arrogance was purely Eyrien. Both that he'd recover and be in fighting shape in no time flat. Rana wasn't exactly as sure as he made out to be but Lucivar had enough confidence that he was willing to go with it.
Ellie’s next words caused him to shift himself excitedly though, pushing himself up to rest on one of his arms and get a better look at her. “You have a brother that makes weapons?” A sudden flood of possibilities swept through his mind. What Lucivar wouldn't give to have the familiar balance of a warblade always within reach. Even if it were only a close approximation it would be a comfort. He felt naked without one, even only having experienced the feeling for a short while. Rana could see the advantages. “When can I meet him? Do you have examples of his work?”
He didn't want to ask who exactly her brother might be. Not yet anyway. He didn't want to share her with anyone else right now even if that meant finding out that Daemon was here, walking around as if he owned the place. News like that could wait. Hell, he was half arguing to himself that the other patients could wait.
“I'm being too intense, aren't I?”
Maybe it was a little bit intense, but that didn't bother Ellie. Being Blood was a little intense. She'd never been around other Blood before, but it already felt sort of normal. Most of the time, Ellie was holding back on half of everything, trying to remember what level of reaction to things was an appropriate level. A human level, like she was still the same girl that she'd been before, not the one that wanted to go rip the world apart because somebody hurt a member of her family. Like that Gen girl that had kept tying Freddie in knots for so long. She'd known that the icy rage she'd felt over someone hurting her brother's feelings had been too much, and she'd managed to pull it back to a normal reaction of just calling her a bitch inside her head a lot, but Lucivar... Rana... he would have understood it, she thought. He was Blood too. He knew what the anger of the Jewels felt like.
"It's okay." Ellie reached out and brushed her fingers against his shoulder, the Queen silently reassuring one of her males. "You can meet him when you're better, and when I say that you're well enough to be up and swinging sticks at people. And you won't be arguing with the Healer about that." The order was tart, firm. She knew better than to think he actually wouldn't argue about it, but she could still try before she got all snarly and gave him the instruction as his Queen, if she had to. Not that she could exactly be Queen of anything especially, when she hadn't made her Offering to the Darkness yet. She might never, especially if she never had her Virgin Night to prepare for it. It wasn't like anyone would understand that part of being Blood, either. How was she supposed to tell Dustin how much hung on that?
Probably talking to Jaenelle's brother for the first time wasn't the best time to be thinking about trying to explain to her boyfriend why sex with her was sort of a tricky thing that couldn't exactly be like sex with a normal girl that you'd been dating for as long as they had. At least he was a gentleman about it, and hadn't pushed her. She hadn't had to figure out a way to explain that no, it really wasn't him, it was completely her and it was that she was afraid of what she was under the skin being too much for him... not that he'd reject Witch (not that she wasn't afraid of that, too), but that Witch would reject anyone that wasn't Blood, and Witch's rejection came with a price.
Everything had a price.
If she wasn't careful, the price for getting distracted and not being at her best might be Rana. Ellie refocused her attention, eyes fixed on him. "Right now, the important thing is you getting better." The important thing for her, anyway. Rana might end up with different priorities. Males were silly about things like that, sometimes. It was alright, he'd still like having her attention on him, for right then. It was all too new, them being there for each other, for him to not be territorial about her. She was his Queen. She didn't, as far as he was concerned, have any other family around to defend her. Not family that was Blood, that a Warlord Prince would see as enough protection. At least her moontime wouldn't be coming up for a while. She wouldn't have any chance of convincing him to stay put, then.
Being Blood was different from being human. It was different from being Eyrien even. It was different, he presumed, than merely having magic and being able to cast spells. It was more than all that. There was power inherent in them, a dark power, that for those gifted with darker jewels particularly had a weight to it. Even only after a few weeks of being Blood, Rana could clearly identify that he was so far removed from who he had been as a human being. The wings or his new golden eyes barely came into the equation. Being a Warlord Prince just made it worse. There wasn’t even a way to describe it, it just was. It was part of the reason he felt like he was being so intense, especially having met Ellie. His Queen. Witch. That only upped the intensity.
He already knew that he would now forever be on edge unless he knew she was completely safe. Which would probably mean that everyone else was a little less safe around him. Even her family, unless they turned out to be Daemon or his Father. That possibility seemed more plausible with Ellie standing there. Even Surreal would do as someone else to protect this girl, she always had a vicious edge to her that gave her a surprising advantage over her foes who never saw her coming. If they weren’t Blood though...he couldn’t trust that they’d keep her safe. Even a girl who could stop the sun from rising if she wanted to needed protection sometimes. There were always threats that could come at you sideways and take even the strongest by surprise.
He hadn’t even realised his temper had been rising to the killing edge until Ellie’s calm words and fingers reigned it back in. Allowed him to think clearly. She’d survived long enough to become a healer in an actual clinic which meant she’d had the time to prove her skills. She wasn’t as new to this as he was, and she’d survive a few more days while he recovered from whatever this illness was. If she didn’t, he’d rip the entire world apart.
Rana considered her order, working out how strictly he needed to adhere to it. Her tone of voice suggested she would brook no arguments though there was a certain amount of give and take when it came to a Queen’s orders. He couldn’t argue that it was stupid, but it also wasn’t as cut and dry as Janelle’s instructions to take it easy for several months when he first met her. It was unlikely he’d lose the use of his wings if he didn’t follow her orders to the letter, which gave him leeway. His grin was fierce and just a little bit calculating when he looked at her.
“Of course, Cat. But you’re not the only healer here.” His golden eyes twinkled with amusement. “I’ll make you a deal though,” He pointed toward the cabinet at his bedside. “Put your number in my phone and add me on Facebook or whatever you use most and I’ll consider staying put until you say otherwise.” If he couldn’t keep tabs on her physically right now, he wanted that extra level of confirmation that he could see she was active on her devices. Psychic threads only went so far, he’d be able to get her attention in the clinic, even in the surrounding city, but there was no telling that she wouldn’t go further afield. He needed to be sure that she could contact him if necessary.
Part of Ellie hadn't been sure that she'd be able to actually calm him. It was a little different, being a Queen when there was someone to actually be Queen to. People who weren't Blood, they couldn't really feel the difference, not until Ellie rose to the killing edge, herself, unless there was that sharp edge to her that showed people what she actually was, under the skin. She'd told Freddie what she was, a little bit, and she'd sort of started letting it out of the bag that she could actually do more than just heal to everyone else in her family, if it happened to come up at a convenient time to talk about it, but Rana was the first one that could tell who she was, and what she was.
She could feel him backing down, though. It felt strange. Not quite in her head, or anything, just... like a force in the room with them, one that had risen when he started getting upset, and soothed back down after she'd calmed him just by being what had been curled up inside her ever since she first heard Jaenelle's voice in her head. It felt nice, letting it out to stretch. Ellie sort of thought she might want to do it more. Not that anyone was keeping her from doing it, not really. Not on purpose. It was just... she didn't want to scare them with it. Just because they'd love her no matter what didn't mean that they wouldn't be a little bit worried, if they knew all the details about Jaenelle and how far Ellie could, and would, go. Not even if somebody pushed her. How far she could go just by accident, just because someone had moved the wrong way and made them seem like they could be a threat.
At least she'd stopped worrying, with Freddie. Freddie wasn't Blood, but she thought that maybe being her twin made up for it, sort of. Even just thinking his name made her feel the sort of fierce protectiveness that a Queen was supposed to feel for her Court. Freddie, she thought, if he wasn't already a king, would make an excellent Warlord Prince. It might not seem like it, not when they were being silly, or when he was pouting, but she knew that no one else would ever, could ever, be as fiercely protective of her right back as Freddie could. Maybe not even Rana, who she would never have to worry about understanding at all, not when he was almost as dangerous as her.
Thinking of Freddie, though, made her bite her lip while she reached over and picked up Rana's phone, pulling up his contacts list to add herself. She tapped at the screen, fingers moving over the keyboard without the ease of someone who actually spent a lot of time using her phone. She handed it back to him with the entry still up, her number listed under 'Ellie! 💗' (she'd tried out a couple of different heart emojis before she'd decided on the one that he obviously ought to have next to her name on his phone). "If I add you on Facebook, you're going to have my entire family descending on you to figure out who you are, and trust me, you're not in the kind of shape to stand up to all of them." There was absolutely no one in the world nosier than the Morgan-Evans family, when it came to figuring out who the newest people in their family member's lives were. They'd know that Rana wasn't her boyfriend or anything, but...
It would probably still be better to wait until after this was all over to introduce the rest of her brothers, and Lydia, to her new brother. At least this one didn't come with any awkward thinking about when he was born, and what his age meant about what Dad had been doing while he was supposed to be happily married, the way that the last brother she'd gotten had. After all, Rana was just hers, not theirs. That probably wasn't going to stop them from being incredibly nosy about it, though. She thought maybe, once Rana was well again, she might even be excited about watching it happen.
So half a deal it was then. Even if she'd explained it off as being for his benefit with terms half met, he could quite happily disobey her. Not that he's was in any particular hurry to leave. This illness had him feeling like he'd already gone ten rounds with Janelle while she was blind with rage. Everything hurt. Even with the soothing magic Ellie had fed into him, it took the edge off but he had to acknowledge that he was practically incapacitated. While curiosity about her family might burn through his mind his lungs felt like they were just burning.
At least he had her number. Slowly he typed out a simple message and pressed send ensuring his information went out to her phone even though, right now, she didn't need any mobile device to tell her where he was. Once that was done he turned the screen off because the light of it was hurting his eyes. You wouldn't catch him admitting it, but perhaps the excitement of meeting Witch again had been too much for him in his current condition.
Rana forced his grin back into his face and looked at the blonde girl. “I suppose I can wait for a family meeting.” He coughed as his voice caught in his throat and struggled to get his breath back enough to continue. By the time he did it was visible the toll it was taking on him to keep chatting and yet he didn't want her to go. Except she still had other patients to see and it was selfish to keep her there as long as he had. Plus if she stayed while he stayed hacking up a lung he'd never get her to leave because she'd be expending all her energy on making him better. Nothing for it then.
“In which case, you might as well bugger off so I can get some sleep.” He yawned enthusiastically to make his point then pillowed his head on his hands. “See you later, little Cat.” Rana winked a golden eye which didn't quite open again. His eyelids were heavy. He let himself drift and surrender to sleep.
Ellie almost didn't leave anyway, but... she was a Healer, and there were a lot of people around that needed healing. As much as she could do against something that no magic seemed to be good enough to cure. There weren't many things that Jaenelle had run into that she couldn't cure. Nothing natural that was completely beyond her abilities. This, though... this wasn't natural. This was poison. Worse than Witchblood. Worse than Briarwood. Ellie hated it, and she hated the people that had made it. If she ever got her hands on them, they'd wish for the mercy of their own weapon.
Not then, though. For then, she needed her energy for healing. She'd done as much for Rana as she could, as much as she'd done for anyone there. More, since he could handle more of her, more of what Witch was, without it burning him up. Maybe if she had the Ebony, instead of the Black... but probably not. It was too late for that now, too late for any offering to make any difference. She didn't have the energy to make a proper Offering to the Darkness, anyway. It was starting to drain her, too, even if she hadn't had so much as a sniffle yet.
She had to go, but she lingered a second longer, leaned down to brush her lips against his forehead like she would if he were one of her own brothers. He might as well be, already, she thought. He and Jaenelle were never letting go, now that they'd found each other again. At least he wasn't making her wait ten years, this time, before she saw his face again. She could see him any time she wanted to.
A few brushes of her fingers against the screen, and his name was saved in her phone, another little heart beside it, and a diamond after that. "Sleep tight, Rana." She'd be back to check on him. Maybe she'd even text him before she did, just to give him some warning that she was going to descend, so that he could pretend to be big and snarly and strong for her, if he really wanted to. Hopefully, it wouldn't be the only time she used his number at all... may the Darkness be merciful.