Wendel...? Elena...?
They must have noticed me, because their talking came to an abrupt stop. I tried to muster a smile as I turned to them, but I don’t imagine it amounted to very much.
“Good...morning...” I said, my voice hoarse.
I had hoped for less slurring, but alas. I felt awful for how rude I must have looked to Elena, but I was thirsty. I was going to ask for a glass—perhaps a pitcher, even—when Wendel ran up to me, his face as white as a sheet. He grabbed hold of my wrist and began taking my pulse immediately. Elena’s surprise, too, only lasted an instant, and then she had her game face on. I was certain that if I tried to make a joke, they would both scold me.
“Um, Wendel...” I started.
“Shh. Quiet,” he said sharply.
Yes, sir.
Once Wendel took my pulse, Elena lifted me in her arms and put me to bed. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought of it, but my goodness, she was a powerful woman. It was so cool. I wanted to be able to do the same. I was so jealous.
“Wendel, I’m going to call Whateley,” said Elena. “You stay here with Karen.”
“No, I’ll go,” replied Wendel. “I’ll make some herbal tea while I’m at it. It’ll take a little time, so would you mind changing her in the meantime?”
“Consider it done. Leave it to big sis!”
I saw tears welling at the corner of Wendel’s eyes. Elena got to work straightaway, every movement like that of a well-oiled machine. She readied a fresh set of pajamas for me, then began soaking a towel in a bucket of water. All the while, I had absolutely no idea what was going on.
“Well, let’s start with good morning, shall we?” said Elena. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, good morning,” I replied. “I feel mostly normal, but also...incredibly sluggish.”
“I bet. Just when everybody thought you’d recovered, you came down with a fever. And then you wouldn’t wake up... Do you remember talking with His Highness?”
“Yes, I...think I remember everything.”
“It’s been five days since that conversation.”
Well, that’s quite the sleep-in.
Unfortunately, that was about as far as my thoughts would allow any humor.
“Karen, are you aware that you almost died?” Elena asked.
“I almost...died...?”
“The reasons aren’t clear, but for a moment, the magical energy in your body almost drained away completely. It was so bad that you almost stopped breathing entirely. Everybody was left in a huge panic. We were all horribly worried about you.”
“I’m so sorry I put you through that...”
“It’s fine. We’re all just glad that you’re safe. But it looks like your hair still hasn’t returned to normal.”
“Yeah, exactly what is this, anyway?”
“Hmm... How to explain... But firstly... Come on, arms up,” she said, motioning with her hands. “Let’s get those old pajamas off.”
I did as I was told, and Elena explained as she helped me get changed.
“To put it about as simply as possible, Six believes it was the ball that Ern left behind. It ate away at you. The proof is in those marks on your arm.”
I followed Elena’s gaze and looked at my left arm. The area from my elbow to my shoulder was covered in what I can only describe as a slithering black tattoo. It was a pattern that crawled along my skin but never left the invisible boundaries set by my elbow and shoulder.
“Do you feel any discomfort?” Elena asked. “Anything odd or unusual?”
“No, nothing at all,” I replied. “I didn’t notice it at all until now...”
“Then it’s the same as His Highness...”
This piqued my curiosity, and I asked Elena what she was talking about. It turned out that Reinald shared a similar “tattoo,” but unlike mine, his was confined to a small area of his back. It brought with it a slight lethargy, but nothing that would see him collapse out of exhaustion—the going consensus was that he, too, had lost a portion of his magical energy.
“Magical energy is something that all people are born with,” explained Elena. “But it’s a life force of sorts—losing all of it will kill you.”
“Yes, I understand the basic theory. Mages have more of it than regular people, and they develop the ability to control their surplus, yes?”
In short, what had happened to me was a result of the black ball that Ern had left in the garden—a ball that had appeared at first to be a stone, then a kind of ink flower. When the ball had “switched on,” so to speak, I had been the target of about ninety percent of it. The other ten percent had consumed Reinald due to his close proximity to me. Having made a home for itself in our bodies, the ball had since evaporated. Whatever it was, it was now “deeply rooted,” according to Six, who was the only person who could detect it. In that sense, we were safe from other mages, but all the same, I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not to reveal the tattoo to anybody.
“But I’m not even a mage,” I said. “Why would my touch have set it off?”
“We don’t know. Even Six finds it strange. He was practically screaming, ‘We all know that if Ern left anything at all, then it had to be box-related! If she’d just given it to me, I might be free right now!’ It was a horrible thing to say when you’re the one who almost died...”
I lost consciousness as soon as the ink consumed me. I was rushed to a doctor when my breathing grew shallow, and my heart even stopped for a brief period. I started breathing again, of course, but all the same chaos and worry filled the Conrad household. Nothing else about my physical state was out of the ordinary until the following morning, when my hair turned white, and the strange tattoo appeared on my arm. Both a doctor and Six examined me carefully, but neither found anything life-threatening. As far as they could tell, I simply had a high fever.