A Love Spell

Hi Everyone,

I hope you have enjoyed my last chapter. Here is chapter two...

Chapter Two

Stone

Vira-na-Nog Province 0400 Sunday

The slap to my face stunned me awake. I rolled over to my right, a move I perfected in defence class, and grabbed the jeweled dagger under my pillow. I was on my feet, before the next blow made an arc in the air.

The smell of jasmine filled my lungs as I drew a deep breathe, ready for a fight.

‘That was the second slap, by the way,’ a sweet feminine voice announced.

I froze, it couldn’t be.

‘Granna?’ I asked.

‘Yes, of course it is me. Who did you think it was?’she replied.

I relaxed my stance. My grandmother was not your usual run-in-the-mill queen-mother, but I still never expected her to wake me up with a clout. My cheek stung like I had been bitten by a swarm of hornets. Lowering myself onto the bed, I held the cool silk sheet to my burning cheek.

‘An assassin…or a burglar maybe? I wouldn’t have expected my elegant grandmother all dressed in lace and pearls, to wake me up with a wallop.’

She laughed a tinkling sound, like bluebells in the spring wind.

‘You and your father are always so dramatic,’ she said. ‘Never did I meet such serious Seelie Princes, in all my 200 years in Vira-na-Nog.’

I sighed, this was an old battle between her and her eldest son. Granna always thought he should be out getting more summer girls and having parties, while father wanted to improve the province by laying out new laws.

‘Well, you did just suddenly bestow me with a clout in the middle of the night. What was I suppose to think?’ I declared, stowing my dagger back into my pillow slip. 

Folding my bare arms against my cotton singlet, I waited for her reply. She harrumphed in resignation. Then with a click of her fingers, the lemon scented candle at my bedside table flared to life, casting a warm glow throughout my pentagon shaped room, erasing the shadowy recesses that were so much like my personality.

‘Well now that you are finally awake, I have something to tell you,’ she said.

Granna sashayed to my sitting area and sat down regally on my giant sized recliner. Her lace skirts magically flared out like a daisy petals around her. She clasped her hands into a prism on her lap. A sign she was about to make a proclamation.

‘I had a vision,’ she declared, watching my face.

She was weighing my interest. Recently, father had little faith her premonitions as very few had come to pass, so she was now wary of who she gave her forebodings to. I schooled my features into a guise of attentiveness, but remained skeptical.

‘You have a vision a day. Why is this one so urgent you had to wake me up at this ungodly hour?’I asked.

She frowned and bit her lip. I stilled. Maybe I had gone too far, but before I could rephrase the question she continued.

‘This one was different,’she said flatly.

‘How?’ I asked.

The frown lines on her brow disappeared and her sapphire eyes glowed.

‘I saw the seer girls,’ she said.

My right eyebrow rose of its own accord, a sign I was hooked. Several faeries had had visions or dreams of the girls in the last month. Granna smiled at my reaction. Still I had some doubts that this vision was critical.

‘The seer girls are a myth. Just stories, faeries tell their young to keep them away from the bucalauns during the wild hunt,’I said.

She laughed at this.

‘We faeries are myths to humans, but that does not make us make–believe,’she stated.

She had a point, I gave her that and motioned her to continue.

‘So you saw the seer girls again… who supposedly kidnap young faeries. Why couldn’t you have wait until the morning meeting to tell me about this? ’ I asked, still not understanding her dire need to awaken me from my sleep.

Granna smiled like Alice’s Cheshire cat and I balked.

‘I saw you kissing one of the girls while the other hid in the bushes.’

...

Regards

Nivi