The king let go of Hailey’s hand. He rose unsteadily to his feet. Hailey stood near him. He began to cough. He almost fell to the floor, but Hailey grabbed him. His entire body was shaking as he coughed. His feet dragged across the wooden floor as he leaned on her. He didn’t weigh as much as he should have. She led him to a couch at the edge of the room, prepared to float him there if necessary.

Hearing the coughing, the guards entered the room. “Go get his doctor,” she told them, “and the queen. Quickly!”

They glanced at the king in fear, as if they needed his directions to do anything to save his life. Her heart thumped in her chest. He was gasping for breath between coughs. “I’m going to run a test on you now,” she told him. Don’t you dare die on me, she thought at him. She tried to make her voice soothing. Everything would be fine. “It’s ok, your majesty. I’m going to run a test on you to see what is wrong.”

She was a little relieved that she had just practiced this on Aaron. She tried to slow her breathing, to remain calm and focused on the task at hand, but this was the heir of the kingdom collapsed before her. She took his hand and focused. There was something wrong with his lungs. He coughed again. He seemed to always be careful about covering his mouth when he coughed and now she could see why. A drop of blood made its way down his chin. He had coughed up blood.

Then she tried a healing spell. Why hadn’t they told her? But there was a resistance to the spell. She couldn’t fight it, couldn’t make his body heal. She tried harder. Sweat broke out on her forehead. They were all doomed if this man died. There would be precious few people she could get out of the kingdom.

She couldn’t do it, couldn’t manage to heal him. She could tell was wrong, thought she knew how to fix it, but when she tried, nothing happened. She was breathing heavily when the queen entered. The king looked like he were taking a nap.

“Theodric,” she said, taking his hand.

The king’s eyes blinked open.

“Are you ok my love?”

He nodded.

“I’m sorry. I tried to heal him but I couldn’t manage it.”

“Never mind that now,” the queen said. Then she turned to the guards. “I don’t want anyone let in here except for the doctor, do you understand?”

The soldier’s bowed and returned to standing on either side of the door.

The doctor entered the room a moment later and closed the doors behind him. He felt at the king’s forehead and felt at his wrist.

The queen took a deep breath and turned back to Hailey. “He is dying. Not even Barinon was able to do anything for my husband and believe me, he tried. We are trying to keep it from the public. Can you imagine the chaos it would bring if they knew that the heir was dying? This is something we have to keep hidden from almost everyone. You cannot tell anyone and there is nothing you can do for him. That’s why we didn’t tell you.” Then she turned back to her husband and the doctor.

Delilah could hear people screaming. She shook her head and the sound went away. That was odd, she thought to herself. She ignored it. Mathias had told her that everything was going well in her kingdom for now, and so she had decided to spend much of her time outdoors.

It was cold, but it would be colder and wandering her gardens wouldn’t be an option when the snows came. All of her flowers and vines had gone dormant, looking dead but the green fir and spruce trees reminded her that things were still alive.

An image of men fighting flashed through her mind. She could see them fighting and then caught on fire. Flames licked up their bodies. And then, as quickly as she had remembered it, the image was gone.

She looked out over her city. Buildings were built near the castle, but there were several ruins of homes farther out. She couldn’t remember why. What had happened to the homes? She looked again. There were no ruins there. They were little homes all perfectly built.

She didn’t thinks he really remembered anything correctly anymore. Her life seemed to swing from memories to reality and back again and sometimes she didn’t think she could tell the difference between memories and reality. It made her wary about everything. If she couldn’t trust herself, then who could she trust?

Mathias probably. He had always been good to her, hadn’t he? He had been her faithful assistant and had done his part to help her run the kingdom. She should make sure that she thanked him the next time she saw him.

A cool wind blew across her face, stinging it with cold. She was sure her nose was red. She wanted to venture farther, away from her castle and out into the forest the way she had…when? She was certain that she used to roam the forest alone. She just couldn’t remember when that had happened.

She decided that she would go and take a walk, despite the cold. Her leg was healing up pretty well, and she could see the path that led out from her home and into the giant trees of the forest. She needed to clear her head and maybe a walk would help. The forest was a beautiful place, even when half of the trees had dropped their leaves to the ground.

She hadn’t gone far when she saw a baby deer. It flicked an ear at her. It still had spots of the very young deer. It’s mother was close behind. She stayed motionless and waited for them to pass.

As she walked, she remembered fire. She kept seeing flashes of it and people screaming and burning, but she was never the one being burned. It didn’t make any sense. She continued down the path, watching the squirrels race up their trees, chittering to one another. Even they knew that it was a last opportunity to gather for the winter.

Another memory surfaced as she paused under one of the leafless beech trees. Her leg was beginning to hurt. She should turn around now, but she paused, grasping at the memory. There was a child, a baby, only a couple of weeks old. She held her in her arms and she said something to it. The baby was silent and beautiful, but whose baby was it? She didn’t remember the parents, only the child and the way the room seemed to freeze, everyone but her and the child were completely motionless.

What did that even mean? She didn’t even know a spell to cause things to freeze like that. Maybe it was from a dream. She felt angry. Something was done to her. Someone had betrayed her. That was real, she was almost certain of it. But who had betrayed her and had she already conquered that foe? Feelings of uncertainty began to creep in. Should she be running a kingdom if she had no idea who had betrayed her or why? But she was the queen. She had a responsibility to her people.