One more day had been completely wasted. Esmerelda spent every spare moment, making sure that Hailey was warm enough, had eaten enough and had rested enough. The following day, Hailey sat in front of the mirror, looking at reflection. Behind her, Esmerelda brushed her hair, a process that usually took less time if Hailey did it, but she had it admit that it felt good. “The queen said that you need a lady’s maid and that I would be the perfect girl for the job, since we’re already friends and you aren’t used to having people look after you.”

That was strange. The queen had much bigger things to worry about than whether Hailey had a maid or not. All of that was the job of the steward, but she supposed that if she didn’t want a lady’s maid, she shouldn’t have run herself so ragged. She sighed, accepting Esmerelda’s help for now. She just hoped that it didn’t ruin the tenuous friendship that they had had.

“There,” Esmerelda said putting down the brush. “You look a hundred times better than you did yesterday.” Hailey had to admit that Esmerelda was good at this job and it was nice to wake up and have a tray of breakfast ready for you, but she couldn’t help feeling guilty about leaving a mess behind for Esmerelda to clean up.

She hurried to the king’s bedroom, where Natalia had agreed to meet her and teach her some of the things that Hailey didn’t know. The king himself must have been feeling better because he was no longer in his bed. Had Natalia healed him? Why were they meeting here if the king was nowhere in sight?

All of the curtains were open, letting in much more light than had been allowed the time she was here before. The massive bed sat between two windows and Natalia was actually sitting on the king’s bed. Her dark skin and hair seemed an opposite of Hailey’s light, easily burned skin and white blonde hair. She was also more poised, carrying herself like a queen, demanding and expecting everyone to follow her orders. Hailey should have seen through her disguise. She still wore the dress of a servant, but she had never acted like one. Hailey had been too tired to see it.

“You’re looking much better,” Natalia said, sounding satisfied.

“I’m feeling better,” Hailey said truthfully.

Natalia began to pace. “I have thought about your problem, and one of the things that you clearly have not learned is about runes.”

“I think I have read about these. They are like foci, right?”

Her dark eyes narrowed in thought. “No foci are something completely different. Foci allows a mage to focus their energy on a specific spell or a specific target. It can also help multiple mages focus on a single target. Those can be useful too. It can help you in healing. If you are healing a soldier who has a deep cut, like what an arrow would cause, it can help to focus all of your energy into that one spot on the body, but we are going to help the king, and for that, we need a rune. Your king is very sick. He is probably dying and there is not much that anyone can do about it.”

That was supposed to be a secret. Hailey worried that she had said something in her sleep. “How did you know?”

Natalia raised an eyebrow. “I was healing people before I even became a mage. It was my specialty and so I can sense pain in people without even touching them. Just being in the room with the king, I could sense that every cell in his body is crying out in agony.”

Natalia’s innate power seemed a lot more useful than Hailey’s ability to turn invisible, but it was something that no one got to choose.

“The best thing that a mage can do for someone who cannot be healed is to ease their pain and that is what we will do for the king. It will make him feel much better and it will aid in his mobility and allow him to rule properly for his final days.”

Hailey nodded, feeling nervous about what Natalia was about to do. If she wanted to, she could easily kill the king and possibly destroy all of Taivalon. Her stomach tightened, but she had no choice but to trust this woman. She was the only one in all the nine kingdoms who had come forward to help Taivalon’s dire situation.

Natalia knelt on the floor and pulled back the rug that was on the king’s side of the bed. With a piece of chalk, she drew the rune that would aid the king. Hailey watched and traced the rune into her notebook. This must be what was helping the king already, why he was out of his bed.

“Incipisso,” Natalia said. Briefly the rune light with a green light. It faded to the chalk outline drawn on the floor. “You must make sure to draw these precisely. If you don’t, the magic may not know what you are trying to accomplish, and it will either not work or possibly do the wrong thing.

“Runes fade faster than other magic, and you will have to come back tomorrow and redraw and ignite the rune, but it will help him significantly. I will come with you to see it done. Now we can go to your room and refresh the one that will allow you to sleep for a shorter amount of time. Be warned that this little trick may help in the interim, but eventually you will need all of your sleep, a full eight hours. If you miss even one hour of the four that are required for the rune to work, you will be much more tired the next day than you would have been if you only slept for three hours.”

“As a side note, I have found that setting up a bed for the maids during their monocycle can really help them.”

Hailey created a portal to the shimmer. She was beginning to hate this place. Sure, it was where Aaron was most of the time, but there was always work to do and it was so disheartening to see people getting hurt all the time without being able to do anything but heal the damage that had been done.

They entered the tent where the injured lay. Stepping inside, Hailey smiled. The boy that Hailey had healed before was gone. There were new people here now, a woman with a baby, soldiers and children. It seemed that no one was completely immune to the fairy’s magic. No one but the mages.

Hailey constantly worried about what was happening on the border and worried that it might be tied to the king’s health. If the princess were awake and free from the spell, then maybe this wouldn’t be happening.

Natalia ignored the injured people. She pulled back the oilcloth in a corner of the tent and traced a rune in the sand. “These are not as powerful as the spell we used in the king’s bedroom.” She paused and concentrated. “Incipisso.”

Hailey copied the rune into her notebook and wrote down next to it what this one would do. If this really did help, that could make a big difference. Hailey made the rune the way that Natalia had shown her. Learning something new was always one of her favorite things about magic. She was relieved to see Natalia standing right over her, watching her finger trace the rune in the dirt. She nodded to Hailey. Hailey breathed the word of power, “incipisso.” The spell lit green for a moment and she stood, looking at the glowing symbol that would help these people heal.

“It works in a radius, like any spell. It creates an area of effect. Just the two runes we created should help anyone who is in this room and several of the people on the outside.”

Natalia pushed open the tent flap and they stepped outside. “You will have to refresh this every week, but you also will not have to come here everyday. They can bring the most injured people to you. You can’t plan for being here when someone gets hurt, though. All you can take care of is things you can plan for.”

Hailey nodded. What Natalia was demanding was that everyone, including Hailey, realize how precious Hailey’s time was. Everything was changing again, and she could feel some of the tension relax from her shoulders. People would die. There were people wandering the forest right now, and she couldn’t save them all. It made her feel better and feel guilty about the people who would die because she wasn’t here everyday to check on things.

She glanced along the shimmer, wondering for the millionth time what had gone wrong and how the fairies had suddenly become such a big problem. Not too far away was Aaron and that woman he had been spending a lot of time with lately, Gillian. Aaron’s back was to her, and as usual, he was talking and joking with the other woman, standing a little too close to her for Hailey’s taste.

He turned towards her and his smile faded. Had his feelings for her changed? Was he falling in love with the gorgeous red head that was always out here, always by his side. She felt small and stupid. She had not treated him well in the last few weeks. She had been tired and too busy to give him the time of day.

“Are you ok?” Aaron raced the distance to meet up with her.

“I am much better than I have been in weeks. Thank you.”

“I will go see to the injured,” Natalia said, leaving them there alone.

An awkward silence stretched between them. She didn’t know how things were between them and that made everything different. Then she remembered what she had wanted to tell him as she worried that they both might be led to their deaths in the forest. “I am sorry about everything, if I made you worry.” There was so much more she wanted to say, but just then, Gillian walked up.

“How did you make it out of the forest? I saw you walking into it before I fell.”

Aaron looked at Gillian who grinned up at him. “Gillian found me, but I pulled her out of the shimmer a couple of weeks ago. I think now we’re even.”

“Yeah, so don’t go following any more fairies around. If the guys hear that you had to be saved by a woman, twice, you’ll never hear the end of it.”

Aaron chuckled. He did seem to be happy with Gillian, and Hailey had been so mean to him lately. She bit her lip, unsure of what to say to Aaron or the beautiful woman by his side.

“Hailey, I have an idea. We should go.”

She turned, relieved to be able to walk away from that conversation without making Aaron think that she didn’t care about him. She looked at Aaron, unsure of whether to hug him goodbye or just walk away. “Thank you, Aaron,” was all she could manage before she turned and walked away. What were you thanking him for? A tiny voice in her head asked. A million better responses came to mind. It’was good to see you, I’m glad you made it out of the forest ok, see you soon, but it was too late.

Hailey returned to her glyph and created the portal to get her home. Natalia was grinning about something. Clearly whatever she was going to show Hailey was going to be something good, but Hailey couldn’t help but think of Aaron and Gillian. She had been such a fool. She had not taken the time to thank him for everything he had done for her. It was no surprise that he was moving on, but now that someone else was with him, she missed him more than she ever had, and what kind of person did that make her?

“Are you ok?”

Hailey shook her head to clear it. “Yes, I’m fine. Just distracted.” She forced Aaron out of her thoughts. It would do no good to dwell on that now when she could do nothing about it.

Instead of using the portal to her bedroom, she used the one that sent them back to the throne room. A line of people waited to see the king and many of them turned when Natalia and Hailey appeared. Portals were a rare thing in Taivalon.

In the king’s chambers, Natalia said, “Just like you are required to get your rest, the king needs his rest if he is going to continue to rule. I think that if we tie the rune to the mage light, then it will let you know if he’s not getting enough rest.”

That was clever. Hailey created a mage light. “I will have to get the lantern for it in the mage’s study or I think I might have one in my bedroom.”

Natalia waved her hand. “It doesn’t matter.” Natalia bound the mage light to the spell and Hailey could see the connection, a series of green lines connecting the rune to the light. The lines connecting the two spells faded almost instantly.

Natalia took a deep breath. “I know that you’re busy, and now that you’re training with me, you might be even busier, but you really should take the time to thank your friends. Someone who you can trust, someone who will stay with you through thick and thin, those relationships are worth every bit of effort you put into them.”

She knew that Natalia was talking about Esmerelda, and so she said, “I think I know exactly what I can do to thank her.” Natalia smiled, but Hailey’s thoughts drifted back to Aaron. Had she already let a relationship die that she should have been nurturing?