The gate was the only place that Leana could think of to flee. She crashed to the floor in pain the second that she fell through the gate; he wouldn't dare follow her there. Covered in mud and gushing blood from her waist, she heard yell – presumably from Alistair – and large hands pull her to her feet. She didn't even want to stand, she was ashamed beyond words. A Seelie faerie? Leana hated the Seelie with a passion! They had killed her father, they had murdered queen Ariana amongst other atrocities they had committed over the years. And now she had fallen for one.
"What happened?" Alistair asked with great alarm as his eyes scanned every inch of her body for injury, finally settling for her wait. His face fell. "You're bleeding," No shit, she thought. He held her steady but all that her legs wanted to do was give up on her.
"Tell no one I'm here," Leana gasped as she clutched her waist, trying to avoid looking into Alistair's eyes for fear that he would realise what had happened. He began to stammer some kind of response as Leana turned to stagger away as quickly as she could towards the only destination she could think of; Keomie's home. When Alistair did not respond she turned and scorned him, tears in her eyes. "Promise me!" She yelled. Her words hit the boy like a bus. He knew that something had gone wrong and he knew that it was something emotional, but he dared not to open his mouth, he simply nodded and looked down as Leana slinked away into the trees.
Luckily, Keomie's place wasn't far from the gate at all, closer than the palace and in the opposite direction. Years ago, she lived in the palace with Leana but when the king went crazy, she decided that it would be best to move away. Keomie was a water nymph which meant that her home was always going to be around water, in her case, a hollowed out tree on the bank of a small lake though the majority of her home was in the roots under the water.
When Leana reached the tree, she threw her whole body against the door as she knew that she would be too weak to knock, she also did not want to remove her hand from her wound in case she passed out from blood loss before Keomie found her. Leana's ever-weakening body slumped to the floor, sliding down the door, leaving a long smear of blood down the door. Brilliant, a stripe of blood down the king's alchemist's door isn't suspicious at all. She lay on the floor, mud and dirt staining her face and hands as her consciousness began to waver the second that the door opened.
Her head, that was previously resting against the door, fell to the ground at Keomie's feet. "Leana!" She gushed as she dropped to her knees beside her. "What happened?" When she didn't answer, Keomie tried her best to hook her arms under her and yanked her inside. The woman winced at the trail of blood she was leaving on her floor and decided to try and lift her. With a grunt, she threw Leana's arm – the one that wasn't clutching her gushing wound – around her shoulders and lifted her. "Come on, help me here Lea," Leana just huffed in response. Around her, Keomie's home was a mess of colours from the many sheets of organza hanging around the place. She would never tell her so, but Keomie's home resembled more a brothel than a place of residence. Finally, they reached a chaise in the centre of the communing area. Her strength finally giving up, Keomie dropped her onto the cushioned seat causing Leana to call out in pain as Keomie winced an apology.
Tearing away the armour, Keomie fought to get to the wound, kneeling on the floor beside her friend and dousing the injury with all sorts of chemicals. "Ah!" Leana screamed as she tipped her head back and sweat rolled down her forehead.
After a minute or two, the pain settled, the bleeding had mostly stopped and Leana's heartrate had settled back to a steady, slow pace. She tipped her head back again and breathed deeply the warm air of Keomie's home. The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife. Keomie knew Leana's skillset was far too advanced to be beaten by some Seelie knight. She knew for a fact that something had gone wrong though she dared not ask. Keomie lifted her hand and dabbed the now healing hole with a wet rag to clear away some of the blood and dirt to prevent infection. "Go on," Leana sighed not letting her eyes leave the ceiling. "Say it," She knew that she would have to tell Keomie at some point, there was no use trying to pretend that she didn't. Keomie looked up as she wrung out the bloody rag over a bowl of water.
"What happened?" She said holding her breath. A small tear collected in the corner of her eye as she remembered his face when he saw her.
"It was him," She said. "That human. It was him," Whatever Keomie thought that she was going to say, that surely wasn't it. She was starting to believe that a gravitational attraction to Seelie blood ran in her family though she was smart enough to keep that thought to herself.
"What did he do?" she asked cautiously as she threw the rag aside and took the bandages from the floor.
"I left before he had the chance to do anything," The question mulled around in her mind. What would he have done? Would he have finished her off? Would he have taken her prisoner? There was no use speculating considering that she would never know. It was an empty question. The two sat in silence as Keomie tried desperately to shield the worry from her face as she tied the final knot on the bandage around her middle. Sighing and sitting back on her knees, craning her aching back, she looked up at Leana who was tenderly coursing her fingers over the bandage.
"So what are you going to do?" She asked unsure of whether she even had an answer. Once again, many options filled her mind. Report to the king? Run away? Suicide? All had their drawbacks. She couldn't possibly explain a loss without revealing the truth, the punishment of which she was not prepared to pay.
"I have to go back. What am I to tell him if I stay?" She asked, standing as best she could and rolling her shirt back down over the bandages. "I need time to come up with a lie," She told her friend as Keomie stood. She knew she was right, of course. For her own safety, going to the king would be the worst idea! Keomie followed her as she walked towards the door and grabbed her arm as her still shaking hands touched the handle.
"I'll buy you as much time as I can," She told her. Leana's face, still forlorn with heartbreak, she nodded and thanked her before exiting the house, disappearing back into the trees to avoid being spotted by as many fey as she possibly could.
When Leana finally reached her home, she pulled her phone from the charging cable beside her bed and flicked it on. Nothing. Why was she expecting him to have said anything? It's not like he had a duty to speak to her. She wasn't even sure if she wanted him to talk to her. What would she say? Sorry that I wasn't the simple human girl you thought I was? Leana shook her head and cast the phone down onto the covers of her bed, soon following with a light bounce. She wasn't sure how long she spent staring at the roof of her room but it was long enough to hear the birds begin chirping outside her window. Craning her neck to check the time, she read 04:58; five in the morning – had all that really happened in just under three hours? That one night was enough trauma to last her the year. Rolling over onto her side, not even bothering to change, she tried desperately to sleep; she could use all she could get before getting up in three hours to go to morning lecture in the city centre.
Would he even be there? He had no need to. Why would he? He would most likely have gone home that night and recounted all that he knew about her to that bitch of a queen he served. He had gone somewhere anyway, as when she returned through the gate after getting patched up, he was no where to be seen.