🎧 Feelings Don't Lie by Ofenbach ft. Salem Ilese
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"I'm glad he got in, I knew he would."
"Look, Davina, I feel the need to warn you that they will want some explanations from you, such as why your power feels so… strange."
"I felt it too," sigh. "I don't know why, but it felt different when I lost my control in the coliseum. Sure, it's been years since I last felt it, but it felt wrong, it shouldn't have been that explosive, even if we were dealing with anti-magic. And I'm sure my magic didn't feel that way when I was a little girl, at all, so I get it. But unfortunately, I don't know either."
She seemed frustrated, but not with me, "That complicates things."
"What is your work in here?" I asked after an instant, curious.
"I'm the head healer," she passed her hand on her long ginger curls and licked her heart-shaped small lips. "I've had this work for four centuries now, so, I know a pretty good amount of kids."
"Can I ask you a question, Cat?"
She narrowed her eyes, "Yes, it's different working here now that the Empire is ruled by the Seven Kings and Queens, it's very different from how it was back when the Emperor and the Empress were still around."
I felt my cheeks blushing, "How did you know I was going to,"
"Ask me that?" She giggled softly. "You were very vocal over how you are against the change in power, and how you would revert it all if you could. I guessed you would be curious about that in special, given how I'd said that I also am not the happiest with the current ruling system. Or with how they," she paused, eyeing me as if wondering if I was worthy of hearing what she had to say or not, and when her shoulders fell down, I knew she had decided not to tell me. "Yes, it's different."
"Different how?"
Cat licked her lips, "The Imperials... you knew them thanks to your parents, so I think you will get it, but they exhaled power, they dominated wherever they were, wherever they went to, without having to force it. It was natural, they just… were, and we respected that, we didn't doubt it, as they were that different kind of strong, and we could feel it. Their presence was different, it was overwhelming, it was consuming, it was unable not to look at them, not to be drawn at them, and not to feel small when we did, given how they were build different than all of us."
A sad smiled curled my lips softly, "I know, I remember that very vividly. While the new Kings and Queens don't feel like that, right? They feel wrong, because they shouldn't be the rulers of the Empire, because you can feel that their power was wrongly stolen away."
Looking down at her hands, jaw clenched, she nodded. "Yes, but in a way, they are still strong, more than us, so we can't do anything about it, not when they ganged up on anyone who went against their power. Anyone who tried to fight them, they ganged up and destroyed the person, which is how the fallen nobles came to be, because they were kids of the people who dated to speak up. But those kids are not their parents, they are submissive to the current power, hence why almost all of them got accepted."
Lisa Thalassa is an example of that, "I expected as much."
"Now, Davina," her demeanor changed, "the headmaster is here."
That much I know, I felt her presence outside, it's hard not to when she makes sure everyone will feel her, like a white peacock showing of it's pretty dam feathers. "Are you leaving?" I asked.
"Me? No, I have to keep an eye on you," she winked.
And somehow, that made me feel better, comfortable, relieved. "I see, thanks for that," I said softly and turned my eyes to the door. "Will you keep standing outside, or will you come in, headmaster Di Angelo?"
With a scoff, she came inside, and to my dismay, he was with her, like a guard dog, which is weird since I couldn't feel him at all, and no one ever passed unnoticed from my radar. "Got some manners now, uh?"
"You were nothing to me before, but now it's different, now you're my headmaster, hence why, now I will be as respectful as possible."
Clicking her tongue, she closed the door behind her and took a look over me, then sat down on the fancy cream chair at my left. "At least, you can do that much, I'm surprised."
"I did get some great education before the orphanage," I snorted.
"You don't look as broken as I thought you would, dangerous little thing," he muttered, his voice husky and almost a whisper. "A normal fae would have broken all of their bones in there, you only broke your arms."
"I did?" I blinked, totally having forgotten that, but when I looked at my arms, they weren't broken. I moved them, but only felt them hurting slightly, nothing close to agonizing. "They don't feel broken."
"You have Cat to thank for that," Dove scoffed.
I turned to her, "Thank you, again, Cat."
"Oh? You actually thanked her?" Dove gasped. "I thought you were of the proud and stubborn type."
"You don't know me," I rolled my shoulders. "And I am, but some people deserve some… decorum, some respect, some are worthy enough for me to swallow my bitter feelings, my pride, my stubbornness, just so I could thank them properly. That's the case for Cat, she's been nice to me, and I'm not very used to that, hence why those rare people like her, to me, deserve way more than the two of you do. You two treated me like everyone else does, so, you fit in the other category, and you only got yourselves to blame for that."
"Devious little thing," he hummed under his breath.
"Stop calling me something nasty and then little thing, bastard," I snapped. "That's not nice, not nice at all, you're a jerk, you know that? And I am not a thing!"
"So you are the nasty adjectives and little?" He countered, grinning.
"You,"
"Uh-hm," the headmaster cleared her dam throat, stopping me, and I turned to her, my jaw clenched with annoyance. "You said you got a good education until you were in the orphanage, but you went to the orphanage at 14 years old, and the usurpation which killed your family, happened when you were 7. Where were you in those 7 years in between?"
That a nice question, but so damn inconvenient. "Elsewhere?!"
She narrowed her eyes to me, suspicious, "Elsewhere, where?"
"Elsewhere, in a place you wouldn't be able to go to," I said.
"Being mysterious about this won't get you anywhere, Davina, we need to understand what's happening, and you have to collaborate with us," she exclaimed, clearly stressed. "Because we really need to understand what the fuck was that, what happened, and how it happened."
Filters, Ravenna, filters, filters. "And what would that be?"
Crossing her arms over her chest, she sucked on her cheeks, "The way your magic exploded felt wrong, not in a way that your magic felt like that, but the way it did, how it did.