Chapter 98Light Comes

At first I was a little blinded with the light. I was on my back, still in the clearing we were before, with the sun above me. It hurt my eyes a little but that fades quickly enough. I still felt hands on my chest, so I turned my eyes to whoever was holding me. A silhouette at first, against the light sky and green trees. But then hair and face came into focus, colors flowed back into the image.

Deirdre.

"I'm sorry." Her voice was so soft and gentle.

But why was she apologizing.

She just saved me from death and healed me...

Healed.

Light magic!

She was able to use Light magic! She was more like me than I could ever have imagined. She was another abomination that the world didn't accept. Like me.

It made a lot of sense suddenly. Her interest in how Light worked for me, the ways she supported me in training Dark Magic. All that while she learned Light from me. She'd been very subtle about it too. And there were other things that suddenly made a lot more sense. She wasn't able to manipulate the elements like I did, but she could make a body stronger, helping her while fighting.

Or making focus stronger in me.

The first few times I tried to touch the elements with my mind, it didn't happen as fluently as I would have hoped. But with her hand on my shoulder, it worked. I never thought too much of it at the time, as my focus was elsewhere, but as I looked back on it, it all fell into place and made so much sense.

And it explained her battle prowess.

I smiled in understanding. "Don't be."

She helped me sit up. "But I kept it hidden from you for so long. I had no idea how to bring it up, or when..."

I still smiled. "It's alright. I just understand a lot of things now. It's not like we've had a lot of time to talk about this with everything that happened." One thing came to mind. "Is that why they locked you up?"

She shook her head. "No, I tried to keep it hidden from everyone. I never got to use it before I met you."

My muscles were a little stiff and confused. My body had gone from close to death to fully alive in the span of... I didn't know exactly. But it hadn't been very long. Maybe an hour or two. I looked around and saw Maeve standing next to the boy. The boy just looked at us with an indifferent curiosity. It was strange that a boy his age wouldn't be staring at Maeve's beautiful body. How old was he anyway? Fourteen, fifteen? It didn't really matter. We should bring him back to town or something. Of course I wanted to do something else first.

I stood up, partly helped by Deirdre and stretched. She'd done more than just heal my wounds, my whole body felt stronger for the moment. Maeve looked at me with a smile, she probably knew what I was going to do. Deirdre still had an apologetic look on her face and watched my movements carefully if I was going to collapse again. I just took another short look around to find Derrek Wolfe's body dragged away a little, his blood colouring the ground in an unusual hue.

I looked back to Deirdre and smiled. "Close your eyes."

"Why?"

"Just close them."

She finally closed them, allowing me to step closer, embrace and let my lips touch hers. She was almost shocked by the gesture it seemed. Her body twitched as my lips touched hers, but allowed it. Her hands slowly moved to answer my embrace and lean into her kiss. It was much softer now. She felt... Accepted.

Our lips were all that touched this intimately. Nothing more was needed. This wasn't lust or desire, but pure love. For me to her to show her that I really didn't care about her not telling it. And I didn't. She was who she was and I accepted her...

Completely.

When we broke the kiss, Maeve was smiling and the boy was looking around at some tree, touching it with his fingers and apparently being surprised by how it felt. Deirdre looked at me with pride in her eyes. We still held each others hands while we addressed the both of them.

"I think it's a good idea to tell people what's happened here, try and prevent anything worse from happening."

Deirdre squeezed softly in my hand. "And we need to find somewhere for him. What is your name anyway?"

The boy looked a little surprised. "They named me Connor, but I'm not sure."

"Come with us then, Connor, we're going back to town."

He just nodded and followed us, with Maeve behind him, back to the path to head back to town. I still held Deirdre's hand. I didn't want to let go of her just yet, plus I felt like I finally knew her completely. It was good though. Maybe things would be quieter from now on. Not that I wanted to give up being a messenger just yet, despite the crazy things I'd been through so far.

With a warm smile I led the way back to town.