FIVE

Consciousness creeps up on me slowly and painfully.

Groaning, I blink, subconsciously reaching upward toward my head, which throbs horrendously. The night sky spins as I slowly open my eyes, the stars dancing around the velvety canvas in my vision as I try to figure out what is going on.

I've slipped on ice and hit my head. That much I know for certain.

Wincing, I brush my fingers along my scalp, feeling the warmth of my blood gathered in one area of my hair, yet when I touch the spot, it's only slightly tender, the sharpness I would expect to accompany touching a wound not there. The blood must be from nothing more than a scrap.

Slowly I sit up, blinking blearily. Beside me, the ice is slick with my blood. My mouth goes dry, realising what this means for me, being out in public bleeding the colour that I do.

I've always bled the colour purple. No one has been able to provide answers as to why, and due to the questions it arises, mother and I have kept it a secret between us and a few others. Lei knows, and a few other close friends, along with mothers personal physician, and that's practically it. I've gotten lucky never bleeding in public, yet out here, there's a chance anyone could see me.

The sound of ice cracking beneath me has me looking over my shoulder.

Eryk approaches over the ice, wiping their hands down with a towel...Covered in my blood. His suit is unkempt as he kneels down beside me.

"Are you insane?" he questions, hair raining down around his eyes as he looks over me. "Are you trying to kill yourself?"

I blink, unsure of what to reply with. My vision is dizzy, unconsciousness threatening to swallow me against at any moment. Faintly, I wonder if I'm dreaming that Eryk is before me right now, holding my arm tightly, my blood staining his fingers. Why else would he be out here right now?

"My head..." I murmur, wincing as a wave of pain washes over me. There's a lot of blood for just a cut, yet when I touched my head I felt nothing more serious.

Maybe I'm in shock...Or dreaming.

"You're going to be okay. I've healed you," Eryk murmurs, brushing my hair back to examine where all the blood must have come from. His fingers are gentle, not eliciting any pain in their wake.

"Healed me?" I mouth, confused. "Who are you?"

Eryk doesn't respond, as I lie back down on the ice, dizziness forcing me to. He leans over me, still holding my arm tightly as he looks around. I'm alone out here with him. Lei must have gone inside to get help, making me wonder how long I've been out here for.

"It's like you're trying to make my job harder," Eryk murmurs, shaking his head as he continues to examine me. "It's like you want us both dead."

Job?

I blink up at him as he leans over me, brushing my hair back from my face. He looks genuinely terrified to be on this ice with me, the blood all around us. Yet I have a feeling it's not because of what he is witnessing, but because of the implications that surrounds us.

"Eryk?" I hear someone say in the distance. There voice is deep, foreign, gliding over me with ease, almost as if it's telling me that it's okay to no longer fight the darkness that is approaching upon me.

So I do just that, letting my eyes flutter closed, letting unconsciousness swallow me.

+++

I sit up in bed, back resting against the headboard.

I've only been awake for ten minutes now, my mind still having a rough time sorting everything where it needs to be. A healer sits on one side of my bed, examining my head, while my mother sits on the other, her hands grasped in my cold ones.

"I'm fine, mother," I assure me, my voice croaky and rough.

I woke in bed, only remembering brief glimpses of what happened before I last passed out. I was lying on ice, the feeling cold and hard against my back, my blood slick against my fingertips. And there was someone else there...Eryk.

"You could have died out there...You should have died, either from hypothermia, or from hitting your damn head," she curses, closing her dark eyes for a moment, trying to regain composure.

I glower at her. "This is how you talk to your almost dead daughter?"

Right now I'm already starting to feel better, despite the faint headache that lurk in the back of my head. My mind is starting to clear too, more of the night forming back where it is supposed to be in my memory. For a moment there, I thought that I may never remember past when the ball started.

"This isn't funny...Not anymore, I've had enough," mother exasperates, looking genuinely distressed. "My heart almost stopped seeing you like this."

"The bump to the head is very minor, ma'am. No more than a scratch," the healer murmurs, pulling away from me. I've known this women my whole life. She is the only one my mother trusts to know what colour my blood is, even if she has no answer as to why I'm like this. Mother has never pushed it, telling me to accept and love the fact that I'm different.

"That's impossible. There was so much blood," mother hisses.

She never doubts the healer, which means she is truly shaken up by this. For some reason I feel as though they are both being ridiculous, that there is no way I could have died from that. Yet why? I can't quite grasp why this feeling is haunting me.

Mother looks over her shoulder at Lei, who still stands in her gown, blanket draped over her shoulders. "No one else saw the blood, did they?"

Lei shakes her head mutely, eyes blank.

Someone changed me while I was unconscious, as I'm now dressed in warm clothing, rather than my soaking wet ballgown. I remember falling through the ice, feeling the bite of the cold water against my skin as my head threatened to sink around the surface. Lei dragged me up and onto my feet...When did Eryk show up.

"I'm can't disagree with what I'm seeing," the healer notes grimly, shaking me from my strewn about thoughts.

"You can leave," Mother instructs. The healer does so promptly, taking her equipment with her. Once the door closes, mother turns her attention back on me. "You are so lucky. Keep drinking your tea."

I hadn't realised I had abandoned it, as mother hands it back to me from where I had put it on the bedside table. It's warm against my hands, yet my stomach churns too unevenly for me to dare take a sip.

"I realise that," I say. A darkness gathers in my chest, remembering when my life was last at risk...The day at the waterfall. "It wouldn't be the first time."

"The Moon Goddess wants you alive to serve a bigger purpose," she assures me, petting my leg atop my covers. She glances over slightly, seeing my dress laid out against the bed, part of it ripped around the waist, likely from the ice I broken through. "Wait...Where did you get that dress?"

"You left it for me on my bed. Now who hit there head?" I say flatly, tilting my head at her.

"I left a pretty lavender dress, not...that."

Shaking my head, I lean back into my headrest. If it were any other day, I would be questioning how a strange, yet beautiful dress appeared on my bed that wasn't by my mother. Right now, I'm willing to assume one of her many assistants misplaced the dress and replaced mine with another.

"I nearly died, who cares about the dress," I dismiss irritably. There's only one thing I want an answer to right now. "Where is Eryk?"

Mother stiffens. "Who is Eryk?"

I'm not sure how to answer that. I'm not even sure who Eryk is, yet but from my foggy memory, he saved my life. I don't believe his claim to heal me, which is suddenly dawning on me again. Maybe he meant helping in that moment, although my stomach does churn uneasily, knowing that there is nothing more than a scrape on my head, when my blood was everywhere.

"Apparently you have connections to his family," I reply uneasily, wondering how she doesn't know. I glance over at my friend, who stares distantly out the window, still shivering. "Lei, the guy talked to you tonight."

She frowns, shaking her head. "You really hit your head hard. I never spoke to a man named Eryk."

My breath hitches in my throat. Did I hit my head hard enough to imagine an entire night involving an enigmatic stranger? It seems unlikely, his strange accent still ringing in my ears, the details of his face forever etched into my memory. The more I think about him, the more memories return to me.

"Lei, this is not the time to joke," I tell her slowly, although the concern in her eyes suggests she isn't playing around with me. But I swear she was the one who first approached him. "Mother, a man named Eryk was there when I woke up out on the ice. Lei must have gone in to get help."

"I'm sure we can track him down and thank him," Mother says dismissively, grabbing the cup out of my hand. "I will go make sure they are getting you more tea."

Fear blossoms inside me as I realise that no one here has seen the man that I've seen.

"Lei, don't you remember him? Brown hair, brown eyes?" I ask weakly, as she comes to sit beside me in my mothers absence. She's look at me as though I really did hit my head and now I'm having thoughts that aren't actually real.

"I have no idea who you are talking about. Maybe you should get some rest," she whispers soothingly, brushing my hair back, careful to avoid where I hit my head.

I truly have lost my mind.