CHAPTER TWO:FOUR FREAKING MONTHS

KIARA'S POV

If anyone had told me there would be a day I would run so hard for my life, from the place I call home I would have run a sharp blade through their gut.

“Stop her..” 

I couldn't hear her voice from behind me, desperate and shameless. 

She fucking killed my mother. 

The sky began to darker and the sudden rain drop began with that infinite thunder that only Seraphine could cast still I hadn't reached the gate.

Spells cracked through the air behind me bright and vicious, splitting the dark in blue and white bursts. One clipped the ground three inches from my left foot and I felt the heat of it through my bare sole.

Keep moving. Keep moving. Keep….

Flash.

Smoke. Black and thick. Her voice is somewhere inside it.

I blinked it away and kept running anyway, the ground was wet beneath my feet, grass giving way to mud giving way to stone, the terrain shifting faster than I could track it.

Not until I was out and running through the wrong places….ciff. that was a cliff gated to nowhere but death….

I stopped just to stumble and lost my balance.

Spells against gravity were useless, my heart beating so hard, tears dripping, my mind going blank, all I wanted to see now was  “mama.”

Her face. Her eyes steady and open even as everything came down.

My hands were on the locked door that day…I had tried…..I had tried  to save mama from the burning fire. .

She was already gone. She was already….

My back collided with a sharp pointed rock ....”Arghh….” My bones rattled, I felt my spine break in half…as my body kept on rolling down the hills that used to be covered in clouds.

I grabbed for something,  anything….my nails tearing, spells firing uselessly into the dark.

Until all I saw was void and complete darkness.

“Mama!”

The word tore out of my throat before I could stop it, the fire was everywhere, walls, ceiling, floor… the fire erupting through the whole building.

Around me witches were running, pouring out of every exit, casting spells and flying through the smoke thick air in a burst of desperation.

But I couldn't see her.

I couldn't see my mother.

I ran toward the building.

I could hear voices…screaming my name from behind me, yelling and casting spells to pull me back, but the moon goddess and the witches forbid I let my mother die.

The smoke hit me the moment I crossed the threshold. Thick and black and suffocating, filling my lungs faster than any spell could clear it. My eyes burned. My chest seized. I pushed through anyway, casting blindly, following the sound of her voice somewhere deeper in the collapsing dark.

I found her in the back room.

Crawling helplessly on the ground.

"Mama…." My voice broke. I dropped to my knees beside her, hands already reaching, already pulling. Her eyes found mine through the smoke and what I saw in them made my chest tightened.

"Kiara." Her voice was barely sound. "Go. The building is going to…."

"I'm not leaving you."

"You have to…"

"I said I'm not leaving." I got my hands under her arms, started pulling. Above us something groaned the ceiling, the beams, everything holding the structure together giving its final warning. "Hold on to me. Just hold on…"

The fan overhead collapsed.

She shoved me. Both hands, every ounce of strength she had left, pushing me backward and away.

“Go….” she said. Or maybe she didn't say it at all. Maybe I only felt it, in the press of her palms, in the way her eyes stayed open and steady even as the ceiling came down between us.

“Mama!!”

Beep beep beep.

I opened my eyes to be faced with the plain white ceiling. My chest is still doing it. 

Everything seems unfamiliar for a moment.

 Not the particular cold damp of Volkron mornings at all. 

A thin tube taped to the back of my left hand running up to a clear bag hanging beside the bed.

I stared at it.

What? It's in my arm.

I tried to sit up but my bones…. blinking against the light, taking inventory. 

Hospital gown. Both legs are present. No veil, obviously, because apparently world had no concept of privacy. 

I mean who saw my butt bare?

A monitor beside the bed making a steady, indifferent sound.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

I looked at the tube in my hand again.

My magic reached for it automatically , that instinctive witch reflex, classify the unknown and came back sluggish and slow. 

That was new. That was not good.

The door opened.

"Oh thank the universe you're awake…"

Chloe hit me like a small hurricane. Both arms around my shoulders, face buried in my neck, squeezing hard enough that the monitor beside me beeped in mild alarm.

"Chloe!"

"Don't." Her voice cracked. "Don't say anything yet just,  just give me a second."

I gave her a second.

She pulled back. Her eyes were red. It had been red for a while by the look of it.

She grabbed my face in both hands and looked at me like she was checking for damage.

"You absolute idiot," she whispered.

"Good morning to you too."

"It is not morning." She released my face and sat down hard in the chair beside the bed. "It's 4PM on a Thursday."

"Thursday." I looked out the window. Grey sky. Rain. "I fell on a…." I stopped. "What Thursday."

Chloe looked at me.

"Chloe."

"You've been unconscious for almost four months, Kiara."

The monitor kept beeping. 

“Can this shit shut up?”

“Not kidding kaira, what happened?

‘Four months.’

"That's not…." I stopped."That's not possible. I fell last night, I was running and the cliff and the storm ...."

"Four months." 

 "I've been here every day. The doctors couldn't explain it. You weren't in a coma exactly, your brain activity was all over the place, like you were somewhere else entirely. They were talking about transferring you to a specialist in…" She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "It doesn't matter now. You're awake."

I looked at my hands. The scrapes were healed. Skin smooth where the cliff face had torn it open.

Four months.

"The babies are healthy by the way."

"The…." The word didn't come out right. I tried again. "What?"

Chloe reached over and very carefully pulled the edge of my hospital gown to the side.

I looked down.

The swell was real.

My ears were ringing.

The oath. The coven oath. Whatever you give birth to belongs to Volkron.

Whatever you give birth to..

"Twins," 

"Both healthy. The doctors are baffled because apparently your…… and I am quoting here… ‘cellular regeneration is unlike anything they've seen in medical history’ which, yes, I know, but I've been smiling and nodding for four months now."

“This can't be true?” 

“Apparently it is, did you sleep with him that night?”