Page 4 of Heir

Oh god. If she dies, I’ll kill myself. I can’t lose my best friend. I can’t. Gemma sounded far away, almost in a tunnel. Her warm hand gripped mine. Wake up. Wake up, dammit!

I groaned again and stirred.

She let go of my hand and gripped me by the shoulders. “Maer! Maer! You need to wake up. Maer, wake up.” She shook me.

“Wh-what happened?”

She sighed. “Thank god. You were hit by fucking lightning!”

I was?

That’s right. I was. Coming out of the poker game. Thunder rumbled and then lightning, as if thrown by Zeus himself, came barreling out of the sky, almost like it was aiming for me. Like some kind of homing beacon.

I opened my eyes into thin slits, but the room was too bright so I shut them again. “Wh-where are we?”

“The hospital, obviously. You think I’d just bring you home after you were struck by fucking lightning?”

Did she hit her head too? Fuck. Thank god she’s awake. Thank god. I can’t lose my sister. My best friend. She’s all I have. She’s my only family.

Why did Gemma’s voice sound different? She spoke to me, then spoke like she was in a tunnel about me?

Maybe I did hit my head on the stairs.

“Is she awake?” came a soothing male voice. Curtains were drawn.

“Sort of,” Gemma said. “She’s speaking, but hasn’t opened her eyes.”

“That’s because the room is too bright,” I croaked, my throat raw.

“We can fix that,” the man said. “There.”

“He dimmed the lights, Maer. Try opening your eyes now.” Gemma squeezed my hand, and I tried to pry open my eyes again.

“Hey there, Ms. Playfair. You gave us quite the scare.” The doctor was crazy handsome and crazy young. Not as young as me, because there were very few twenty-two-year-old doctors out there, but if he was over thirty, I’d be surprised.

“Is she going to be okay?” Gemma asked.

The doctor shone a light in my eyes and asked me to follow it as he moved it back and forth. I glanced at my arms and I was hooked up to an IV, had a heart rate monitor on my left index finger, and there were a few things stuck to my chest. I was also wearing a hospital gown. “I think so,” the doctor said. “To be honest, you’re a bit of a medical marvel and incredibly lucky. You were struck by intense lightning and have managed to come out pretty much unscathed. You don’t even have any burns.”

“When can I go home?”

“We’d like to keep you here for another couple of hours for observation, but then you should be cleared to leave.” His smile brought out two deep dimples. And fuck me, he even had one in his chin. Dr. Dimples, M.D.

“Thank you,” I croaked.

“Here.” Gemma brought a straw to my lips, and I greedily sipped, relishing the way it softened my thick, dry sponge of a tongue.

Dr. Dimples left and pulled the curtain closed again, leaving Gemma and I alone-ish in our little slice of the ER.

“Did you hear that?” I asked her when I could speak without razor blades slicing my tonsils.

“Hear what? The code blue?”

I shook my head. “No. When I first woke up, there was this chant. Like a choir, or chorus, or something.”

She shook her head, jostling her wild red curls. “No. What did the choir say?”

“All hail Omaera Playfair, Queen of the Realm.”

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