Who's Blue?

Chapter 8 - The Four Kingdoms

××Diesel××

Blue and I held each other's gazes for only a moment.

Isabel laughed nervously, knocking me out of the spell in seconds. I retracted my hands, retreating a couple steps, all the while Blue's large purple eyes followed my every movement.

"Is Arthur okay?" Isabel repeated, stepping into my line of sight. She was clearly trying to ignore my blatant slip up and move past it. I'm sure she would question Chrom on it later and he'd have to once again lie to her for my sake.

"The doctor said the same thing as usual. There is nothing he can find that would be causing this. The coughing spell was just a coughing spell. Nothing worse right now but also nothing better," I explained, taking the seat farthest away from Blue. I ran a hand roughly through my hair in frustration.

"So he's sick but your doctor doesn't know why? Have you tried other doctors?" Blue piped up, trying to wrap her head around this new information.

I had failed to explain a lot to her.

"We've had doctors come in from all other kingdoms trying to find a cure or reason. Nothing," I spoke. Isabel was quick to interject.

"We haven't tried any doctors that have anything to do with magic or energies." She stared me down, waiting for me to stop her from bringing it up. Blue opened her mouth before I could.

"Why?"

"Like we explained, magic isn't allowed here and all residents have to pass a test to be here. It shows whether or not the magic in your body is high enough for use. If it is, you can't stay. There's no way this is being caused by magic because magic didn't exist here when it started." Of course that wasn't entirely true but my case was different. Shifters did have magic but nothing past allowing us to shift into an animal and use the animals senses to our advantage.

Blue frowned but said nothing more on the subject. Isabel excused herself and left the two of us in a deafening silence.

"Am I going to have to go through the test?" Blue whispered, eyes trained on my unmoving form. I pursed my lips and shook my head in the negative.

"I'll do everything in my power to keep you from having to since we don't know..." I trailed off but we both knew what followed. We didn't know a single thing about her. She didn't know a single thing about her. I could smell her anxiety flood the room at my less than confident words.

"C'mon, let's go to the library." I stood, Blue following suit with a confused look.

"What are we doing there?" She asked as I took her hand in mine. I couldn't stop myself from wanting to touch her, to have some form of contact. She didn't seem to mind.

"We might as well start you on studies since you don't remember anything but basics. And I thought I might as well be your teacher," I explained, leading her down a hall she'd never been in before. She tried to hide it but I saw the smile that split across her face. I wished the look would stay forever.

It thankfully continued to last through the hallway and only grew once I pushed the large door of the library open for her. She stepped inside slowly, her now free hands wringing themselves together in front of her as she examined the large space.

"Good morning," The librarian greeted, spooking Blue and causing a glare to appear on my face. The smaller man took a step back but didn't stop speaking.

"Is there anything I can help you with today?"

"No," I said curtly, pressing a hand flat against Blue's back and leading her in the opposite direction of the librarian's desk.

"Thank you though!" She called back to the man and although I didn't like her giving him attention, it just showed how kind she was. It wasn't long before I stopped us at an empty table and prompted her to sit down.

"I'll find some easy literature to start with. Stay here."

I took off towards the historical section quickly, not wanting to leave her alone in such a large space for longer than I had to. She was still sitting patiently when I came back, four books in hand.

She looked them all over with interest as I sat them down and began explaining each one.

"I thought we might as well start with basic history on the four kingdoms of Vespear since that's where you are right now." She nodded along with my words, listening intently.

The first book was bright blue, the cover reading The Barrick Kingdom.

"This one is us," I said, pointing to the map on the first page of the book. Our kingdom had been made most prominent on the map, the others shaded out to show the bounding lines. "We used to be just a small territory. We grew, taking territory from the Mantic Kingdom until we were big enough to be considered one ourselves."

With that I opened the red book titled The Mantic Kingdom. The map inside showed how large the Kingdom was. We barely made a dent when taking territory and we were still surrounded. 

The third book was a bright yellow and titled The Seolia Kingdom.

"This kingdom holds all territory on the West side of Vespear." I trailed my finger across the line separating Mantic and Seolia while Blues eyes followed.

"And this last one is the Fairy Kingdom but its more commonly known as Fae Isle," I spoke, opening the final book, a dark forest green coloring its cover.

"It's not touching Vespear," She said, pointing to the Severance Sea on the map.

"It used to, before wizards began hunting the fairies and killing them for the magic in their wings," I explained, Blue letting out a small gasp as she covered her mouth.

"That's terrible," She mumbled.

"That's why King Oberon and the Earth elemental fairies separated their land from the rest of Vespear to create a safe island," I finished.

"Can't people just boat across?"

"The king thought of that too. He placed a protective shield over it and there's only one boat dock that can take you across, protected by fairies."

"And what about this area here?" She pointed a small, pale finger at the section of the Vespear that wasn't claimed by any kingdom. It was settled next to Fae Isle and bordered the Mantic Kingdom, though it was close to our kingdom.

"The fairies protect it but no fairies live there. It has become the unofficial meeting place for the four kingdoms as well due to it having no real affiliation to any of them."

She continued asking questions well into the evening. She was entirely drawn to what little information we had on Fae Isle but we went over all of the other books as well. It was an amazing day, spent alone with my mate.

It was all too easy to forget about the sick man only a floor above.

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The attached image is a super super rough map that shows what was spoken about in this chapter. There's some locations on there from other books and some locations that don't exist yet and names have changed but it shows how Vespear is split between the 4 kingdoms