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Choking, I woke up, and slipped out of bed, trying to suppress my coughs until the door was shut behind me.
I had managed not to wake them, and sat with my head drooping as I thought about the dream; I knew that tower, in my dream, and could almost see the storm superimposed over it. I let my chin rest on my crossed arms, and stared into the distance. Something I could give them. I could feel the need to be able to give them something build within me until it over powered the pain and the weakness in my lungs and limbs. Fishing in the pocket of my coat, I came up with the silver chain and it's tiny key. As always, touching it calmed and focused me. I spread the chain between my hands, and invoked a trickle of the protection magic in it. The chain lengthened again, just like it had that night; oh it seemed like years ago, when it had transformed into a fierce guardian and warded away Vlad and Edward. Unexpectedly, tears came to my eyes, and my throat closed up with misery. The tears spilled out and fell onto my hands and the chain, which took no notice of them. I wiped the tears away like a child with the back of my hand, and tried to choke them back, away. I didn't have time to mourn for what I lost- what I'd given up, unless I wanted to loose what I had now. I thought about what Henry had said and the twins. We should run, but something in me rebelled against it; oh part of it was pride, and part of it was the knowledge that Cedric would track us down if we tried, but there was something else there. The Cedric in my dream was right, he'd already put his mark on the twins. It took a few tries, but I got back to my feet, and opened the door that separated the main room with the bedroom and stared at them. While they slept, they could have been any children, lost in dreams. If I could have, I would have taken their feyness from them, and left them normal children to live out their lives, but I couldn't. It would destroy them. Wasn't that what Cedric was trying to do? I choked back another cough, and closed the door again. I raised my hand in the darkness of the apartment, and watched the chain wind around it like a pet snake, shimmering with it's own light. I wondered where the extra chain came from when it was like this. Magic, I almost laughed, and it turned into a another cough. I sat down again, this time in a chair, and wished I could give the twins my charm,. But there were two of them, and only the one charm. They probably wouldn't take it, if it left me unprotected. I wondered if I could recreate it. It had taken everything I had had to lay the original charm, and much of Henry to reinforce it. But in the darkness, in the middle of the night, with time stretching on endlessly in the wake of a bad dream, I felt like I could.