Much More

With Mairwen's encouragement, Dania showed Renat what she was working on with the healing water. Through their interaction, Mairwen realized that Renat had brought the water to be studied in the first place. He was quite pleased with their findings.

"Excellent news!" he exclaimed at last. "I look forward to seeing what you do with these discoveries."

"Thank you, Prince Renat," Dania curtsied. The tall scientist stiffened at his title, but there was nothing he felt that he could do.

"Thank you, Dania. Please keep me posted on your progress." Renat offered Mairwen his arm.

"Is it time to go already?" she asked, surprised.

"It is, and I insist we hurry. If we are late for dinner with your parents again, your father may actually follow through with one of his threats. And I think Eira deserves a rest as well." The tall man motioned at the door where Eira was standing dutifully, still as a statue.

"I told her to come get a chair, but she wouldn't!" Mairwen defended herself with a pout. The blue-eyed woman turned toward Dania. "Will you be alright if I leave?" There was a hidden meaning in her question that was not lost on the other woman.

"I am very flattered that you would think of me. Your Highness. I will be fine. I need to catch up with Taran anyway." Dania curtsied again. "I will see you in the morning?"

Mairwen nodded. "Until then." She took the arm of her husband and left the laboratory.

"I see you met Sir Taran." Renat noted as they walked down the hall toward their waiting carriage. "Rumor is that he and Dania are secretly a couple. Perhaps there was a little more to catching up than just scientific findings." He squeezed his companion's hand which rested lightly on his arm.

"I did not get that impression…" Mairwen replayed their interaction in her mind. "I suppose I could be wrong."

"Well, they are just rumors. You should have heard some of the outlandish tales that circulated about the two of us. Scholars gossip worse than old women." Renat drummed his fingers on his arm and then saw the narrowed eyes of his wife peering at him through the slits of her eyelids.

"What did people say about us, my love?" She asked slowly, her lips pulled thin.

"Uh…nothing! Just that you are way too beautiful for a numbskull like me. I would have to agree with them of course." Renat felt beads of sweat form on his brow. He pulled at his collar and cleared his throat. "But enough about rumors, I want to hear your opinion. What do you think of Sir Taran?"

"He is quite the charmer…" Mairwen's voice was more wary than complimentary.

The lanky man chuckled and nodded, "He is a pretty shameless flirt. I know for a fact that he has been caught in a compromising position with more than one lady secretary…wait! Did he flirt with you?!"

Eira snorted from behind them, her stoic expression turning into an amused grin.

The princess tucked her hair behind her ear. "To his credit, he did not know I was married at the time."

Pulling his arm away from his wife, Renat turned on his heels away from the waiting carriage. "I will kill him!"

Quickly, Mairwen wrapped her arms around her husband's waist and urged him into the coach. "You will do no such thing! Sir Taran will not make that mistake again or I will take care of it myself…though," she added with a coquettish grin, "I do like to see that protective side of you."

The man's furious expression fell away at his wife's words. Instead he stood tall and handed her into the carriage. "If you want to see jealous, I would be happy to oblige."

Renat eagerly hopped in the carriage behind the princess and shut the door before the coachman could. Eira rolled her eyes as she heard Mairwen giggle. The personal guard vaulted up into the drivers seat, and looked down at the coachman.

"Best get back to the palace," she told him. "The faster, the better for both of us."

——————

The next two weeks passed with Dania making more and more potent water. Instead of just being shimmery, the liquid was becoming more of a semi-solid. Before each addition of more water, the healing water in the beaker resembled a soft putty with a swirling iridescence constantly moving through it.

Yet somehow the female scientist could still draw a sample into a syringe to examine it.

"What is a royal's favorite type of precipitation?" Dania asked. The smile on her face was full of mischief.

"What? Hail?" The princess cocked her head to one side.

"No, they like their reign," Dania corrected her with a straight face.

Mairwen rolled her eyes. "That joke is all wet."

Dania chuckled. "Sorry, I was going with the flow." She placed a drop of water on her glass tray. It beaded and glowed like a tiny pearl.

"I have been meaning to ask: where did you get so much of this water? Do you have someone go to the land of magic and fetch it for you?" Mairwen queried as she watched Dania examine the drop water and add something green to it. The water popped, sizzled and changed to purple, making Dania frown.

"The doctor has been giving me some of the supply from the palace. I am not sure how he gets it from the land of magic though," she answered absentmindedly.

In truth, Dania had been curious at one point how the doctor had so much water, but she did not want to ask. Whether it came by messenger or magic, it came just the same.

The scientist scribbled down some notes in her cryptic shorthand. "Hm, again?" Her frown deepened as she stared at the now purple droplet.

Mairwen noticed the change and stood from her copious note taking to look at the specimen herself. "What is it?" She tilted her head, hoping a different angle might help her understand.

"Everything I add to the base seems to have an effect, but I have no way of testing exactly what the effect is without actually using it."

"You mean you need a person to try it?" The princess tapped her ink-stained finger to her chin as she squinted at the purple pearl.

Dania pulled her mouth to one side before answering. "I have tried some of the formulas and so has Taran. And even my former assistant Gela would take his turn. However, it probably wasn't the best idea." She paused, trying to decide what else to say. "I will speak to some of our colleagues to see if they have any suggestion of a safer way."

"Why did you say safer? Did something happen?" Mairwen got an uneasy feeling in her stomach. Seeing Dania's far off, sullen gaze only made things worse.

The scientist pressed her lips together. When she finally spoke, her words were quiet and strained. "I know this is important work, and we are doing all we can to be safe. But to tell the truth, I am a little concerned that—"

Taran burst into the room, "Dania! I have been looking everywhere for you!" He bowed to the princess and then took the brunette's hand.

"You were looking in the wrong places then," Dania answered him, he former daze gone.

The charming man urged his colleague forward. "You must come and see what I have found! Would you excuse us, Your Highness?"

By now, the princess was used to his exclusion of her from his findings, but this time seemed different. And it had occurred right as Mairwen believed that Dania was going to share a big secret. 'Very suspicious.'

Her face must have betrayed her thoughts because Taran quickly apologized. "Forgive me. I promise to only keep her a moment. Someone as experienced as you must know that some things cannot wait." His hazel eyes looked at her expectantly.

Mairwen rested her chin in her hand, pressing her fingers to her lips. She realized they were waiting for her approval to leave, yet she felt unwilling to give it.

The princess wanted to send the man away and find out what Dania had been thinking a moment ago. But if the blue-eyed woman wanted to be treated as a colleague, she could not go around using her royal tone on such matters.

She smiled gently and shooed them with her other hand. "Go, but one of these days, I would love to see your work, Sir Taran. It must be quite fascinating for it to require so much of dear Dania's attention."

"Of course, Your Highness. All will reveal itself very soon, I assure you." Taran flashed a sly grin that would likely would have earned him a punch from Renat. As is was, Eira cracked her knuckles from beside the door in warning.

The pair of scientists left the room, and Mairwen returned to copying the notes. While she thought she could possibly read some of the markings, many of them seemed incomplete or even altered.

When she had asked Dania about the anomalies before, the scientist had said it was her own special code that she had been using since she was young. Again Mairwen tried to puzzle out the scientific runes.

The princess was lost deep in her thoughts when Dania finally returned. She was startled by the scientist's entrance and even more startled by her change in demeanor. The brunette looked like she had seen a ghost.

Mairwen rose from her chair and wrapped her arms around the other woman's shoulders. In anticipation of the princess's request, Eira brought a glass of non-magical water for Dania to drink.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Mairwen coaxed her.

The brunette opened and shut her mouth a couple of times before shaking her head.

"Did Sir Taran do something to you? Because if he did…"

Dania held up her hands. "No, no. Taran did nothing to me." She wiped the tears that threatened to fall down her cheeks. "Sir Taran is a good man. Have I told you that he sponsors my brother at the preparatory boarding school? And he recommended me for this position. I do not have anything bad to say about him, really."

"I had no idea." Mairwen stopped the threat that would have escaped her lips.

"Yes, well…Taran is more than just a handsome face." Dania said vaguely. "Much more."