Chapter 5 Bahira
Chapter Five: Bahira
I run my fingers through Nox’s hair, pulling the wavy strands away from his forehead. It had apparently only been a day since the guards found him on the beach after the ball, passed out in what my parents had described to me as a crater in the sand, its diameter at least ten feet wide.
“Wake up, idiot,” I whisper, earning a snort from Cass who leans against the wall next to the door, officially off duty but standing in as Nox’s personal guard anyway.
“I’m sure being called that will coax him right awake,” he drawls, though his levity is only a fraction of what I’m used to.
I snort before I sit back in the chair propped at the side of the bed.
“Tell me again what happened.” Cass has already run through the events of the ball and what happened after, when Nox learned Rhea was missing.
It explains the state of the council room and the destruction of the Mirror, the latter a piece of information that gutted me to learn.
I knew I had to tell Kai—or more specifically, Siyala—about Rhea.
Anything beyond that, however, I hadn’t decided on.
With the possibility of talking to the shifters now gone, it’s suddenly all I can think about.
Would Kai try to reach out through the Mirror when a week or two or three went by without word from me?
Would he even care beyond needing the information for Siyala?
Or would my silence encourage him to move on, if there is even anything about us to move on from?
I ignore the way the thought slices through my gut.
Cass clears his throat when he finishes his full recap of events again, and when I shoot him a glance, he’s a few feet closer than he was before. “You alright?” he asks, a single brow drawing up. “You looked as if you were in a daydream.”
“Sorry. There’s just a lot on my mind.” Tilting my head back, I look up at the ceiling, tracing the long wooden beams that cross the room.
The astringent scent of the healing wing is layered in every breath, this part of the palace one I grew familiar with as a child but had never seen Nox step foot in.
Perks of him having strong magic and all.
“He’ll be okay,” Cass says softly. “Galen thinks he just expended too much magic.”
At the uncertainty of his tone, I ask, “And what do you think?”
“I don’t know. A part of me has always thought of Nox’s magic as infinite. Something ever present. To assume that he reached an otherwise unknown limit, enough so that he needs to fall into a deep sleep in order to repair himself, isn’t exactly a comforting thought.”
I hum in agreement, closing my eyes as I draw in a deep breath.
When Nox first began training with his magic as a child, he was reckless with it.
He’d draw it out and toss it around as if it was a toy.
When the council suggested he train more extensively, trading in classroom time for more hands-on manipulation practice, he had eagerly agreed.
The lessons seemed excruciating, Nox often gone for the entirety of the day, but he learned to control it far beyond most could at his age.
When his shadows were discovered, the council then insisted he dedicate even more time to controlling it.
So the idea that he somehow slipped and drained his body of power is unsettling indeed.
“There’s also the fact that I can’t sense his magical signature.”
At that, I open my eyes and lift my head to look at Cass, growing wary at the tight lines that bracket his mouth. “At all?”
“Well, I can if I’m right at his side, but it’s like there’s something wrong with it. I didn’t think anything of it at first, but for an entire day to pass and have it still be off…” He gives his head a shake. “Perhaps he just needs more time to rest, like Rhea did when she first came here.”
That had been an interesting fact to learn. Something about how Cass described her magic had tugged at my mind, but I couldn’t quite place why it sounded so familiar other than the fact that it is akin to Nox’s.
“What do you think will happen when he wakes up?” I murmur.
When he remembers that Rhea is gone goes unsaid.
Daje’s recollection of events, as well as Siyala’s worry for her, cast the supposed goodbye letter left by Rhea in doubt despite the council’s protests that she left of her own free will.
Normally, I would never question the intentions of a woman who had gone through as much as I was led to believe Rhea had, yet so much of this entire situation felt like reading a book with missing pages.
In any case, Daje was hurt, Rhea is still missing, and Nox is otherwise incapacitated.
And I would eventually have to answer to the council about what I saw and learned in the Shifter Kingdom.
Cass draws his white-blond hair back into a ponytail, the strands draping over the hilt of his sword and the sun and moon insignia there that peeks up just past his shoulder.
“I don’t know,” he says after a moment, the rawness of his voice forming a knot in my throat.
“I know you didn’t really see them together, but he loves her, Bahira.
And she loves him. There is no scenario where she just left of her own accord.
” His eyes meet mine with uncharacteristic seriousness blazing within them.
“And there is no chance Nox won’t do everything necessary to find her. ”
Exhaustion catches up to me quickly, and I don’t realize I have fallen asleep until the door opens with a creak, jerking me awake as my mother and Galen step inside.
The palace healer goes straight to Nox, his hands hovering over Nox’s body as his green magic pulses from his palms. I watch his expression tighten, his arms shaking as he makes his way from Nox’s head to his chest.
“Go, my rose. I will make sure you are told immediately if he wakes.” My mother joins me, and I take in her gaunt expression, her own fatigue evident. Her normally tamed curls are piled on her head in a messy array, as if she couldn’t waste a single moment to do them.
“I can stay—”
“No,” she interrupts, gripping my hand in hers. “Things are precarious right now, Bahira. Your father’s focus is needed on the council, and yours, I know, is needed everywhere else. Now go. Should Nox wake, I will send someone to get you.”
Sighing, I grab my pack from the floor and secure it on my back, my mother giving me a reassuring grin.
I spare Nox one more glance before hugging Cass, and once the door is shut behind me, I take a moment to drag in a breath before heading back down the corridor to the foyer.
In the silence, without Nox or my work to focus on, my thoughts drift back to Kai.
Not once before has anyone taken up so much space in my head like he has.
I want to ignore the reasons as to why, but even I cannot pretend that I don’t see the facts for what they are.
Kai had shown me what it was to have someone relish in all the imperfect edges that lined me.
However brief it had been, what I always longed for was suddenly within my hands.
And over my body and inside of me. While Daje wanted a past version of me, I had made Kai crave a woman who simply didn’t exist. I had lied, knowing the whole time that my deception would ruin everything.
I packaged myself up as one thing, and when I pulled on the string that held me together, revealing what was actually underneath, he had deemed me worthless.
He was right when he said he couldn’t take the words back, but he was wrong when he assumed I was strong enough to handle them.
And fucking stars above, I hate that all I can think about is reaching out to him again and asking if he really did see me.
Not the magicless princess or the mage or the warrior, but the woman who was melded between those things.
If his hurt had found comfort with mine like I felt mine had with him.
But I suppose the answers to those questions remain to be seen, at least until the Mirror is repaired.
Blinking away the uncomfortable feeling that rises, I continue down the hall until I see the wooden door to the council room.
Slowing my steps, I listen to hear if anyone is in there before taking the silence as a sign of its emptiness and reaching for the door handle.
The space is dotted in amber light from the setting sun that streams in through the windows.
Nox’s magic had almost obliterated this room—could likely have toppled this entire wing of the palace if he had tried hard enough.
Perhaps that is the most unnerving part about all of this; not that Nox’s magic has the potential to destroy something to this magnitude.
It is that he has the capability to do this without even realizing it.
All because he is in love with someone.
Is that the other side to love? Not the sweet and enduring tenderness of my parents, but something wilder.
Something that consumes every part of you until you are inexplicably out of control.
Kai’s throne room flashes in my mind, the memory making me shiver as I recall how he so effortlessly killed his uncle when the guard had overpowered me and held a knife to my throat.
That’s different, isn’t it? It was a necessity, a foreign king protecting the asset of another kingdom.
The lie doesn’t make me feel any better, so I turn back to inspecting the council room.
I had missed what remains of the Mirror on my earlier visit, but I inspect the shards of the glass still stuck to the wooden frame tilted against a wall now.
It is said that the Mirrors were formed at the very beginning of life on Olymazi—one given to each kingdom by the gods so that the rulers could communicate with each other.
It had been full of ancient magic for so long, and now it just looks ordinary.
Lifeless. No longer showing evidence that it had held such power.
“One thing at a time,” I murmur to myself as I turn for the exit. Fixing the Mirror just became my first priority, followed by somehow testing my theory on the Spell and figuring out how to get my magic. Simple. I nearly snort out loud.
I pass a plethora of guards on my way to my room, including a new one who is posted where Barron should be. We exchange quick pleasantries before I continue on towards my room, only to find Daje sitting on the ground in front of my door.
“Hey, Bahira,” he says, a morose kind of pain hidden behind a forced grin.
I return one just as pitiful. “Hey, Daje.” We stare in silence at each other, and though there is likely not a worse time to have this conversation, I know it is one that can no longer be avoided. “Let’s talk.”