Chapter Twenty-One Bahira
My balance sways as I cock my head, sure I must have misheard. “Did you just say he tried to kill them?”
Cass nods in answer, his sullen expression further bottoming out my stomach. “I had just stepped outside to use the bathroom as the next round of healers came in to try waking him again.”
“It isn’t your fault,” my mother says, leaning forward until she draws Cass’s attention to her.
“Do you understand?” But he doesn’t respond, only lays a hand over Nox’s arm.
My brother jerks at the contact, those strange eyes flicking to his best friend with zero recognition in them.
“He was furious when he woke, and his eyes were just as they are now. Two healers approached him, and without warning, he attacked them. Caught off guard, they took some serious hits before the third healer and I were able to subdue him with our magic.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No,” she says quickly, shaking her head. “It took everything I had just to hold him there until Cass returned, but he didn’t hurt anyone else.”
“I put the shackles on him.” He says it like a shameful confession, and my heart lurches as his shoulders droop.
I blow out a shaky breath, watching my brother fight against his restraints. When the council learns of this, there is no telling how they will react. I might have been able to guess three months ago, but now it is almost as if they are looking for reasons to criminalize our family.
Perhaps to remove us from the throne.
“Is his magical signature still off?” I ask.
The look that Cass and my mother exchange is brief, but I catch the uncertainty on both of their faces.
“Yes,” Cass says, pinching his eyebrows together.
“I can sense him in it, the usual feel of his power, but there is something else there too. Like…” He tilts his head back and forth, as if he can shake the words he’s looking for free.
My mother offers her insight. “I, like Cassius, can sense him, but it’s almost as if it is buried beneath more.” She reaches out to cup Nox’s face, the touch working to calm him. His muscles relax as he falls flat against the bed, his eyes fluttering shut.
The handle to the door jostles, startling the three of us, while Nox seems to have already fallen back into the deep sleep. My father’s voice calls out through the wood, prompting Cass to rush over and let him in.
“Bahi,” he says in greeting, kissing the top of my head. His affection works to ground me.
With a gentle squeeze of my shoulder, he turns and looks to Nox, sadness overtaking him. “Are they true?” he asks, looking to my mother. “The murmurs I heard on my way here?”
My eyes fall shut, a sinking feeling sending my heart crashing to the floor. To already have word spread of what Nox had done—no matter how accidental or unaware he was—is not going to bode well.
“He attacked the healers,” she confirms, her voice laced with sadness. My father says nothing as he joins my mother at her side, his arm wrapping around his shoulders. “And his magic is still not his. At least, not fully.”
My father nods, sitting on the bed’s edge as his light purple magic glows from his palm and he extends his hand over Nox’s body.
“It’s chaos,” he mumbles quietly, drawing a confused look from the rest of us.
My father’s magic is stronger than most of those in our kingdom, and that makes his sensitivity to other’s magical presence higher—more attuned.
As he moves his hand farther up, it stops abruptly over Nox’s chest. “Here,” he says, tilting his head to the side, his brows drawn low in concentration.
“It feels… tangled.” Nox stirs, almost as if he’s sensitive to the brush of our father’s magic against him.
Tangled. But magic is supposed to be a fluid thing. It has always surrendered to the intentions of the mage it comes from, has always been molded and shaped into whatever the wielder asks.
“How do we untangle it, then?” Cass asks. No one answers, the silence taut as if balancing on a knife’s edge. One wrong move will result in split skin and spilled blood, something our family cannot afford any more of.
Hours later, after the sun has set and the warm glow of the spelled flames lining the walls overtakes the room, Nox’s eyes open again. This time, the man looking back at us is one I recognize.
“He’s awake,” my mother rasps, exhaustion pulling at every word.
We had undone the restraints as soon as he calmed earlier, but no one had wanted to leave the room as he slept.
Kallin had come to the door, eagerly trying to see my brother until my father was able to coax him away.
There is a silent understanding that we can only deter the council for so long before their curiosity becomes more demanding, especially as the rumor of how Nox had attacked the healers spreads.
But we need time to assess Nox. To bring him up to speed on what is happening, and what had happened, before any of us would dare leave him to the council’s interrogation.
Cass leans forward in his chair next to me, his gaze assessing Nox.
“I must look like shit if you guys are fawning over me like this,” Nox says, running a hand down his face before taking stock of everyone in the room. He does a double take when his eyes meet mine. “When did you get home?”
“Not long ago,” I answer, avoiding the urge to shift in my chair beneath his gaze. Nox’s ability to tell when I’m lying is something I don’t know if I should find endearing or annoying. More often than not, I lean towards the latter.
My mother rises from the chair she’s sitting in and walks over to a small side table where a silver pitcher of water and a few cups are stationed on top.
Nox drains the cup she gives him, setting it on the end table next to the bed with a grimace.
A labored breath hisses between his teeth when he attempts to sit up fully.
“I feel as if I’ve been tossed off a mountain and hit every ledge on the way down. ”
“You look it too,” I tease, earning his flat glare. His eyes shift then to his surroundings, a line forming between his brows.
“Where am I?”
“The healers’ wing,” my mother answers, her hand reaching out to hold his.
My father approaches from where he was sitting on the other side of the room, his outward demeanor calm, even as a finger lightly taps the side of his thigh.
“What do you remember?” he asks, and Nox stiffens at the question.
His eyes move side to side as he tilts his head, as if the question has triggered a series of thoughts.
It takes him a moment to work through them but when he does, his expression shifts and his hands fist the comforter on either side of his hips. “Tell me it was just a nightmare,” he says, voice rough as his eyes scan the room. Looking for Rhea, I realize. “Tell me that she’s still here.”
“I’m sorry, my star. I’m afraid it was no nightmare.
” My mother tells Nox of how long he’s been asleep, of what has taken place here in that time, including both my arrival home and the breaking of the Mirror and the council’s theory on Rhea and where she might have gone.
She also tells him about the healers, which he has no recollection of.
“I know where she is,” Nox seethes when she’s finished, his hands cradling either side of his head.
“King Dolian is the only one stupid enough to risk my wrath. He’s the only one who would spend the entirety of her freedom plotting a way to get her back.
You shouldn’t be asking where she is and instead asking who the fuck in our kingdom helped him get to her. ”
A heavy weight settles in the room, one that carries with it truths that haven’t yet been spoken.
“I’m going to ask you something, Son, that I need to, even though I don’t want to,” our father says, looking at Nox.
“Is there any chance Rhea left of her own accord? That the pressure would have gotten to her? Been too much? Did Rhea have any reservations at all about marrying you? About becoming our queen?”
He looks down at his lap, where his hands are resting.
“We talked, of course, about everything a marriage to me would entail. What it would mean when it was time to step into a role that she had never considered for herself. Rhea is many incredible and wonderful and complicated things, but a willful liar has never been one of them. She wanted this, wanted me—” He stops abruptly to draw a deep inhale, roughly swallowing before lifting his gaze.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Rhea’s absence is not her choice. ”
“The council is convinced the opposite is true, and unfortunately, with the letter Rhea left—”
“Letter?” Nox interrupts Cass, jerking his body forward. The movement causes him to groan out in pain, his weight tipping forward before Cass and my father help to steady him. “I’m fine,” he grunts out, turning to look at his friend. “What letter?”
Cass reaches for a leather pouch attached at his belt, uncinching its ties and pulling from it two items: a familiar folded letter on cream parchment and a ring.
The ring, I realize as he holds it out to Nox.
My parents had told me that Nox had proposed, and while a small part of me had felt a pang of sadness at not being here for the engagement—and the celebration after—a larger part still finds it a bit bewildering that he is engaged at all.
Nox turns the ring in his hand, the diamond and surrounding colorful gems glistening beneath the amber light. “Where did you get this?”
“Both items were found on the landing where Barron usually stands guard. Though”—Cass stretches his neck from side to side—“he has been noticeably absent since the night of the ball.”
Nox takes in that piece of information with a frown, his attention then going to the letter. We fall silent as we watch him read, his eyes skimming it from top to bottom three times before he tosses it onto the bed ahead of him.
“She didn’t write that.”