Chapter 26 Kai
Chapter Twenty-Six: Kai
“Have you heard anything?” Her voice—deeper and smoother than it had been before she disappeared four years ago—commands my attention as Jahlee and I stop short in front of her.
“No.”
Jahlee sighs, while Siyala’s eyes narrow, their amber color brightening. “I thought you said we could count on your lover? It has been weeks since she left, and there has been no word on Rhea—”
“She is not my lover—” I interrupt, though it doesn’t deter her rant.
“The Mage Kingdom is not even answering your calls through the Mirror. Either something is wrong, or she is purposefully ignoring us.”
“Bahira wouldn’t do that!” my sister cuts in.
“And you know her so well?” Siyala snaps, looking to Jahlee before shaking her head. “I knew I should have gone with her.” My cousin’s frustration isn’t misplaced, and though her concerns are valid and mirror my own, I don’t know how to respond.
Siyala’s changed since she disappeared, and while that is to be expected, the jaded way she has shared her viewpoints isn’t.
Her survival in the Mortal Kingdom for four years is a mystery that not even she can answer, and she’s been reluctant to give many details beyond the fact that she was well cared for in her animal form by Rhea.
It’s my understanding that she hasn’t shifted once yet since being home.
Jahlee wraps an arm around Siyala’s shoulders, flicking her white braid behind her back.
“Bahira is a good one, Cousin. I’m sure whatever the reason is for her not reaching out to us, it is an important one.
Kai will keep trying to contact the Mage Kingdom.
” She sends me an arched brow as if to say, right?
Meeting both of their gazes, I nod and ignore the pit that makes its presence known in my stomach again. “I could reach out to the Mortal Kingdom and see if—”
“No!” Siyala growls, raising invisible hackles along my neck at the power that infuses her voice.
I note the clenching of her fists, the way her chest rises with a deep draw of breath that she holds, as if she is trying to halt the urge to shift.
Jahlee’s fingers tighten around her shoulder, but Siyala jerks out of my sister’s hold.
“It would risk too much.” My gaze meets Jahlee’s as Siyala shakes her head before running a hand down her face.
“Just tell me if you hear from Bahira.” She spins on her heel and heads towards the stairs, ignoring Jahlee when she calls out to her.
“She is still young,” I murmur, facing my sister. “And we cannot imagine all she has gone through.”
“Because she won’t tell anyone! She keeps her thoughts to herself as they build and build within her.
She’s going to burst if she doesn’t talk about what happened.
” Jahlee throws her hands up in frustration at the small chuckle that escapes me.
“But it’s not just her I’m upset with. Are you sure you’re using the Mirror properly? ”
My smirk falls as I lift a brow. “I am.”
“Then why hasn’t anyone answered? Why hasn’t Bahira reached out to us?”
“The Mirror worked just fine when I reached out to the Mage Kingdom for help with the blight in the beginning. And when Bahira used it to contact her family before. This is… a choice they are making to not talk with us.” It’s the first time I’ve acknowledged the thought out loud, and Jahlee is all the more agitated for it.
The tip of her nail jabs into my chest as her eyes gleam with a fury that could rival any shifter’s, even with her lack of magic. “What did you say to her when she left?”
“Goodbye.” My hand wraps around her wrist to stop her attempt to hit me.
“Asshole!” she shouts, stumbling back when I release her.
“Did you tell her how you feel about her? How you really feel?” The effort it takes to hold her glare makes that pit within me open wider, swallowing whole all the emotions this conversation brings up.
“You didn’t, did you? Gods, Kai! Would it have been so hard to be honest with her? With yourself?”
“What if I was? What if I did tell her how I felt and left it up to her whether she decided to include me in her life or not?” My voice rumbles down the hall, low and menacing as Jahlee’s eyes widen.
“As I said before, it is a choice. One I am not interested in ruminating on any further. I will reach out to the Mage Kingdom because I promised Siyala I would until we hear that Rhea is okay. Beyond that, Bahira has made it abundantly clear she is not interested in anything I have to offer her.”
I brush past, ignoring her soft call of my name.
My admission circles round and round in my mind, Bahira’s face accompanying it before I’m able to get control and squash it.
It doesn’t matter that I can admit to myself silently in the darkest depths of my mind that while I don’t have any experience with romantic love, I think I felt it with her.
I think I knew, briefly, what it was to lay my armor down at the same time as someone else, leaving me raw and exposed in a way no one had ever seen before.
I can admit those things and still acknowledge that it was nothing more than a slip in time.
A single star glimmering in the night sky, there and gone in the blink of an eye.
Because Bahira has made it clear that her future does not include me, and maybe it’s time I try to come to the same conclusion.
A haze surrounds me for the rest of the day, even when I visit the dungeons to interrogate the rebels.
After an hour of interrogation on Sir Duarte, the promise of fresh water and a meal made of more than just meat scraps and bread finally got him talking on where there are still rebel strongholds throughout Molsi.
I had anticipated that there would be larger pockets where shifters were still planning my demise.
I hadn’t expected the sheer volume that Sir Duarte alluded to.
But he had least given me the locations of meeting points that the rebels were known to utilize.
With the sun now set and a midnight storm shaking the palm trees outside the palace, I stare up at the ceiling lost in thoughts not of remorse or—thankfully—a certain mage princess but instead of what I had found two days prior.
Turning my head to the side, I look over at my nightstand and the five leather-bound journals stacked upon it.
The words lining the pages taunt me, but despite the fact that I had found the journals that belonged to my father, I haven’t had the strength to open them.
Tua had done well enough hiding them, tucking them into a compartment hidden behind one of the bookcases in my father’s room.
And though I am so damn curious to know how the hell he altered any part of me, discovering exactly what he did to my mother is something I know I must be ready to read.
With a deep exhale, I turn my back on the journals and stare out one of the windows.
Allowing sleep to slink in slowly, it cradles me as surely as my loneliness does, and despite the way I hear her calling out my name as I straddle the line between sleep and consciousness, I ignore the lure of the woman whose missing presence may as well be a blade to the heart.