Chapter Sixty-One Bahira
The clouds overhead turned gray quickly, my view of them unobstructed from my spot on the training fields, an archery target in front of me.
My mind needed the quiet that only physical movement could provide, and though I used to find myself tumbling into the bed of another at a moment like this, the thought of hands on me that do not belong to a giant male with a wicked mouth and warm brown eyes is as unappealing now as it was weeks ago.
Blowing out a breath, I nock my arrow, pulling it back until I feel the bowstring’s resistance, the strain on my muscles a welcome distraction.
Seconds pass as I wait for the right moment to release, my heart beating softly against my ribs as I allow my eyes to fall closed.
Breathe. I tune into my surroundings—the cool air scented with rain from the incoming storm, the soft fabric of my cloak as it brushes against my bare arms. One by one, each part of me settles in the present where there is no over-reaching council.
No threat to my father’s throne. No faraway shifter king occupying all of my thoughts.
No experiments or worries about the Spell or a broken Mirror.
There is only me and the weapon I’m holding.
I release the arrow, the sound of it traveling through the air and hitting the target bringing a smile to my face.
“A perfect shot.” My eyes open at the sound of Haylee’s voice behind me, and I turn to watch her crest a small hill as she makes her way to me. “I forget sometimes just how talented you are with other weapons because you prefer the use of your spear.”
I smirk, dropping the bow to my side while I reach for the quiver at my back, pulling another arrow from it. “You’ve likely got me beat in the sword department,” I counter.
“You flatter me.”
It isn’t exactly flattery. Haylee is a talented warrior with training as extensive as my own.
As her friend, it makes me proud to know that she could hold her own if it ever came to it.
She stands in front of me in black trousers and a dark blue long-sleeved shirt, crossing her arms against the cool wind that pulls strands of her dark blonde hair free from her usual braided coronet.
“How are you, Bahira?” she asks, tilting her head to the side. “And I want the real answer. Not the one you give everyone else.”
“You know things are… precarious right now. The most they’ve ever been.
” I turn back to face the wooden targets, my previous arrow sticking out of the center of the farthest. I prepare to nock the next one, rolling my shoulders back and adjusting my stance.
“I’m just trying to put current fires out before new ones start. ”
“That’s putting it mildly.” She watches me line up, my fingers pulling the bow string back as I inhale deeply. “Is one of those fires your brother?”
I arch a brow on instinct, keeping my gaze on the target. “He certainly isn’t making things easier.”
Not that I could sincerely blame only him.
My brother has been kept busy by the council, and while I’m grateful that their focus on him has drawn them away from me, there’s something odd about how much time they are spending with him.
Even my father has been kept on the sideline, the council claiming that they are simply assuring that Nox is doing well enough to deal with the public pressure that’s been building ever since the ball.
Including the fact that a body had been discovered and a guard had also gone missing.
Toss in the rumor-fueled gossip that both of those things happened the same night Rhea supposedly abandoned Nox, and I suppose I can understand why they are preparing him.
Still, understanding it doesn’t mean that it also doesn’t feel wrong.
Releasing the arrow, I watch it hit its mark just slightly off center. Damn it.
“May I?” Haylee asks, holding her hand out for the bow. I grab another arrow, giving that to her as well.
“Why were you so insistent that Nox get engaged to you?” I ask as she nocks her arrow, her stance opposite of my own.
“I’m sure that interaction with your brother seemed odd. Given our last conversation.”
“It’s more that I’m confused by the whole thing.” I expect a quick retort or a witty response, but instead, Haylee keeps her gaze forward, spending way too much time readjusting her stance. I take a step closer to her, worry gnawing at my gut. “What’s really going on, Haylee?”
Her brows furrow as another cold gust blows through the training field, pulling a few more tendrils of hair from her makeshift crown.
“Have you ever felt trapped?” she asks, the corners of her mouth drawing down as if she doesn’t like her own question.
“I suppose it’s insensitive of me to ask you that. ”
I let out a rough laugh, following her gaze to the targets in front of us. “We already know my feelings on being magicless. It’s nothing you haven’t heard a hundred times already. But what has you feeling trapped?”
She sighs, planting her feet more firmly as she lifts the bow. “Did I ever tell you that when I was growing up, my uncle would take me on tours of your palace?”
“You didn’t.”
“It was the only time we ever had one on one. So often he was busy with the council or pushing me into another class, another lesson. But, occasionally, we would walk the foyer, and he would point to the different paintings and tapestries, explaining the history of your family. Of the Void queens that came before them.” She begins to pull the bowstring back, her bicep flexing.
“And we always stopped to linger in two rooms, one of which was the council chambers. At first, I had looked around that room in awe. There is power to be had in this room, Haylee, he would tell me, a hand gripping my shoulder. Not like a father would—he’s never cared about me enough to even pretend about showing that level of emotion—but for him, for the relationship between us, well, I cherished it.
I lived for the attention he gave me because it came so rarely.
In those moments, he taught me just how valuable status and reputation was to gaining power and, in return, what opportunities arose from it. ”
I swallow roughly. I knew that Councilman Borris had been hard on Haylee. Growing up, she often complained about the pressure placed on her to be the best at everything she attempted. I had thought it was nothing more than Borris preparing her for life as a future council member.
“Don’t pity me,” she says, and I shake my head, my mouth opening to explain that having empathy isn’t the same as pitying her, but she cuts her eyes towards me.
“I would not change the way he raised me.” The arrow sings through the air as she releases it, and it embeds in the center target right next to my own.
“The bastard may have been brutish, cruel at times even, but he wasn’t entirely wrong in his approach.
I have spent a lifetime trying to appease him, trying to prove that I’m worthy of him taking me in instead of letting me go to the orphanage when my parents died.
I have obeyed every single rule in order to be valuable in his eyes.
And though you may hear that and immediately think me a fool, I see it for what my uncle taught me: If I want something badly enough, I have to work for it. ”
A storm of emotion swirls in her gray eyes as she turns to me, pressing the bow into my hands. “What is it that you want, Haylee?” I ask.
The wind whistles between us, the pillow grass of the training field swaying as we stare at each other. “I want freedom,” she whispers, lifting her chin. “And I will do whatever I need to in order to get it.”
Haylee offers me a small smile before she brushes past, only making it a few steps before I ask, “What was the other room?”
“What?”
“You said your uncle would always take you to two rooms in the palace. One was the council chambers. What was the other?” This entire conversation had started because I wanted to know why she was pursuing Nox despite knowing his heart was elsewhere.
Despite claiming hers was as well. But the woman who looks at me now isn’t some lovestruck fawn trying to win over a man who isn’t interested in her.
That fact makes my stomach sink with realization.
In all the time I’ve known Haylee, I’ve never once thought her a liar.
But secrets don’t always come in the form of lies spoken—I know that all too well.
Sometimes, betrayals happen in what is kept hidden. In what is never said.
“It was the throne room,” she says, turning to head back towards Galdr.
My eyes shut, my hand going lax around the bow.
My mind begins to run through all of our previous interactions, going as far back as when we first met as children.
Had Haylee befriended me because she saw a girl being picked on and felt bad?
Or had she, even then, seen me as nothing more than an opportunity?
She wanted freedom, and the only way for her to gain that was through power.
What was more powerful than befriending the princess of the kingdom?
My eyes open, my lips pursing as I stare in the direction she disappeared. “Marrying the prince.”
The palace library is practically empty—only the sound of pages turning disrupts the otherwise oppressive silence.
Sitting at Elora’s desk, I wait for the red-headed librarian to show while I peruse a book that talks about the first instances of imbuing dragon stone with magic.
It’s not a firsthand account, more of a researcher’s thoughts on why it makes such a great conduit for our magic.
One interesting theory is the makeup of the onyx mountains themselves.
While the Fae Kingdom’s temperatures are generally cooler than ours, since they are farther north than the rest of the Continent, their mountains are rumored to have warm cores made of more than just rock.
The author theorizes that this is why the dragons settled there as opposed to anywhere else on the Continent.
It’s an interesting hypothesis but not exactly what I’m looking for.
Still, there have been a few noteworthy pieces of information on imbuing stone and the history of the practice.
Laying the book face down on the table, I stretch my arms as I yawn and stand, rounding the desk to where Elora keeps paper and pens for note taking.
I grab a black pen and find a notepad, laying it on top of the desk as I flip through the pages to find a blank one.
Most of them contain Elora’s thoughts on whatever book she is currently reading, one of which included doodles of the characters kissing.
I continue to pass pages of drawings and quickly jotted notes when a name catches my eye.
Pausing, I hold the notepad open and reread to confirm what I saw. Rhea Maxwell.
“What the fuck?” I whisper, scanning the length of the paper and its back side. By the time I’ve finished reading everything, my heart is racing in my throat.
“Hello, hello!” My head shoots up as her voice rings out from somewhere down the center aisle.
Moving quickly, I rip the two pages out and fold them before stuffing them into my pocket and putting the notebook back in the drawer.
Elora rounds the corner a second later, carrying a large bag of books.
She looks as she normally does—like she’s in a rush but the place she is hurrying to is just the next chapter of her current read.
With her unassuming personality, it would be easy for her to fly under the radar as the rat within our kingdom.
She already had the trust of Nox, of Daje and Cass too. What information has she been privy to?
“Okay, so I was incredibly bored last night at work and started thinking about other materials that could mirror the… Mirror.” She snorts as she heaves her bag onto the desk with a thud, beginning to pull books from it.
“Glossy, reflective materials, regardless of whether we know if they hold magic or not. And that brought me to glass.” She pushes her glasses up her nose where they have slipped, medium gray eyes meeting mine with excitement.
“Mages can’t imbue glass,” I remind her, keeping my voice level despite the way my fists clench at my sides.
“Right, we can’t do it to our glass. But what if there was a special type of glass from the Fae Kingdom? Just like how there is dragon stone?”
“It’s never been recorded.” Not once.
“Well, not in the texts we have here,” she counters, leaning a hip against the table.
“But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Or that it might be kept secret by the fae or hidden in texts that I don’t have access to.
” Her eyebrow lifts, and she tosses her plait over her shoulder.
“What if there is dragon glass and that’s what we need to fix the Mirror? ”
“A fair guess,” I tell her, rounding the desk. “I’ll see if Elisha has anything that might cover it in the Galdr library.” Or if the archives do.
“Wait, right now?” she asks as I pass her. “I thought we were going to look through these books together!”
“I had something come up. I’ll meet you here tomorrow.
” I leave her grumbling behind me as I make my way out of the library and into one of the main halls, my muscles tense.
I need to show someone who knows Elora what I found, who can at the very least tell me if I’m overreacting or if we should have her questioned immediately.
Nox is too close to the situation to ask him to judge fairly, and that leaves only one person I trust that I can ask.
Daje.