Chapter 82 Bahira #2
“The king’s new girlfriend,” she answers with a roll of her eyes and a wave of her hand. “Or, I guess, old girlfriend? Lady Margaret said he is now marrying your friend. Helena.”
“Haylee,” I murmur, to which she shrugs her shoulders. “You’re sure Rhea’s magic was white?”
“Yep. I saw it lots when Dilan made me train with her.”
“And you’ve never seen that color from a mage before, right?”
She pauses cleaning up her own small table to look at me over her shoulder and drawl, “No.”
I dig back in my memories to what Nox had told me about Rhea’s magic.
But other than the revelation that her flame had turned blue in the Cauldron of Vires, marking her as the next Void queen, he hadn’t shared anything else.
I purse my lips together. With so much unknown about Void Magic, it’s impossible to even begin to predict all that she might be capable of.
And, I realize as a chill moves over me, all that she could be forced to do while in the clutches of King Dolian.
A stilted eeriness has settled over the palace, one that whispers from the corners that something here is very wrong.
Between Nox disappearing every night, the council’s secretive nature, and the lack of any correspondence from Daje, Cass, and Elora, I feel on edge.
Constantly waiting for the rug to be pulled from beneath me once more.
It is selfish to complain about the status of my life when, relatively speaking, the upheaval isn’t as serious as, say, being kidnapped by a sadistic uncle intent on marrying me.
It doesn’t make it any less jarring, however.
Add in the fact that Nox’s last spoken words to me have been needling my brain like some kind of foreign worm, and it’s no wonder I can’t focus on the ancient manuscript on the bed in front of me.
Nox isn’t my only distraction, however.
I assumed that, with time, thoughts of Kai might dwindle until they fizzled out altogether, like a lingering sunset finally giving way to night.
There is nothing here to remind me of him, no reason for memories of our time together to keep playing on repeat in my head.
But despite all of that, they do. His touch on my life had been brief, yet it still haunts me as if we had spent lifetimes together.
One night, while in the thrall of those memories, I drafted a letter.
I rationalized it by saying I was only sticking to the things I had promised to tell him but had been unable to because of the broken Mirror.
But as I wrote, each sentence grew longer until the paragraphs morphed from information about Rhea to the truths of my heart.
The longing I feel, and even the bits of anger and sadness and guilt that surround it, have been unavoidable verities for the entirety of my time home.
I pushed them aside to focus on other important things, ones that I thought I might have some control over.
But doing so didn’t lessen them, and they certainly didn’t go away.
The letter sits hidden in a drawer, unsent to the only person who might want to hear those words, to the only male who’s ever deserved them, yet I do not believe that I deserve to say them to him.
Sighing, I turn my attention back to the manuscript and the cursive writing of its author.
Three quarters through this book, and I’m finding that it is part factual text and part personal opinion and, overall, has yielded very little information besides the mention of blood mingling.
My eyelids grow heavy as the night progresses, and I go from sitting up to laying on my side, lazily reading through a new section entitled The Gods We Worship when a noise outside my door draws my focus.
I already know whose heavy steps traverse the room on the other side of the hallway, and I move quickly to try and catch him before he disappears into his bedroom.
But when I reach his sitting room, his door closes and locks, and my chest deflates.
Whatever Nox has been doing, whatever is pulling him away each night, it can’t be good.
Certainly not when he comes back smelling of ale, his eyes full of secrets.
Returning to my room, I climb back in bed, grabbing the manuscript and preparing to close it when the word Void leaps off the page at me.
Blinking the exhaustion from my eyes, I squint to better focus and follow the sentence.
Void Magic, while precious and holy, is also volatile.
With the sheer magnitude of what the queen holds in her, it is hard for this author not to ponder if, perhaps, there is more godly work at play.
After all, who else but a god could be capable of both restoring vitality and draining life?
And while we have so far been blessed by benevolent queens, one day, we might not be so lucky.
So it is important that we ask, when a new queen rises who does not have the best interest of her people at heart, who will be there to stop her?
I swallow roughly as I close the book, my heart pounding heavily in my chest. It’s time that I have a true conversation with my brother about what, exactly, Rhea has the power to do as the holder of Void Magic.