Chapter 33
Coco and I hit a roadblock in the Zo library. I’m working it out, but it means we have some extra time at home, so I checked in on a little experiment of mine. As I’ve instructed, Preysee has been dropping the trays of food meant for my brother to our live-in Zo scholar—who I’ve learned has been informing our military movements to Zo. He’s started limping. I checked the infirmary and found out he is complaining of bone pain too. Just like Father. Thankfully, Dagen hasn’t shown any signs of poison, so Preysee has been doing her job. I’m going to have to properly thank her with a visit to Zem to see her niece. I don’t know what I’d do without Dagen. He found me on the roof tonight. He knows if he finds me up there, I’m not okay. He sat by me, put his arm around my shoulder, and didn’t say a word.
As soon as I shut my guards out of my room, I crumple to the floor.
My body shakes from fatigue, hunger, and the hole Soriah punched through me.
I needed something to calm my rolling stomach and trembling hands. Whether or not it’s poisoned is a secondary concern.
The milk is still cold, condensation gathering on the outside of the glass.
I wonder who brought them. Preysee is gone, and Yisabell, along with all the bondslaves, are scrubbing the palace in preparation for my betrothed’s arrival.
I skip over that thought.
I close my eyes and chew with my back against the door, grateful again for the numbing salve, and my thoughts go to Dae. He was there outside my room, and I can’t help but wonder if he had something to do with this plate of food. I plan to ask him, and the thought of talking to him again loosens something in my chest. It’s a little thing, but it helps me breathe easier.
Once my plate is clean, I hobble to my closet and change into the sleeping gown Preysee left for me before facing my stack of books. I pluck the Jaxelli book out of my stack instead of the romance novel, because my betrothed will be here tomorrow before the preliminaries.
Climbing up onto my bed, I begin reading the history of the Jaxelli Warriors, pretending this is just another book recommended by Thaddeus.
Not a history of my betrothed’s lineage.
I’m reading about their unnaturally long lives when his velvet voice caresses my senses. “And you call me the flirt? What kind of sleeping attire is that?”
I look up at the ceiling where Dae just feathered in, following him down until he fills out his full, ghostly form that now towers beside my bed.
I take the silky, midnight-blue material in my fingers. “It’s called comfort.” My eyes dart back to him. “With style.”
“Comfort is big and fluffy. That nightgown barely covers you.”
My father’s whip snaps in my mind, slashing through the skin on my back. “That’s what makes it comfortable.”
“Let’s talk about something else.” Ice coats the air, and his words come out clipped. Angry. I can almost feel it in the air.
“Like how you delivered food to my door?” My logical mind balks at the accusation, but my gut tells me I’m right. He knew I was hungry; knows I don’t eat meat, and as he touches down to the floor taking his human silhouette that fills my room with cold air, I’m also reminded, he’s not like other spirits.
“What makes you think it was me?”
It’s not a denial, and I wonder if this is one of the things Father doesn’t want me to know about spirits.
“Just tell me how you did it.”
His spirit lingers by my bookshelves, a taunt in his voice. “How about you tell me why you almost kissed the Zem prince?”
I narrow my eyes. “Don’t change the subject.”
He stops eying my shelves and prowls toward me until he’s at my bedside. Bending down and placing his ghostly arms on the edge of my bed—leaving no impression—he leans forward.
“Come on, Nizzara.”
I sense his exact outline, the air swirling in different patterns where he begins. And his broad-shouldered outline is very close.
I think of my near kiss with Kazem and shake my head. It’s so stupid. So girlish.
The air moves as if he is reaching out his hand to brush his fingers across my caster’s shield, over my shoulder. The cold storm of lightning sets my skin on fire. For a split second, I sense his desire. Desire, and frustration, exactly like I sense with Liha’s emotions. Then it is gone.
“What will it take for you to trust me?” he says, his velvet tone taking on a hint of pain.
I bite my lip, thinking. “Tell me how you got a plate of food to my door. Are you bonded to someone else?”
Dae is silent for so long, I fold my arms and try to hide my sudden, irrational jealousy. “So, you are bonded to someone.”
He sighs. “No, I am not bonded to anyone.”
“Then how are you capable of moving things on your own?” Is this some sort of vessel knowledge my father has kept hidden?
His words are quiet. “If I told you what things I’m capable of, you would run from me, Nizzara.”
A shiver works its way up my spine at the way his voice curls around my name. I remember how he claimed to be alone before. How spirits steer clear of him and my heart gives a tug because I know what that feels like.
As if he knows exactly what his voice does to me, he makes a low, rumbling sound. It causes my mind to wander into the land of stupid, girlish—no, not girlish—womanly things. Ever since he made the comment about kissing spirits, I find myself imagining him. Alive and touchable, whispering certain things in my ear, his lips brushing my—
“What exactly are you thinking about right now to make your desires so terribly scandalous?”
Damning heat floods to my cheeks. I swallow and say, “How about an exchange. I will tell you what I was thinking, if you tell me how you moved a solid plate of biscuits on your own.”
I convince myself—barely—that it will be worth the embarrassment to know; to have some insight into what kinds of dangerous things he’s capable of. Plus, he’s a spirit.
Embarrassment doesn’t count with spirits, right?
“You are a cruel little beast,” he says, and it has the tiniest hint of fondness in it. “But I will take that deal.”
I’m used to masking my fear, anger, even disgust, but embarrassment is proving so much harder. “I was thinking—” I clear my throat. “About your voice.” Despite my best efforts, my gaze goes to my fingers as they play with the edge of my nightgown. “And I was imagining what it would be like if you were alive—if I could touch you—while you told me exactly how you liked to be touched.”
Realms. That was so much worse out loud.
Silence.
Complete, unbreathing silence, until he says, “You can tell me that, but you won’t tell me about the almost kiss?”
I force my gaze up to him, arrange my lips into a smirk and pretend my heart isn’t beating just as hard as when I’m in the duel ring. “Try bringing chocolate next time. See what information that gets you.”
“Chocolate. That’s the key to all your secrets?”
I hold up my finger. “We aren’t talking about me anymore. Now tell me how you moved the plate.”
“I carried it,” he says. “In my hands.”
I drop my brows flat. “But how? What power allows you to do that?”
“You did not ask what power I have, just how I moved it. And I have told you.”
I point directly at him. “Sometimes, I wish I could see your smug smirk just so I could wipe it off your face.”
He laughs, and just like in the training room, its sound is wonderful. It’s the kind of laugh that, even though my day has been shit, tugs at strings inside of me. Strings I didn’t even know were there.
And it’s dangerously contagious.
I bite my lip to keep from smiling.
His laughter settles and his cold presence feels lighter. “Be careful what you wish for, Nizzara. Many women have faced my smug smirk—as you call it—only to be dazzled by it.”
I roll my eyes. “No one likes a cocky flirt.”
“Hmm,” he purrs. “Your desires whisper otherwise.”
My throat goes dry, and my voice comes out too high. “What I desire”—I hold up my book—“is to read.”
A soft chuckle. “Not The King of Kingstonight?”
“No. Not tonight.” My mind is in knots from that book, trying to see meaning in every ink blotch.
“Ah, reading up on your betrothed, are we?”
I dip my chin and run my finger along a book corner.
“Find anything interesting?”
“It’s pretty much the same as any other history of peoples. War, oppression, power.”
“It troubles you?”
I close the book. “Have you read any of their history?”
“I know a little about the Light and Dark Jaxelli.”
“The Light Warriors tortured the Dark ones for thousands of years, because they were afraid of their power.”
The Awoms come to mind. Yisabell and her people have been hunted and feared long before my time. That’s exactly why the oracles, and I imagine why their cousins, the guardians, are gone.
“It’s not right.”
“Just because your betrothed is Light doesn’t mean he tortures his Dark siblings.”
I trace my finger over a chapter heading. ”Do you know anything about the Dark Jaxelli?”
”The Dark Jaxelli are gifted their power from very powerful gods. Some have done awful things with it. That”s all I know.”
My mind lingers on the torture devices used to restrain the Dark Jaxelli. “What if the Dark ones are just misunderstood?”
Like me.
“Most people are,” he says softly.