Chapter 36
SAPHIRA
The words written in neat script on the page in front of me blurred but refused to reveal themselves, remaining in fae rather than transforming into English.
Every book dated around five hundred years ago that I had found in Sylas’s private library in my latest foray was the same.
They refused to give up their secrets and I was beginning to feel he had written them in ancient fae on purpose, just to deny me, to taunt me with the truth that was beyond my reach.
Concealed behind a wall I couldn’t translate.
Some words I could pick out, their similarity to fae enough that I could recognise parts of the word or the whole word at times. The rest of it was gibberish.
“Ugh.” I shoved the tome away from me across the table as I sank back in the wooden chair, tilting my head up towards the ceiling.
My tired eyes tracked the motes of magic that drifted in the light streaming in through the large windows to my right, and even they felt as if they were mocking me as time burned out faster than I wanted it to, slipping through my fingers.
Everything felt as if it was against me.
The records I had found were dated close to the Belkarthen attack, a ray of hope that had lifted me up when I had discovered them. That ray of hope became a storm cloud that hung over me when I had realised they were written in ancient fae.
I pulled down a breath, shoved my despair from my mind, and steeled my heart as I dragged another book towards me, refusing to be conquered by them. I would be the victor.
Peeling the leather cover back, I scanned the page. Nothing. None of it revealed itself to me and I couldn’t even pick out pieces of words in this one.
Fate really did hate me.
I had been sent here by it to deliver vengeance to my king, but the answers remained beyond my reach.
It felt as if fate itself enjoyed taunting me. Tormenting me with something I wanted, letting me get close to it before it swooped in and stole it from me. Lucas. Kaeleron. The answer to what had happened to his brother.
Maybe Kaeleron again if I didn’t find that answer and get it to him and get him out of this court before someone noticed him or he did something reckless that I feared would get him killed.
I lifted my hands and slapped my cheeks. “Come on now. You can do this. Focus up.”
I blew out my breath and hunched over the book, flipping the page and going from word to word, trying to decipher them.
Whoever had come up with ancient fae was a bastard or a sadist. Or both.
The swirly lines looked too similar at times, only a dot or a dash to differentiate them from another letter.
I had figured out some of them and had scrawled them on my notebook.
My gaze darted between that pad and the journal, picking out places where those letters were and I hit upon another idea.
I began copying the words, and below them I added the translation for each letter.
I still couldn’t understand a single word, but it felt like progress to me. I kept at it, losing track of time as I hunted for the answers I needed, willing to stay here all night if that was what it took to get them and get to Kaeleron before he could reach the castle.
A word jumped off the yellowed page at me.
I pressed my finger to the point below it and squinted at it, trying to make it out, something about it familiar to me as I looked at the fractured alphabet I had managed to put together and the phonetic versions that I had badly written below it.
Staring hard at the word, I focused all of my will on it, as if that would make it miraculously reveal itself to me.
“Ill’aeth.”
I somehow bit back the yelp that shot up my throat as Meiryn said that close to my ear, but I was sure I had jumped in my chair to make a fool of myself.
I spun towards her, unsure when she had come into the room and cursing myself for losing track of my surroundings.
I had let my guard down and I was lucky it had been Meiryn who had snuck up on me and not Lorien.
“What?” I stammered, heart pounding against my ribs as I struggled to process everything that had happened in the last few seconds and calm myself.
Meiryn gestured to the book, tapping the point I had been prodding with my finger. “Ill’aeth. It means little.”
“Little.” I stared at the word, still trying to catch up but remembering now that Meiryn had been studying ancient fae. “Ill’aeth is little.”
She pulled one of the wooden chairs closer and sat beside me. “You sound as if it is a word you have heard before.”
I nodded, but held back the words that rose into my throat, replacing them with others that I hoped would shield the truth. “Some of the fae back in the Shadow Court spoke ancient fae near where I was being held and I remember that word and some others.”
“What others?” Meiryn lowered her blue gaze to the worn pages as she twisted the book towards her and propped her chin up on her left palm, her elbow resting on the wooden table.
She pointed to the next word in the book, her nose scrunching up.
“That one means pig… or something like what you would know to be a pig.”
The thought that Meiryn might be able to help me read the books, together with how kind she had been to me in the last few days, and how close we had grown, had me lowering my guard.
“I heard the word… um… ky’aethena.” I hoped I said that right. Vyr had told me that ill’aeth ky’aethena, something Kaeleron had whispered to me when he had believed I was sleeping, meant something similar to little wolf, Kaeleron’s nickname for me.
The way Meiryn immediately looked at me, her silvery eyebrows high on her forehead, her pretty face a picture of shock just as Vyr’s had been when I had mentioned it to her, set me on edge. “Then it was a very private conversation you overheard.”
“Really?” I fidgeted with the spine of one of the books, picking at the leather. “I thought maybe it was a word for an animal.”
She laughed now.
“An animal?” She suddenly sobered as she caught my anxious picking at the tome and the way I refused to look at her as my cheeks wanted to burn up while I mentally cursed Jenavyr for lying to me.
Her tone softened. “Oh… because you are a wolf. No. It’s not the word for an animal.
Saphira… did… did someone say this to you? ”
Her gaze was searching.
I panicked and shook my head, quick to say, “No. Like I said, I just overheard it.”
She sat up, the book forgotten as she came to face me, watching me so closely my heart raced wildly and my wolf instincts said to run.
“It’s an oddly specific, and very personal thing for someone to have said in front of you.
Most fae would not speak such words in front of another.
It is a thing said in private. Or so I have heard.
” She looked as if she wanted to reach for my hand for some reason as concern bloomed in her eyes, so I folded my arms over my chest and tucked them beneath my armpits.
She sighed and looked beyond me to the windows.
“I am not sure anyone will ever call me ill’aeth ky’aethena. ”
I tried to hold my tongue, tried to sink into the furniture and disappear so she couldn’t scrutinise me or draw the truth from me, but my curiosity was too great.
I had believed Vyr when she had said it meant something like little wolf, not questioning her, but now I was looking back, her reaction to hearing those words had been as strange as Meiryn’s, only anger had followed her shock.
“What does it mean?” I asked and then shook my head again, quickly biting out, “Not that anyone has said it to me. It was said to another. I just overheard it and thought they were mocking me.”
My face must have betrayed me, because she smiled softly, her eyes filled with warmth and understanding as she said, “It means little mate.”
Little mate.
The world dropped out from under me before I could school my expression.
I was sure that I hid none of the emotions that rushed through me as those two simple words whirled around my mind, catching my heart up in them, teasing my soul.
Fear. Relief. Hope. Shock. Joy. It was a lot to take in.
It wasn’t confirmation of anything, not evidence that we were fated, and I might have been mistaken about the words he had said because I had been half asleep at the time.
It was probably just a term of endearment for him.
The way my wolf side reacted to him, how I wanted to curl around him and rub against him to make him notice me, and how he calmed me so easily, making me feel safe and loved, and protected, left me feeling it was more than that though.
And how his blood had tasted on my fangs.
And that thrill that had bolted through me when he had bitten me in return, making me want to howl in victory as he had claimed me with his own fangs.
Gods.
I had ached for a second mate, had been envious of Kali and her two fated ones, and disappointed that fate wouldn’t be so kind to me, refusing to give me someone who would love and cherish me, who would stand by my side to lift me up.
He had been there all along.
At my side, lifting me up, watching over me.
Loving me.
Not love born of a bond carved by fate, pushing us together against our will and making us slaves to our instincts.
This love was everything I had imagined a fated bond would feel like.
It ran deeper, stronger, as unbreakable as fae steel, and as powerful as the goddess of this land.
I had thought I would fear a fated connection, had been convinced by what Lucas had done that they were a lie, a manipulation of our true feelings to suit destiny.
But in my heart, I knew.
I would have loved Kaeleron whether fate had chosen him for me or not.
This love that burned within me was beyond fate. It blazed bright and hot enough that it gave me the power to reshape this world so I could be with him. It was a blade I wielded. It was the light in the darkness. The courage I needed. The strength that made me fearless.
There was nothing I wouldn’t do for him.