Chapter 46
Therxian hovered anxiously at his mother’s side as the healer swayed over her. “How is she?”
The female settled back onto her coiled tail and looked over at him grimly. “This poison is not a common one, but I recognize the symptoms. I have treated her with medicine that should control the symptoms for now.”
“Will the high queen awaken, Healer Zhia?” Kitanara whispered.
Zhia looked over at her and inclined her head, her gavo slowly snapping.
“Her body needs to stabilize, but she should waken soon, but she will be exhausted and will need her rest. She should be more stabilized by the next rising. However, I must caution you that it is not a permanent solution. The antidote to the poison requires special herbs—poisons that will counteract the one currently flooding her body—that are not available in the shinara.”
“How soon can you get them?” Therxian rasped, emotion thickening his voice.
The healer’s gaze turned to him, and she sighed.
“My prince, it is not that simple. I have sent my assistant to the Daliska Market to see if Nashee, the Uralial, has what I need. But truthfully, we do not even know where to start, as I do not even know the exact plants that would be required for the antidote—only that it is an intricate combination of poisons that were used to treat it. The palace library does not contain any references related to it. And unless the merchant is knowledgeable in such things, she is unlikely to be able to assist us. The likelihood that she might have the specialized poisons necessary to create the antidote is also unlikely, as from what I recall she deals mostly in common goods grown by her kind. I will not know until my assistant reports back to me.”
Therxian lowered his head in acceptance, his eyes shifting back to his mother. Her face was no longer contorted with pain as her body writhed in agony. She appeared to be peacefully sleeping.
A polite tapping sound from a spear hitting the stone floor drew his attention to the female standing guard at the door. Buosoa grimaced apologetically.
“There is someone at the door requesting to see you, Therxian,” she murmured.
His gavo trembled with annoyance. “If it is one of those females—”
“It is an elder female,” Buosoa interjected.
Elder Goyu? He was surprised but understood that the elderly female would be concerned about the high queen.
He hesitated, reluctant to leave his mother’s side when she might waken at any moment.
He cast an uncertain look toward her prone figure, and Jathella hummed her understanding softly at his side.
“I will alert you if she awakens,” she assured him.
Therxian inclined his head in thanks and rose. “Very well. I will see her.”
Buosoa bowed, returned to her post, and opened the door for the elder. Elder Goyu entered with her mate, her face expression drawn with concern. She reached back for Waena, and the male took her hand comfortingly for support as she peered over at the prone queen, grief filling her eyes.
“How is she?”
“Not well,” he admitted. “The healer has her stabilized and she should awaken soon, but her condition will only worsen without the correct treatment.”
Elder Goyu turned to him with surprise. “There is nothing that the healer can do?”
He dipped his chin unhappily. “The treatment requires a combination of Uralialian poisons. Who would have access to that in the shinara?”
Waena frowned, his gavo flattening. “There is that one female who was pushed to the edge of the market by locals—”
“Nashee would not carry anything like that,” Elder Goyu refuted.
“Although her stock is largely sourced by Uralian growers who have access to prime growing conditions not accessible in our own caverns, she carries culinary spices and herbs to treat common and less common ailments. But she is not one to sell things that could harm anyone. Shinara law is highly restrictive to any Uralial. Even being caught with such things in her possession could potentially be a death sentence.”
“Some of the noble houses certainly do like to take the law into their own hands when it comes to matters involving Uralial,” Waena agreed grimly.
“It seems that the noble houses dare a lot more than I was aware of,” a weak voice commented, drawing their attention back to the high queen as Jathella carefully helped Zathexa sit up.
She was pale and haggard with obvious exhaustion, and yet she was still every inch a queen, even in such a private setting.
It gave Therxian a new appreciation for his mother’s strength as her gaze slid over them all, revealing nothing.
At least, not until it settled onto Elder Goyu and her eyes widened with surprise. “Tutor Gorgona?”
Elder Goyu’s face softened, and she swept by Therxian to take the hand that the high queen extended to her. “You remember this old face, do you, Queen Zathexa?” she gently teased. “My house is undeserving of such recognition.”
Zathexa’s gavo quivered with emotion, her eyes brightening as she smiled at the elderly female.
“How could I forget? You were not selected by my mother for your house status, but rather for your powerful rational and disciplined morals that she felt were a necessary aspect of my education. There are few whom I can recount as valuable models of excellence from my youth. It has been many revolutions since I have seen you. Where have you hidden yourself for so long?”
The female gave a wry chuckle, her gavo vibrating with her merriment. “I have been here all along, my queen. But the fifteenth house lacks the prestige to be within the inner circle.”
His mother’s smile fell, and Therxian felt a pang of sympathy for her. For all his resentment in his youth for his intense isolation, it never occurred to him that his mother would have dealt with an enforced isolation despite her great status within the shinara.
“Of course,” she sighed as she withdrew her hand, her expression shifting to a faint smile of regret. “They control everything, do they not?”
Therxian did not miss the bitter note in her voice, nor did Elder Goyu.
The female boldly took Zathexa’s hand again and held it firmly between both of hers.
“Everything is susceptible to change, my dear queen. Zathexa,” she crooned when his mother looked away.
“Come child, I know you have suffered much. You have known countless pains that only a mate who has loved deeply and a mother can know. It is time to make your pain your blade against them. Now is the time to reclaim justice.”
“My hour of redemption has long passed.” Her head bowing with a weight he had never suspected, Zathexa barked a sharp, angry laugh, her chin dipping in denial.
Her movements were weakening as what little that remained of her strength began to rapidly fade.
“It would have been better if you had just allowed me to die so that I can rejoin my mate awaiting me in the next world. I have nothing more of myself to offer or sacrifice for the shinara. My daughter is dead, and sons have disappeared one by one. I could not bear to lose another, and so what have I done—I have violated the trust and happiness of my remaining two offspring. Slengral is gone and Therxian—”
He set his hand on her gavo, the gesture one of intimate trust that he had not shown his mother since he was a nestling, before he had been sent to the haga. “I am still here, Mother. You have not lost me,” he assured her.
Her face twisted with emotional pain, the depth of her grief worn openly on her face for perhaps the first time in many revolutions. “But I cannot forgive myself for the decisions I made.”
“That you were compelled to make,” he quietly argued, drawing her gaze to him in confusion.
He swallowed and ran his hand over the multiple fans of her gavo in a heartfelt motion.
“Mother, I understand. The council has been a lurking enemy. They took from you to control you so that you would do anything to safeguard what little you had left. This was the scale they kept since my father’s death, and it is you who preserved my life for so many revolutions. ”
She grimaced. “And yet this life I have taken from you. I was content to let my mother-line die. You were safe among the Vehal, and Slengral was beyond the touch of the council. I could join my mate and other children at the end of my life with my regrets but with the knowledge that you would continue on in a life where you were safe and happy. And yet... you returned.” She laughed sadly.
“That was a double-bladed velkat to my hearts. A mother’s joy in seeing her son is constrained by the despair of knowing what lay ahead.
And what I was forced to orchestrate so that you did not meet the same fate as your brothers. ”
He lowered himself on his tail so that he was eye-level with her. “Mother... do you know what happened to my brothers? I could only find records of them entering the haga, and of two leaving as mates, but then nothing further.”
Zathexa’s gavo quivered, and she glanced quickly at Jathella before looking away. “I have never spoken of this to any other, and I forbade your mother to ever speak of it to anyone. She was to guard it under complete secrecy.”
“You know something,” he whispered.
Her chin dipped. “I do not know what happened to them, but I recall how they looked when Nyrana summoned me in the dead of the night from my bed. When they were found, she was reported to, and she silenced each of the guards so that no one would ever know.”
“Silenced,” Kitanara whispered. “Our mother killed guards who served under her?”
His mother dipped her chin with a quiet laugh.
“Perhaps that would have been easier, but that was not Nyrana’s way, and it would not have been in accordance with my orders.
She relocated them to live peacefully within another shinara with new identities and the means to ensure their comfort for many revolutions. ”
While Therxian was relieved that his mother had not condoned or ordered acts of brutality to preserve royal secrets, that was not what he needed to know.
“What did you see, Mother?”
She met his gaze, grief-stricken with the memories he was forcing to the surface.
“Dead. They were left at different intervals, the bodies abandoned in different places, their sexual organs removed and their innards spilling out,” she rasped, choking on a sound of sorrow.
“I did not understand how it could happen. Gyin and Taru, I was never alerted to their mating. The haga did not submit their cyclic report until nearly a full lunar cycle after their deaths. But when questioned, their mates claimed to know nothing. The second story was the same as the first. They had left their nest during the night and never returned. They had assumed that they had fled their nests to the upper caverns to wait out the pheromone bond, as that is not unheard of.” She scoffed angrily.
“Not one of them thought to inform me that they had even chosen them, much less about their disappearance, until they were already gone.”
“Sexually brutalized and murdered,” Waena drawled quietly from where he had settled behind his mate, his presence, until that moment, forgotten.
“I have read about this, but it is exceedingly rare, and there has not been any documentation of a punishment of this nature being carried out in generations.”
“Apparently, someone decided to bring it back,” Jathella observed.
“Punishment?” Queen Zathexa leaned forward as Jathella supported her weight. “What crime could be so great that it would demand such a horrific punishment?”
Waena’s mouth tightened. “Historically, removing a male’s sant and inner organs was seen as a punishment for a male’s lack of filiality to his mate that was exclusively carried out among the noble houses.
Many would commit suicide to prevent being passed around, abused, and his sant removed while he was still breathing.
But it would have been ritualistically carried out regardless.
The removal of the internal organs was the final insult before disposing of his body publicly, where it would be subject to shame. ”
Zathexa made a strangled sound, and Waena paled, his expression immediately becoming apologetic as his mate struck him with her wing.
“Waena, she did not know such details. You could have found a gentler way to put it,” Elder Goyu hissed.
“Apologies, my queen. I was not thinking,” the male stuttered in apology, but Zathexa held up a hand, silencing him.
“No need. It just proves that I was right. I suspected that the council was behind it, as it always followed a decision I made wherein I ignored their advice or objection. This was largely the case regarding my own daughter’s rearing and education.”
“Given what my purpose was to be, is it possible that they were likewise used for breeding—but secretively? And what if they had failed to reproduce?”
His mother paled and swayed, forcing Jathella to grip her more firmly as she glared accusatively at Therxian. Zathexa caught the look, however, and patted her arm.
“It is fine, Jathella. I need to hear this. Yes... if they were trying to breed a legitimate replacement for my mother-line, it is quite possible.”
“Mother, I need to speak to you about Vekatha,” he rumbled as he touched her arm and settled more firmly at her side. “And... Yilada.”
Zathexa met his gaze, and her expression tightened at the hated name. “Tell me.”