19. Jaxus
NINETEEN
JAXUS
I struggled to contain the urgency to get her off the ground as she reluctantly climbed my haunches. Each finger clinging to scales reminded me that if I was too twitchy, I’d scare her off and this would be over. On the other side of the coin, if I gave her time to consider what she was doing, she might back out.
It was almost impossible to find the balance, so I waited silently as she got into position.
Once she found her seat, I shifted to stand and felt her tense and try a different hold.
“Hold on wherever you feel most comfortable,” I told her soothingly. “There is no right or wrong.”
“I don’t want to grab something that hurts you.”
“You’re adorable, but I’m made of armor, Kiera.” I wished I could see her expression. “As a healer, you should know that. You seem to forget yourself every time you take the role of ryder.”
“Isn’t that half the problem? I’m expected to be this new thing, and I don’t know how.”
“You can be both. Try not to focus on what you think others want of you. You won’t lose who you already are if you don’t allow it. You just be you, and the rest will simply fall into place.”
“Okay.”
Her lack of snarky response told me I’d hit home with my advice and I relaxed slightly. Winning Kiera over was a battle I was having to fight on so many fronts, I took any win, however small. I hoped she enjoyed our back and forth as much as I did.
“Feel your magic. Let it reach out for mine. Our combined magic will help keep you seated if you let it. You won’t have to think about it. It will just work for you when we are flying. Fully melded, you should even be able to sleep.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she scoffed. “I don’t think a meld can change fully expressed magic, let alone a healing power.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Bringing up melding when we were finally about to fly for the first time was stupid. But I couldn’t fight the urge to keep nudging her down the path to me. One victory would never be enough. I couldn’t stop until we were one in every way.
“Healing magic isn’t the same as others. It doesn’t change.”
“Why would you believe that?” I didn’t know if she was right, but we didn’t have ryders in Kerani, so I couldn’t be sure.
“It’s never been seen before. It’s not a thing.”
“Not if you don’t let it,” I said only half to her. “ Okay, I’m going to launch. You don’t have to do anything but hold on and let your magic find mine.”
“Don’t go too high!” she pleaded.
“I’ll only go high enough to clear the walls, and then we can take a gentle turn over the pastures so you can get used to it. Alright?”
“Okay.”
“Ready?”
“No.” Her fingers dug into my scales. At least she’d gotten over the fear of hurting me. Or maybe her fear of heights trumped the fear of hurting me.
I made the gentlest launch I possibly could and beat my wings to get us clear of the palace.
Kiera was rigid on my back but she didn’t pass out, so it was progress.
After clearing the walls surrounding the palace, I turned away from the city and flew over the pasture lands. There was nothing but silence from my ryder. No movement. No—breathing.
“Kiera?”
She didn’t answer and the silence stretched in our minds. I followed the threads of our magic to make sure she wasn’t passed out on my back.
“You can breathe,” I urged and felt relieved when she blew out the breath she was holding. “Are you okay?”
“Don’t ask me that right now.” Her weight stayed like a statue glued to my back, not like a living ryder.
I pushed my magic towards hers to help her feel more secure, but it clashed with an impenetrable wall. She hadn’t opened herself to me at all. “Let my magic in, Kiera. It will help you settle down.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” she said shifting a little, then grabbing another place tightly. She was virtually laying on me.
“You are practically clamped onto me. You’re going to exhaust yourself, and your muscles will hurt for days. You have to relax.”
“You act like I have a choice in this.” She barely forced the words past her walls .
“You do. You could let me in so I can help you. Are your eyes even open?” I hated the strain between us.
“Yes! But only because I tried closing them, and not seeing is far worse than seeing.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Okay, let’s try distraction. Talk to me.”
“About what? I’m a little busy not dying here. I’m not really in the mood for a chat.”
I knew what would get her mind off it though, so I pressed the button. “Talk to me about Nyx,” I suggested innocently. “I don’t know what to do with him. I’m torn.”
“What do you mean?” she replied, and I knew I had her.
“He’s being irrational,” I hedged. She knew the problems, but I needed her engaged to distract her from thinking about being up high, so I was being enticingly vague on purpose, but this was a problem I needed help solving.
“He’s dealing with a lot. We got through to him about the undead, that’s something.”
“No, he’s being stupid. Taking risks.”
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t known him for long, but from what I’ve seen and what others say, he doesn’t strike me as a fae who makes questionable, rash decisions very often.”
“He’s not. He’s usually the most level-headed fae I know.”
“Well, that’s not what I’m seeing. When it comes to strategizing, he’s not listening to my opinions or those of some of our top strategists.”
“Maybe he’s seeing something you’re not,” Kiera replied, wanting to believe the best of Nyx, which I understood. I closed my eyes, letting my magic flow towards hers again, seeking to forge a connection while she was distracted by her train of thought and hers gave a little, accepting it.
“He hasn’t been the general for long, but he has prepared for it his whole life. He’s a natural. Everyone who knows about these things has said it. I know he’s been erratic of late, but we need to give him the credit he’s due.”
“Yes, but do you really think it’s a good idea for him to go against the King?”
“He’s what?” Kiera asked, sitting up straight, clearly alarmed.
If this wasn’t normal for Nyx, I had a bigger problem than I thought.
“The King gave strict orders that no more flights were to cross borders until we know what we’re dealing with, and Nyx is still considering taking a scouting party out.” Secrecy be damned. She was my ryder, after all.
“Why would he do that?”
“To find the source of the undead? I can’t be sure, but that’s how it feels.”
“No, I know why he wants to scout. I mean, why would he so blatantly defy the King?” She opened up more to me, chasing my words, even probing for them.
“This is what I mean. He’s not being rational. I didn’t know if that was normal for him.”
Kiera was quiet for a moment. The only sign that she was still with me was her long sigh, but still she was focused on the conversation, not the flight. I took the opportunity to gain a little altitude. It was easier flying up where the thermals were. Fewer wing beats and longer soaring. She didn’t seem to notice.
“What are you thinking?” I urged, wanting to know where her brilliant mind had wandered.
“Nothing,” she replied. “Everything—I don’t know.”
“You can tell me. I just told you the King’s confidential orders. We are bonded, we don’t have secrets.”
“I don’t know if it’s something or if I’m just going crazy,” she mentally hedged.
“I can help you decide,” I added some tease to my tone, hoping to gain her confidence. “I have to know if he’s not being himself. Grief can affect someone’s judgement. I know you know that as a healer.”
“It’s just Nyx is acting like ? —”
“Like?” I pushed.
“Like his mate died.” There was a long pause and I said nothing. What could I say? Was she right? I thought back over all that had happened.
“It’s just been a theory floating around in my head. It’s not possible. It’s just I see some similarities in how he’s behaving. The irrational behavior, the not sleeping, the fact that his grief seems to be getting worse, not better. You could be forgiven for thinking he was experiencing the madness of losing one’s mate, not a brother. I’ve never seen it before.”
“But he and Zaria are soul-bonded—” It wasn’t like he could have been that with his brother, but the more I digested it, the more I knew she wasn’t wrong. I just hadn’t seen it through that lens. I hadn’t even considered the possibility.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have put this on to you. I had no one else to bounce it off, but now you’ll be thinking it, too.”
“No, you can always talk to me,” I assured her.
“Thank you.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“What can I do?” She sighed.
“Is there a way to help him?”
“There isn’t much that helps. We haven’t had a bonded pair in ages, but in the height of the war with the Vivi Mortui, we used a kind of torpensal .”
“What’s that?”
“They are medicines that can dull the severing of a mate bond, but they aren’t recommended because they didn’t really work. We don’t use them anymore, but they still exist underground. The problem is, they are mind-altering, harmful, and highly addictive. Unfortunately, there was an epidemic of poor fae who succumbed to them in the past, wasting away under their influence. It has thankfully lessened over the centuries and I’d never want to see is rise to that extent again.”
“What are they even given for?”
“No healer would now, but they are peddled by some dishonest traders as tonics for grief or mental anguish. But they only numb the pain for a while, and more and more is required until it stops working, but then the grief is like a monster.”
I’d never heard of them. I knew losing a mate was an open wound that never fully healed, but the things the fae in this kingdom were forced to do to ease suffering they shouldn’t be facing were eye-opening. In Kerani, mates were as rare as they are here, but in loss, they were taught to bind their severed magic to the Goddess so that the missing part of them was fulfilled by her. For some, this was enough to find a life beyond the loss. For many, it led to a new life in service to the Goddess in what was equivalent to the priesthood here. But for some lucky ones, the Goddess bound new mates to them. I couldn’t share any of this with Kiera, though. My blood bond prevented me from even hinting at a place where the Goddess was still connected to the people in this way.
“And there’s nothing else?” I asked, cutting off my thoughts.
“Not anymore.” Frustration bled through her tone.
“What do you mean, not anymore?”
“Back many hundreds of years ago, when magic was different, there were healers that could heal the mind. That magic is lost now, like so many others,” she lamented.
Not lost completely, I thought, thinking of the elder healers we had who still retained some touches of mind magic.
“It’s not even talked about anymore. Most don’t know it ever existed.”
“Then how do you know about it?”
She laughed. “My gran taught me. I was just grateful my ploy was working. We’d been flying for miles and she hadn’t paid it the slightest bit of attention. Maybe I should encourage her to bring her books up here, she could research while we fly. It wouldn’t be very practical in battle, but the hope was always to outsmart an enemy rather than fight one, so I still held hope that a war would not come to fruition if we were clever enough about our approach.
“What if you’re right?” Kiera’s voice was barely a whisper in my mind as she processed. I wished she had her thoughts open to me, I found her mind fascinating. Maybe one day, she would allow it.
“By the Goddess!” she cried . “What if she—” Her words cut off with a yelp as her body tumbled onto my wing, then slipped straight off. I dared to look beneath me in that split second, hoping beyond hope I’d imagined it, but there she was, flailing in the air.
Fuuuuck!
I dove, banking sharply as I did, and leveled out just above her. I caught her quickly, and her scream cut off.
“I’ve got you,” I soothed. “I’ve got you.”
When she didn’t reply, I thought she had passed out again. Fuck, fuck, fuck! She was never going to fly again. We were done. How could I let this happen? I brought us in to land, cradling her.
I set her gently down and shifted.
“Kiera?” I went to her immediately, surprised to find her dusting herself off. I grasped her shoulders in case she fainted and studied her. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry.”
“It was my fault. I got overexcited. Thank you for catching me.” She tidied her hair as she looked around. She didn’t even seem upset about the fall. “Where are we?”
I stepped back, shocked by her calm demeanor. “Do you need to sit down?”
“Sit down? I can’t possibly sit down. I need to get back to my books and look into all of this!” She looked me up and down. “Why did you shift? Shift back! I need you to take us home. ”
I blinked. Not wanting to bring up her crippling fear of flying, but at the same time wanting to check that she was in her right mind. Perhaps she was delirious from shock. “You realize you just fell off me again?”
“Yes, yes, and you caught me, but we have work to do, so come on! Be a dragon again so we can get back.” She clapped her hands to hurry me up, and not being able to think of anything else to say, I did as she asked and shifted back.