41. Kiera
FORTY-ONE
KIERA
“ I don’t like it,” Jaxus grumped.
“I know you don’t, but it’s the right thing to do. I owe him at least the courtesy of breaking it off with him officially and I need to let the council know I have a mate.”
“Let them know they can’t have you back to become one of their breeding females, you mean?”
I sighed. “Exactly.”
“Wouldn’t you rather I just tell him?” Jaxus gave me a big grin.
I rolled my eyes, wishing it could be so. “While that would be easier and funnier, I don’t think it would go over well.” He’d probably try and poison him or something for all my luck, I thought to myself.
“I heard that.” Jaxus looked at the cup of coffee he’d been drinking. “I’m not eating anything else I don’t see made in front of me.”
“Like you’d be able to determine if they were poisoning you even if you watched it being made.”
His upper lip curled. “Good point. No more tiny mushrooms!”
“You going to cook everything the rest of the time we’re here?”
“Don’t think I won’t. I’ll hand-feed it to you, too.” The look in his eyes told me he was entirely serious.
Heat pooled in my belly. “Stop.” I pointed a finger at him. “I need to do this.”
He slipped his fingers between mine as we walked to Casimir’s family compound. Theirs was one of the largest in the city, with all of the family dwelling in interconnected homes. I’d always hated the idea of being forced to live with his mother hovering around. I was so happy that was no longer my future.
“I don’t want you going in there alone,” Jaxus insisted.
“You’ll hardly be welcome, you know?”
When we arrived at the main stairs to the compound, the conversation was rendered pointless because Casimir was just leaving. His robes were clean and he carried his bag, indicating that he was on his way to work.
He stopped abruptly when he saw us and backed up.
“Now listen here. I am a healer of this realm. You cannot harm me. It goes against the King’s laws,” he said with all the authority he could muster.
“No one is here to harm you, Casimir. I’d just like to talk for a moment.”
Jaxus was rigid, but when I squeezed his hand, he squeezed back.
“I don’t have time for this. I’m on my way to surgery.”
“It won’t take long. Something happened, and I wanted to tell you personally before I take it to the council.” Desperation leaked into my voice. I needed to get this over with.
Casimir scowled, eyeing Jaxus accusingly. “What did he do?”
“I didn’t do anything.” Jaxus had a smug air to him.
I side-eyed him. “Stop.”
Casimir narrowed his eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
“Just let me speak, will you both?” I cleared my throat. There was no gentle way to say it and I could feel Jaxus’ restraint dwindling, so I just came out and said it: “Jaxus and I are soul-bonded.”
Casimir narrowed his eyes, seething in Jaxus’ direction. “Excuse me? Surely there must be some mistake.” He looked at me, his expression all-knowing and patronizing. "Come now, Kiera. That’s an uncommon condition and wasn’t it only recently discovered that the general and his ryder are soul-bonded? It’s quite unlikely that you two are as well.”
Is he male-splaining soul-bonding to me?
“Do you think I don’t know my own bond?” I asked, staring at him.
“New magic can be intoxicating.” Casimir oozed condescension while he looked Jaxus over. “Don’t worry, it wears off quickly with that type. Once you realize you can’t have an intellectual conversation with them?—”
“She told you we are mated, healer,” Jaxus snapped. “What don’t you understand?”
“When do you think this happened? Bonds like that don’t just poof into existence. We just had dinner and there was no mention of it.” Casimir crossed his arms over his chest.
“I found out after the dinner,” I told him honestly.
“I’ve known for some time,” Jaxus added proudly.
He studied us, losing confidence in his argument. “What does this mean for us? Surely you won’t let a little complication like this impede our duty,” Casimir asked incredulously, his voice pitching as he really took in what I was saying.
“It means there can be no us, Casimir. You know that.”
“But your duty?—”
“Her duty is not to you or your kingdom,” Jaxus spat.
“I was not speaking to you,” Casimir returned. He looked at me. “We are going to produce the strongest line of healers in centuries, Kiera. You cannot turn your back on that. That is far more important than whatever ownership claim this creature says he has on you. Our kind are more important than any other. Without us, there would be no kingdoms.”
“I don’t claim ownership, you imbecile. Kiera is a free fae who decides her own future. I would have stood back and watched her wed you and bear your perfect healer children if that was what made her happy.”
Casimir looked at me expectantly. As if I would take this as permission and come to my senses.
“That’s not what I want, Casimir. Even without the soul-bond, it never was.”
“You don’t mean that. You’re being influenced by—” Casimir paused pointedly, “—this bond.” For an awful moment, I’d thought he was insinuating I was being influenced by dragon dick.
“I do mean it, Casimir. I’m in love with Jaxus.”
Jaxus took a sharp intake of breath.
“It’s true,” I whispered through our bond. He had told me he’d fallen in love, but until now, I hadn’t let him know I felt the same.
Casimir sighed. “No, you’re not, Kiera. The bond is making you think you are. If you give in to it, you’re going to have to live amongst these—” he waved his hand at Jaxus. “—thugs. That is not your destiny. Your destiny is here with me. Open your eyes. ”
“My eyes are wide open and my destiny is decided by the Goddess, not you.”
“I feel sorry for you,” he scoffed. “You had such a bright future as my wife. Our children would have been extraordinary.”
His words put a bad taste in my mouth.
Jaxus stepped towards him and I stopped him with my hand across his chest. I stalked forward and stood right in front of Casimir.
“My future was closing in around me, knowing the time was coming where I’d have to give up on my life's work and come be your wife.”
“You’d rather give up on healing than be my wife? Unbelievable.”
“She won’t have to give up a single thing. She is the most valued healer we have and I would never take her away from that.”
“It’s hard to see how she can be of value as a healer when she has to find time to saddle up and take you out for your daily ride,” Casimir sneered. “Let alone living in the First Kingdom where all her talents will be wasted.”
“She’s doing more riding than that…” Jaxus muttered and I ignored him.
“Are you suggesting that I am not useful as a healer in the First Kingdom and only of value to bear your children?” I glanced back at Jaxus to see him moving his head from side to side to stretch out his neck, in readiness for a fight. When I looked back at Casimir’s self-satisfied face, I realized I couldn’t let Jaxus harm him.
That honor was mine.
I curled my fist and swung, landing my first ever punch perfectly on his nose.
Casimir lurched back, blood pouring down his robes and I opened my hand in shock, staring at it as it throbbed.
“Ouch! I didn’t know hitting someone would hurt so much,” I whimpered, clasping it with my good hand and cradling it to my chest.
Jaxus was beside me in an instant, encouraging me to let him see. He inspected it and gently palpated my knuckles. “I think you’ll be okay,” he said, his deep raspy voice giving me shivers. I hated feeling at odds with him.
“Her?! What about me?” Came a shrill nasal voice from the ground his face covered in blood.
We both looked down at the pathetic mess.
“A healer like you, Casimir? You’ll have that fixed up in no time.”
I turned back to Jaxus to find his heated stare boring into mine. He lunged, crashing his lips onto mine. He then scooped me up into his arms and carried me away.
I turned another page and looked at my pinked knuckles. I flexed my hand and felt the bruising I’d caused.
Jaxus shook his head. “I still can’t believe you hit him.”
I smirked. “He deserved it.”
“No arguments here,” Jaxus agreed.
“It felt really fantastic, I can’t lie. Now if we could just figure this translation out, I’ll be much happier.”
“Every text we’ve found seems to refer back to this Lepid-folie-de-grandeur and then later there are references to folie-à-deux, which we must be translating wrong. It isn’t making sense.” Jaxus’ words bled frustration.
“Folie à deux is an old healing term for a form of psychosis shared by two or more people, while de-grandeur could suggest delusions of grandeur, but it had a deeper meaning in older texts. There were depictions of a shared vision or idea. So perhaps it means a delusion or dream shared? Which leads me to believe it wasn’t meant to mean a type of mental illness in these ancient descriptions. We need to stop trying to fit the translation around the current meanings of those words and look more at the clues these depictions are giving us, I think.”
Anyone who worked closely with ancient translations knew that the meaning of words and context changed over time, and cultural significance of the time also mattered. So what if we’d got this all wrong and when this was written, it didn’t mean a delusion at all but a vision for the future? A plan or dream of two.
“But what does any of this have to do with lepid and extinct plants?” Jaxus asked, not for the first time.
We’d been going in circles. I’d gone to examine the seeds in the archives, but I’d been told by the historians in the seed room, we’d lost the ability to grow many of them.
Lepid needed magic to thrive and because the ground had been so drained of it the plant had died out even before the Hundred Years War. I didn’t think the elders would allow me the last of the seeds to experiment, either. Even if I thought I had a lead on making a treatment for Nyx, they wouldn’t risk a guess with the last of what we had on a maybe. The elders were possessive over their collection, especially of practically extinct things.
“We are missing something, it keeps referring to two, but two what? Do you think we are missing half of the text? Half of what we need? I keep going over the old language in my head and deux is two. So why is there only one part?” Jaxus wondered.
“Do you think we are missing a second ingredient? Or maybe something else to go with the seeds? Was there something it was often paired with? Or prepared with?” I suggested.
“Maybe. Perhaps that’s why we are drawing a blank.”
“There were strange markings on the container the seeds were kept in. All the samples in the seed rooms are labeled, but this was different. They were carved into the bottle. They were like sacred symbols, but nothing I’ve seen before.” I wrinkled my nose, trying to put it all together. I felt like I had all these loose ends, but none of them would come together. I needed to find a way to connect them, but there was just too much noise in my head. Then I had an idea. “Can we fly?”
He looked over the top of his book and smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”
We had to trek back to the closest open space, but before long we were in the air and our magic was free-flowing along our bond. I hadn’t realized how much I missed this connection between us and since the soul-bond had been revealed it felt so much deeper than before. I tipped my head back, letting the air flow through my hair, fully immersing myself in the experience.
“What does the container look like?” Jaxus asked in my head, keen to use this clarity we were both feeling at last.
I sent a mental picture through our bond of the vessel. It was carved from carnelian, with a narrow top and wide base. It was more ornamental than most of the containers in the archive, with an elaborate carving on it’s surface.
Jaxus went quiet. “The engraving almost looks the top half to a really ornate skeleton key.”
“A bottle which is half of a key?” What an absurd idea. I turned the image over in my mind, trying to see what Jaxus was talking about, but now that he said it, I could kind of see it. “Why would it—oh!” Goddess. Could he be right? There could be two, and until we had both, their purpose would not be clear.
“Was there any information about it in the catalog?” he asked.
“I don’t know. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of things listed in the plant archive catalog. It would take days to go through them all.”
“I think we have to.”
“Back to the archives?” He sighed, turning back towards Calanthe.
I felt terrible asking for him to return underground when we’d only just gotten in the air after weeks of being grounded. “Sorry.”
“We will fly again. It’s important to chase leads as they come.”
He dropped us down close to the archives and we went right to the section devoted to preserving ancient plants and seeds.
“If this doesn’t give us a direction, what are we going to do?” Jaxus asked with an edge to his tone. He’d been off for days, and it was since we’d grown closer that he seemed to close off.
I didn’t want to read too much into it, but it felt like the closer I wanted to be, the further away he got, and it hurt. “Are you anxious to get back to the capital?” I asked, trying not to feel defeated.
For a few moments since we’d been here, we’d felt magical together, but for every high, there was a low. I hated to think it, but maybe we were just incompatible.
“I’m not anxious to get back. I’ve loved our time here, but I am concerned with the ravens that come.” He’d been getting them more and more from Nyx and showed me some of the notes. They were getting more irrational by the day. “I’m not sure how much longer we can put off intervening with him.”
“Surely Zaria would send a raven if he was much worse?” I reasoned.
“Would she know soon enough?” Jaxus asked, sitting back and shoving both hands into his hair. “Have you had any word from Zaria on the Dragon’s Bane or the priests?”
I shook my head. “No update. ”
“It’s hard to be this far away.” It wore on him, but we couldn’t leave while we were so close.
“Do you want to go back without me?” I asked carefully, without looking up from the text I read.
“No, absolutely not,” he said, ending any such suggestion.
“Okay,” I offered him a placating smile.
“We will give it a few more days to see if we can find the answers.”
I flipped the page in the huge catalogue and there was the jar I’d found in the archive. Beside it was what looked like the other part of a pair. They were clearly meant to belong together. “Jaxus, Look!” I turned the text around and pointed to the roughly sketched images.
Jaxus glanced at it and gasped.
“What?” I asked, excitement flooding my veins.
His eyes met mine, alight with discovery, but he opened his mouth and no words came.
Panic flickered in his golden irises.
“What is it?” I asked again.
He shook his head, coughing, eyes watering as he shoved to his feet. “I need some air.”
“What happened?” I followed.
“Nothing. I just need air,” Jaxus snapped. He quickened his pace, not letting me catch him.
He was lying.
I’d seen it in his eyes. He’d recognized the picture.
Why would he lie to me?