60. Jaxus
SIXTY
JAXUS
I lifted my gaze to the door of the training room and saw Nyx watching my flight training. He tilted his head in a signal to join him. I turned to Kiera, and she spotted Nyx.
“You go. I’ll oversee this,” she said confidently.
It made me almost burst with pride at how far she had come since our assessment day. Not only was she now able to be in a room with those who had previously tormented her, but she was confident enough to lead them in a training exercise based on using her very unique skills in battle.
Things like this had never been done in these kingdoms, and she was pioneering it. The thing was, while it was my idea back when I just wanted to get her some help, it had turned into something much bigger than she was running with. There were so many ways to utilize specific powers in battle scenarios that the flights have never explored since they had dragon fire and brute strength. The flyers in our flight had really taken to the idea, and we were now having special extra training sessions to tap into what other powers our flyers had in their arsenals and share the skills with each other. We would be a formidable unit by the time war came if we had all taught each other how to tap into magic we never thought could help.
I left them talking and headed for Nyx.
“Can you talk?” he asked as I reached him.
“Yes, Kiera has this. What do you need?”
“Come to my office,” he said, turning on his heel and heading for the stairs.
“Uh oh,” I murmured, following.
When we reached his office, he held the door open for me, and I found Luka sitting in one of the chairs.
He waved. “Hey, Jaxus. Good to see you.”
“Hello, Luka,” I replied, sitting in the other chair. I hadn’t seen him since—well, since Kiera was poisoned. “How’s it going?”
“That’s why I came to get you. Luka is going to fill us in on his findings,” Nyx told me, rounding his desk and taking his chair.
I turned my eyes back to the unassuming fae in surprise. “You’ve been working on the river all this time?”
“Yep, and it took you fools long enough to realize I needed you to pull me out.” He rolled his eyes.
I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Nyx chuckled. “What he means is that he got himself so entangled with what’s going on down there that he couldn’t risk being seen with any ties to the palace, so he just kept working with his new friends and waited for one of us to come looking for him.”
“So, how did you pull him out without giving it away that you knew each other? I’m confused.” I said.
Nyx sighed. “I was tired of Zaria asking every day if I’d heard from Luka, so I took a stroll down to the river to see what I could see.”
“And?” I asked.
“And I got the distinct impression I was not welcome there when our friend here and his cohorts packed up and left on their boat as soon as I was spotted.”
Luka laughed. “As welcome as a cat amongst the pigeons, he was.”
“Spitting at the ground in disgust was a nice touch,” Nyx deadpanned.
“I thought so.”
I watched their exchange. “So wait, how are you here now if you can’t be seen with us?”
“That would be my amazing idea,” Luka said proudly.
“He got himself arrested for drunken brawling in the square last night and managed to convince the jailer that he was planning to assassinate the general. They came and got me, and I ‘took him in for questioning.’”
Luka wiggled his brows. “Quick thinking, right?”
Nyx shook his head. “You could have sent a raven.”
“And have it intercepted? No chance. If I’m going back there, they can’t suspect me.”
“You’re not going back there. I can’t tolerate Zaria’s worrying. That is over.”
“Fine,” Luka agreed. “I can’t say I’ll be sorry to be back in my cozy palace bed tonight. But let’s not burn the bridge, yeah? We might need me to go back at some point. We need to leak that I was sentenced to some time in the jail. Say I stabbed a guard or something.”
“Sure,” Nyx agreed. “Now, tell us what you have been doing all these weeks.”
Luka leaned in conspiratorially. “I’ve been digging for information, and let me tell you, it goes deeper than we ever imagined. I’m going to need some time to break it all down for you. ”
“Just give us the short version.”
“Okay, fine.” He thought for a moment. “The Dragon’s Bane that our village was growing is part of a huge supply network.”
“We knew that. It was being used to create the undead,” Nyx stated, showing less sign of the emotional turmoil those memories were bringing him before. I was happy to see him healing from the trauma of losing his twin in a healthier way.
“It’s not just sold for that.” Luka said with a pause that said drama was coming. “The priests are involved.”
Nyx’s brow furrowed. “How?”
“To be honest, I’m still not sure. But that day of the poisoning, I had recognized one of them and I couldn’t place where. Now I know. He collects the deliveries. I’ve seen him loading sacks marked the same way our deliveries were from the village. Only he wasn’t wearing his priests robes which is why I had trouble placing him initially.”
“Did he see you?
“No, he wouldn’t recognize me from the drop offs. I was never allowed to interact with them, I just drove the cart and kept quiet.”
“So what do the priests have to do with this?” I wondered aloud.
“Well, I’m still not sure. At first, I thought maybe nothing. We were always told that what we were growing in our village was a sacred herb the priests used in worship of the Goddess. So I thought maybe that was why they took deliveries. But it’s more than that. The traffickers that move the Dragon’s Bane up and down the river seem to answer to the priests, not supply them. I still wasn’t trusted enough to get that close, but I’m sure the priests are calling the shots.”
Nyx sat back in his chair and pondered the new information, and I tried to let it sink in. I didn’t have a good understanding of the priests and their role here. I would have to study up on it.
“Okay,” Nyx said decisively. “I need to know everything you saw and identify everyone involved, right down to their pets and their grandmothers. I’ll have an office set up for you and give you access to all my resources. But I need all the information you have. I need the full picture so we can find out what is going on. This is your full-time job now, Luka, and the same applies, you report to no one but Jaxus and me. If the priests are involved, we have to keep this tightly guarded.”
“And Zaria too,” Luka added. “Don’t forget, she is your soul-bonded mate so she is in the circle of trust too.”
“Well, in that case, you’d better add Kiera to the circle,” I said proudly.
Luka beamed. “No shit! Congratulations,” he said, genuinely pleased for me.
“Thank you.”
“So it’s five of us now in the circle,” he said in wonder. “The five intrepid—fact finders!” he said triumphantly, then his face fell. “No that’s terrible. I’ll have to work on it.”
Nyx shook his head, but Luka didn’t notice. He was too busy thinking up a name for our little crew of secret investigators.
He mindlessly toyed with the chain around his neck as he muttered to himself, pulling out a pendant that looked like a vial of sand.
“Are you still wearing that thing?” Nyx asked incredulously.
Luka glanced down at the pendant he was holding. “Listen, it’s not doing me any harm, and if you think I’m letting your dragon fire right near my face, you’re insane!”
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a pendant that blocks magic. They made all the members at their coo-coo cult wear it so that they could manipulate their kids’ realities and have no magic in their lives.”
“That—“ I paused.
“Disturbing,” Nyx finished for me
“Yes. ”
“Don’t you want to know if you have magic? Goddess, you could be destined to be a ryder, and you don’t even know it.”
“You found Zaria while she was wearing hers,” Luka argued. “And if I have a dragon out there that is destined for me, they too could find me and take it off themselves,” he said defiantly, clutching the pendant like it was a security blanket.
“Our bond had awoken before the pendant was put on her, and besides, I didn’t find her, the pendant did its job. My brother stumbled upon her and he alerted me. If not for that, I may never have found her.”
“Perhaps the Goddess put your brother in her path. If I’m supposed to be something else, I’m sure she will do the same for me, and it won’t involve me getting my face melted!”
I laughed. He was strange, but I liked this fae. He could be part of my fact finding circle of five if he wanted.
Yeah, that name really sucked.