Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
LYRIANA
“Princess?” I yelled. “You’re a princess?” I shook my head. “But I thought you were—?”
“What? I can’t be both princess and librarian?” Ramia winked. “How boring.”
I shook my head. “No, I mean—I’m just trying to wrap my mind around the fact that all of this time I’ve known you as a librarian—and a jewelry dealer—”
“Rare artifacts procurer,” Ramia corrected.
“Okay, fine, if that’s what you want to call it,” I huffed. “My point is that all this time, your mother was the Moon Queen.”
“And?” Ramia asked.
“And I didn’t know!”
“Lyriana,” Auriel laughed. “We’re riding on a jalamnavim to Queen Ma’Nia’s court to call in a thousand-year bargain, and this is your main concern?”
“Not the main one,” I said. “Just the latest. Add it to the list.”
“So now I’m keeping two lists. Things that are currently concerning Lyriana. And things that Lyriana has done to offend me.”
I twisted my neck to glare at him. “Seriously?”
“And now,” he announced, “I’m adding that to the list.” I shoved my shoulder back into him.
“And that!” he said.
“Auriel!” I snapped.
“Okay,” he said, holding up one hand. The other was still around me, grounding me, keeping me from falling off our dragon. “I surrender to you, Lyriana. Truce! Let’s be friends again.”
“You’re impossible,” I said.
The pyramids were growing larger as we moved closer.
They housed the library where I’d first met the half-Afeyan.
It was in the stacks of scrolls where Ramia had first approached me, and then more recently, proceeded to seek me out, multiple times, trying to convince me to wear Asherah’s chest plate.
The chest plate that she’d given to me on my birthday—on Mercurial’s command.
I frowned. “Ramia?”
She looked back again. “Let me guess. A question?” She lifted her eyebrows.
“If I’m allowed. Just … Mercurial is a member of the Star Court,” I said slowly.
“Yes. First Messenger,” she said. “Why?”
“Well, you work with him—with the First Messenger of the Star Court. But you were born into the Moon Court.”
“This all true.” Ramia pursed her lips together. “And?”
I suddenly felt like an idiot. I had no reason to expect Ramia to willingly share her parentage on her own.
And it wasn’t like I’d ever asked. But I should have at least known what court she’d come from.
I’d never wondered—never even bothered to consider the distinctions between the three.
As far as I was concerned, they were all Afeya.
I thought they were all the same. But now, the idea of her working with Mercurial, especially when she was so high-born of another court, was beginning to sound alarm bells in my mind.
“You work with the Star Court,” I said. “Is that normal? For a princess to work so closely with a … a First Messenger?”
“I only half-Afeyan,” Ramia said. “Remember?”
“Your father isn’t King RaKanan?” Queen Ma’Nia had been married to the King of the Sun Court for centuries.
Ramia made a face of disgust, as if the question were absurd. “How I half-Afeyan if two Afeya parents? RaKanan? No. He not my father.”
“So if you’re half-Afeya, does that make you half-princess?” I asked.
Ramia laughed and scrunched up her face. “Like bastard? No. My mother queen.” She waved a hand in dismissal. “I princess.”
“Then … I mean, who is your father?” I asked.
Ramia snorted. “Some man.” She shrugged her shoulders, unconcerned. “My mother lay with him one time. Then I come.”
“And that’s it? You don’t know who he is? What country? What Ka?”
Ramia shrugged, “Who says he has Ka? Not important. I am my mother’s daughter. And princess. Who care about father?”
I shook my head in annoyance.
“It’s quite common,” Auriel said quietly, his mouth still close to my ear.
“Afeya do make life-long commitments like the king and queen, but making a promise for life works a little differently when they live forever. They quite openly take lovers on the side. Have other relationships. What counts is they always return to each other.”
“Oh,” I said. But that still didn’t answer my question.
I didn’t care what kind of commitments Afeya made, or how open or closed their marriages were.
However different they were from us in that arena, we had other similarities that I was much more focused on.
Like living within the borders of our countries, and forming alliances between them.
Showing loyalties to our rulers. I knew the Afeya banded together against Lumeria.
But the courts remained separate, not governed under any one entity.
There was no Afeyan Empire. Unlike us, none of them had been forced to bend a knee to our Emperor, or any other.
“Does your mother know you work with the Star Court?” I asked, trying for another angle.
Her nostrils flared. “Who you think introduce Mercurial?”
“So your mother works with him, too? With the Star Court’s First Messenger.”
“Work?” Ramia scrunched up her nose. “Together?” She frowned. “Shared goal. More accurate way to describe.”
“And what goal is that?” I asked.
Ramia shook her head. “Not mine to say. I only princess. Enough question. Why not relax? Enjoy ride.” She turned then, and the water dragon dragged its tail before lifting over a current, and splashing us from behind.
I turned slightly in Auriel’s arms, our eyes meeting. “Do you know?” I mouthed.
He frowned, his eyebrows furrowed together in confusion.
“The goal they share,” I whispered.
Auriel sighed, then quietly said, “I think I did once. But I don’t right now.”
“Should I try to heal you again?” I asked. His aura felt clear, sunny almost, not like the cloud it was when he first arrived. But maybe he still needed more of the red light’s healing to remember.
Auriel shook his head. “It’s not the same.
I’m not forgetting exactly. It’s more like …
the magic of the Afeya is affecting me. I’m not supposed to say.
And even from my former position—I could learn things I wish to know, discover secrets—but it’s not a matter of asking, or looking up the information.
It’s more a matter of watching. And I wasn’t exactly inclined to spend the little time I was not with Asherah, watching the courts these last few centuries. ”
“What were you watching when you weren’t with her?” I asked.
His eyes drifted down my body then back to my face. “You know what.”
My cheeks warmed, and I looked away.
“The common goal between them will be told to us directly by the Queen,” Auriel said, “if she wants us to know.” His voice lowered. “And if she doesn’t? No amount of asking will change her mind.”
“Maybe we don’t need to ask. It’s not like the Afeya are following the rules. Mercurial’s able to do magic he shouldn’t,” I said. “He performs magic on his own all the time in front of me.”
Auriel frowned. “No, he can’t. There are many loopholes they find and abuse, but not that one. That’s not possible. The magic binding them is too strong. I promise you—they’re not breaking those rules. No Afeya can perform magic without a request.”
“But he can,” I hissed. “Unless … the magic he does serves some other purpose or request I don’t understand.”
Ramia whipped her head around, her eyes narrowed, before she turned back to the head of the water dragon, continuing to steer us toward Khemet.
“He’s working for someone,” I continued. “And he won’t say who. I’ve asked him, even offered to make another bargain, Rhyan did, too.” I frowned in frustration. “He refused us both.”
Auriel bit his lip, considering. “It’s not the Moon Queen he’s working for—not when he’s using magic,” he said.
“It can’t be an Afeya. If they could ask each other for what they wanted—they’d never deal with Lumerians.
From down here, I’m not entirely sure what he’s up to.
But, if he is doing magic without a direct request, it’s because he made a bargain with a Lumerian, or … someone who was Lumerian at the time.”
“At the time?” I shivered. “Like they’re something else now? Like akadim?”
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s someone who’s passed.”
I considered his words. “So you’re saying that Afeya can continue to do someone’s bidding after death?”
“Some bargains take time. Some may have been outlined to outlast the one making the request, whether that’s by Afeyan trickery, or the asker’s true wish, I don’t know.
But the Afeya must fulfill their bargains, answer what is asked of them, or do what they promised when the contract is made, no matter what. ”
But that still didn’t feel like the answer to me.
Knowing Mercurial’s personality—his sudden ups and downs, the way he seemed to live completely governed by his own whims, I couldn’t imagine him just serving someone after they died.
“Are you sure there’s no other way he can be performing magic on his own? ”
Auriel’s eyes darkened with shadows. “I’m sure. Lyriana, trust me. Let it go. If I knew, I’d tell you. I swear. But as traitorous as he is, he’s not our problem right now. We need to be ready to meet Queen Ma’Nia. You should rest while you can.”
I gestured around us. “On a water dragon?” The dragon in question was currently looping its body over the rushing tides of the ocean.
Between the waves splashing around us, the way the wind caught in the beat of its wings, mixed with the sound of its breathing, the water dragon was the loudest animal I’d ever been on.
And as if to make my point, it shot up into the air without warning, screeching like it was a game.
I leaned back into Auriel, my fingers digging into his arms to keep from falling. My stomach lurched as the dragon dove back down, its waggling tail spraying us with water from behind.
No further words were needed as I glared. Point made.
Auriel shook his head, like he was trying to shake out the water now dripping from his hair.