Chapter 22 #2
“It’s fine. I, uh—don’t know what I was thinking coming out here.”
He walked back in the door.
I threw my hands into my hair, unsettled by the interaction, but I couldn’t move from the spot I was in, couldn’t say anything to change it. So I didn’t.
Meera joined me an hour later, both nahashim infants curled around her wrist.
“He likes you,” she said quietly. “You don’t have to be so cruel to him.”
“I’m not,” I snapped. “I said nothing cruel. I just … don’t say much at all.” My stomach turned, but then I shook my head, angry. “Why should I? What do I owe him anyway?”
“You don’t owe him anything. But, Jules. You can be nice. We’re all in this together. And he is proving time and time again how willing he is to protect us.”
“I protect us. I got us this house, and it’s because of me we got the last two. We’d be in the Palace now, locked in the dungeons or the Godsdamned Yellow Room, if it weren’t for me.”
“Jules.” Meera’s eyes widened. “No one disputes that. And we’re all grateful. But, we also might be locked away in Seathorne if it wasn’t for me.”
I exhaled sharply, leaning over the balustrade.
“We’re all doing our part,” Meera continued. “Our best. The situation is shit no matter how you look at it. We’re just … trying. Especially Dario.”
“What do you care?” I asked. “Why does it matter if I’m nice to him?”
Meera’s brows drew together, her hazel eyes thoughtful. “It doesn’t. I have no designs on this. It’s just, right now, we need each other. It would be nice if we were all getting along. If we all trusted each other a little more.”
“Fine.” I watched people moving through the small stone streets of the town beyond the hills surrounding the house.
People were just going about their daily life.
Hardly aware that so much evil lurked around them, above them.
Was that unique to Korteria? Were the Bamarian’s just as unaware they’d been conquered?
Soothed by Arianna’s lies? Comforted in the false belief they were safe because of Tristan’s vorakh testing?
“You know he won’t …” Meera started, and looked away. “Dario would never hurt you.”
“He’s a man,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “He can hurt me.”
“He could. But he’s one of the few that I know won’t.” She lifted her arm, and stroked the backs of the babies. Their bodies arched and curled, both of them opening their mouths and making tiny hissing sounds that were, admittedly, kind of cute. But only a little.
“No news about Lyr?” I asked.
Meera’s eyes grew distant and she shook her head. “She’s out there. She’s just … hidden somehow.”
The clock tower began to chime. My heart thundered. Another hour of my life gone. Stolen.
I shook my head. “I thought the whole point was that nahashim could find anything, anywhere.”
“They can. I even—” Her mouth tightened “I sent one on a mission to—to find Her Grace.” Lyr’s title, if she were married to Kormac. Meera wiped at her eyes, and blinked. “Nothing.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Maybe the snakes are being intercepted, like you’re doing to Devon Hart’s.”
“But we would know, they wouldn’t be returning to us.
They can find anything,” she said, like she was reciting something she read in a scroll.
“There’s nowhere they can’t go. Nothing they can’t find.
I mean, for Lyr to be unfindable— she’d have to—she’d have to not exist in our world. But she does.”
“She does,” I said. “She’s somewhere, somewhere out there in time or space.”
Meera frowned. “Time?”
“What?”
“You said time.” She squinted, her mouth open.
“Just a saying,” I said.
“No. It’s not. She’s somewhere in time. She’s—By the Gods. I think—I think I know where she is.”
I leaned in toward her.“Where?”
“The snakes keep coming back, and each time they turn around at the southern border here. Where Korteria and Khemet meet. The Moon Court.”
“So? Maybe they’re just being turned around by the Afeya,” I said, confused.
“But they should still be able to enter. Nahashim are from the old world, from Lumeria Matavia. Like the Afeya. They wouldn’t turn them away.
They’d ignore them, or welcome them in. Not confuse them and send them back.
I remember reading once that time moves differently there.
That …” Meera frowned. “Oh, come on. No! I didn’t read it.
The knowledge isn’t public. It was in one of my trainings to become Arkasva.
That’s it!” She shook her head, looking wild, slamming her hands down on the banister.
The snakes slithered up her arm, settling in tiny coils on her shoulders.
“The Moon Queen married the Sun King, and it changed time in their realms. A day is a month there. And a month is a day.”
“And the last sighting of her was on the beach of Bamaria. With a water dragon,” I continued.
Something that hadn’t been seen by anyone on the shores of the Empire in as long as I could remember.
They supposedly spent most of their time near the Afeyan lands.
And Lethea. I encountered them on my travels there.
But … if they also spent time near El Zandria and Khemet …
almost a month had passed since Lyr’s last sighting.
And the snakes were getting turned around the Korterian border. Turned around when they reached Khemet.
“She’s in the Moon Court,” I said.
Meera nodded breathlessly. “She is. Gods, yes.” She clutched her heart. “Yes. I knew it.” She shuddered. “I knew she wasn’t dead.”
My heart thundered, my own relief at the news washing through me in waves. I’d hoped she was okay. Prayed. But I’d barely allowed myself to think of her. Hope, I’d found, was a dangerous thing. Because it made you want, made you desire. And when you wanted things, you could lose them.
I’d been numb for a long time now. So long. After losing my home. My family. My freedom. And then … Seth.
It was miserable not wanting. I hated it. Deep down inside of me, I wanted to want. I wanted it more than anything. wanted to feel alive. But I just … I just didn’t.
“Oh,” Meera cried out. And all at once, the warmth of the sun shining down on us was gone. Freezing cold air blasted against my skin. A cold I knew too well. Meera’s aura. A vision.
I grabbed her hands, pulling her body back against mine and slowly helped her to the floor, her head in my lap.
“Meera, breathe,” I commanded. “Relax. Remember what we went over. Let it come to you. Don’t fight it.”
Her hands twitched in mine, starting to resist me.
“Relax,” I said. “Deep breaths. Inhale. Exhale.”
She gasped a choked-out sob, her chest rising and falling, but her breathing slowed, her facial muscles released, and her eyes began to move rapidly back and forth behind her eyelids.
A moment later, her eyes opened, and she sat back up, gingerly holding her head.
“Thank you,” she said shakily. “That was … the least painful one yet.”
“Good,” I said. “I’m glad. You’re getting better at this.” I frowned. “What did you see?”
Meera pushed her hair back off her face, and slowly rose to her feet, slipping the nahashim back into their boxes.
Her aura darkened, like a storm, and my stomach twisted. “It was Rhyan,” she said. “I saw him as an akadim, marching with an army on Glemaria. Under the sun.”
“Daywalker?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Maybe. There was water flowing beneath his boots, he was on … on the cliff where Asherah’s tomb lies. On Gryphon’s Mount. The water turned to fire, and then it—it spread across the Empire.”
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I knew that image.
“So Rhyan …” I said slowly.
“Could destroy all of us.” Meera’s voice shook. “There’s something—he’s getting more powerful. More dangerous. Closer to ... to a weapon of some sort.”
I swallowed roughly. Fuck. Poor Rhyan. And Lyr. How was this world so fucked up?
“Do you think … do you think she’s in the Moon Court for him?” I asked.
“I think so. And whatever she finds there, she’s going to have to use against him.”
“Gods.”
“Um,” Meera crossed her arms over her chest, still clearly cold from the vision. “I think I’m going to go lie down.”
I nodded. “Take your time.”
“And since I already had one today, I don’t think I’m going to be up for anymore visions tonight. You should study magic with Aiden.”
“Okay.” I watched Meera leave the common room behind. We were occupying one wing of the safe house. A common room, a small library, a bathroom, and two bedrooms. One I shared with Meera, and one for Dario and Aiden.
I sat down on the couch, my mind still on Lyr and Rhyan, and their fate. Their undeserved fate. What had drawn her to the Moon Court? And did it relate to Meera’s vision?
I lost track of time, and realized I still needed to tell Aiden that I would study with him tonight. But before I could go, the door opened, and Soturion Alistair, the owner of our safe house, walked in.
“My lady,” he said, lowering his chin in respect at once. Like I was an Heir. Or Heir Apparent.
He’d tried to call me “Your Grace,” when we first arrived.
I’d broken him of that habit, but this one seemed to stick.
“Soturion Alistair,” I said, rising to my feet.
“I don’t mean to disturb you,” he said. “But a guest has come. One of us.”
Us? There was no us. We had nothing in common. There were just the people who wanted to use me for my bloodline. Who thought that I could fulfill some need in their life because of who my parents were. And then there was me— literally using that just to survive.
“I’m a little tired,” I said.
Alistair’s brows drew together. He was older, the blond in his hair now gray. His muscles were more lean than stocky. But I couldn’t forget that at the end of the day he was Korterian and a soldier. A wolf.
“If it is a quick meeting,” I amended.
“Would you like one of your companions to accompany you?”
I looked back. Not a lot of options. Meera wouldn’t be up to it just yet. And I didn’t want to ask Dario. Not after our last interaction. Aiden? But I’d have to go through Dario to get to him.