Page 46 of The Keeper of the Kingdoms

“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 beinghimself. 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 theirinfluence. 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 encourageher 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.

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