Page 77 of Heir Of Sun And Moon
“Do you think I haven’t tried? To push these feelings I have for you so far down that I hope they disappear? Only to have them come rushing back to the surface every time I see you smile?” His blue eyes shine with silver as he stares at me. “I have tried to let it be enough, Bahira. I have begged and pleaded with any gods that might listen to let me just be happy with what you will give me. But I can’t—” He hesitates, his head dropping for a few breaths before he looks back up to me. “I can’t keep sacrificing my heart in the hope that one day you might catch up and see me the same way I see you. If you care about me at all, if there’s even atinychance that your heart calls for me like mine does for you, then it’s worth it to try.”
My lips purse as I contemplate his words. I don’t love Daje in that way now, but could I learn to? If I allowed him to change the parameters of our relationship into ones he sets the rules for, maybe Icouldfind happiness. Maybe I could settle down and feel fulfilled by it. I have never been in a long-term relationship, by my own choice, but maybe there has been a solution right in front of me all this time.
“When do you need an answer?” I question, to both his shock and my own. His eyes move between mine as if he’s trying to figure out if I am being serious.
“In two days,” he answers. “I will be at the palace for the council meeting after the shifter king leaves. You can tell me then.” It’s a strategic move, and a smart one, on his part: either I have to reject him in my own home, possibly even while his father is there, or accept his proposal in front of the council, in front of my father. He swallows, a nervous but hopeful look flashing briefly in his eyes.
“Okay. I will give you an answer then.” A feeling of unease settles inside me as I agree to his terms.
Daje nods, moving to take a step before pausing. “I would do anything for you, Bahira. I just want to make you happy.”
My throat feels like it’s being squeezed in a tight vice. I watch him walk back to the party, taking the spelled flame with him and leaving me alone in the darkness.
I take the steps back up from the center of the amphitheater slowly, the ringing in my ears blocking everything else out. The entire carriage ride home, Daje’s words replay in my mind, and that sinking feeling grows. My brain begins running through the possibilities of what my life would be like if I were married to Daje. And each time I picture that future scenario, there are no butterflies in my stomach, no fluttering of my heart. There are no happy wedding day smiles nor tangled bodies in the sheets later that night. There’s nothing but that sinking feeling, the pit of my stomach aching with something that feels an awful lot like dread.
“Fuck,” I whisper, feeling like I can’t breathe. The carriage finally comes to a stop in front of the palace, the guards opening the door and helping me out. I stop at the bottom of the stone steps, my gaze tilting up to stare at my home. In two days, it will be the place where I mete out an undetermined judgment on my own future. My hands grip the fabric of my dress, my breaths coming faster and faster.
“Your Highness, is everything alright?” one of the guards to my side asks, but my brain feels like it’s spiraling out of control.
It feels like the very essence of who I am is being ripped out of me in one harsh yank, and I don’t know where that will leave me after. I have never felt so unsure, so defeated. I need to go anywhere else,anywherebut here.I turn and start running down the stone path, the guards calling out behind me, but I don’t stop. I run, my dress rustling with each step, and the only other sound is that of the wildlife around me. It takes a few minutes, but I end up at my destination with sweat dripping down my brow. When I step into my workshop, I exhale heavily. I would have gone to the library, but everyone else is down at the celebration, meaning it is locked.
I need to work this out logically, but when it comes to love and relationships, it isn’t that simple. There is no way to write out Daje and I as an equation to find a true singular solution. He’s in love with theideaof what I could be for him, and I care about him only as a friend. Those two things cannot mix, and yet I don’t want to lose him from my life. He stood up for me when I was picked on and isolated from the other kids for being magicless. He listened quietly as I told him about my theories on magic and my latest experiments. He had sparred with me and attended boring council meetings and been someone for me to vent my worries to about Nox being gone. And now, he wants to be even more or he wants to be nothing at all.
Spelled flames hang from glass bowls on either side of the space, giving the room a calming ambience. It feels ridiculous to be wearing such a fancy dress in this space where literal sweat—and now, I suppose, blood—has been spilled. I walk over to the desk at the front of the room and sigh as I take a seat and hold my head in my hands. Haylee’s poems and stories are stacked on one side, while the other has two mage journals that I accidentally left a few days prior. I had stopped in to make sure everything was clean and ready for my experiments the following day. I snort at how pointless that ended up being. My eyes dart over to the journals, those two voices once again on my shoulders: one begging to read them and one pointing out that it doesn’t matter anymore. But I need something to ground me or, at the very least, distract me enough to calm my spiraling mind. My fingers brush against the soft leather cover of the top journal before I grab it and slide it towards me. Flipping it over, I bark out a crazed laugh at whose journal it is: Kallin Keria, Daje’s father.Of course.There must definitely be a god out there just laughing at my plight.
“Might as well,” I mutter before opening the journal to the first page. The date on this one is from two years ago. The beginning is mostly notes about various council meetings and decisions they’ve made that bear no interest to me, what with my data collection being focused on tracking magical discrepancies. About halfway through the book, Councilman Kallin mentions an incident with magic in another small town. Concordia has about three hundred residents, and is situated right on this side of the border with the Mortal Kingdom. According to Kallin’s notes, older mages in their eighth decade of life are completely magicless now, or at least unable to wield any magic they may retain. That correlates with what Councilman Arav wrote about the mages living in his small town that bordered the Fae Kingdom. Searching through Haylee’s papers, I find a blank one to tear a corner off of and bookmark the page so that I can add the information to my data chart in my own journal. I spend another hour or so reading and bookmarking before the words start to blur on the page. Exhaling, I lean back in the chair and stretch my arms overhead while closing my eyes. Rolling my head side to side, I work out the tension in the muscles there as I think.
While I still have no idea what I’m going to do regarding Daje, at least I am now calm enough to go home and try to sleep. I roll my head once more to the left, holding the stretch there as my hands come to rest on the table. My eyes open as I stretch to the right and look over at the table where my experiments are performed. All of the glass bottles are pushed to one corner from my hasty clean up after Haylee left. I gaze over them, my nails digging into the desk as I remember the moments when I could see the magic fading from the leaves. When they started to turn brown again and return to their decayed—
My eyes catch on one of the containers. I blink twice, my brows drawing up, before I push up from the desk and hasten over to the table, nearly tripping on my skirt as I do so. Slowly, with trembling hands, I slide it closer to me. My breath catches as I stare at the contents, my heart beating riotously in my chest. I pull the other two bottles used in the experiment forward and line them up next to each other. One is still full of dead, brown leaves, and it could be either Haylee’s or Erick’s. One bottle contains the leaves affected by my father’s magic, and the leaves are vibrant green and sprouting a few roots, but not any further along than where I had left them yesterday. But in the third bottle, not only are the previously dead leaves teeming with life, but roots and new buds have blossomed from more leaves than any other jar.
I stare for what feels like an eternity at each jar, trying to figure out how this could have possibly happened. There was obviously some sort of delayed reaction with either Haylee’s or Erick’s magic, and I’ll have to look at the plants more closely under a magnifier tomorrow, but it worked. Something quantifiable and tangible andnewhappened. My smile lifts my cheeks as I feel a warm tear fall.It worked.A sob breaks loose, an overwhelming feeling of exhilaration causing me to fall to my knees in front of the table. More tears descend as my eyes burn and my chest heaves in relief and excitement.
I know there are still so many questions and this may be yet another dead end, but I can’t help but feel like maybe the timing of it is no coincidence. Like maybe this is a sign that I am not meant to settle.
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Rhea
Heatenvelopesmefromall sides, the soft thumping of my heartbeat slowly pulling me out of sleep.No, not my heart. In the distance, water trickles in a tranquil song, the hushed rustling of leaves in the wind adding to its melody.Hisscent is right under my nose, so I snuggle in a little closer until it’s all I can breathe.
Images of golden armor, arrows, and blood—so muchblood—beat against my shut eyelids. With my heart pounding faster, I force my eyes open and focus on the forest around me, the trees stretching up and their branches intertwining in the canopies. The sun must be just starting to peek above the horizon from what I can see through gaps of the leaves above. The dark blue sky is a combination of the first rays of day mixing with the lingering black of night—a meeting in the middle between two worlds. My eyes drag back down to where I see Bella sitting guard near my feet—our feet. Her eyes meet mine, her head slowly tilting to the side. We don’t need words to be spoken for me to know what she’s feeling and vice versa. My gratitude and love for her is reflected back at me.
I sit up slowly, bracing myself for pain, but there is only a slight ache—which might have more to do with sleeping on the hard forest floor than my healed wounds. Flynn’s arm stays wrapped around my hips, his other tucked beneath his head. The position pulls the sleeve of his tunic tight around his bicep, which I shamelessly trace the outline of with my eyes. Other than the slight muss of his hair, he looks remarkably put together after a night of running and fighting. And tending to me. My heart beats funny against the walls of my chest as I contemplate dragging my fingers through his hair.
“You’re staring at me.” His sleep roughened voice brushes against my skin like a calloused caress, and I can’t stop the shivers and goosebumps that happen as a result.
“Just admiring,” I say, my tone joking even if I’m not. His lips kick up into a grin, and my heart does that little dance again.
“You can admit it. I’m the most attractive person you’ve ever seen.”
“Yes, but to be fair,” I start, biting back my own smile, “I haven’t seen very many people.” His answering squeeze of my hips makes me laugh as his eyes sedately open.
“That hurt more than getting stabbed did,” he jests. Though his words, and the memory that accompanies them, sober the moment. My hand rests on his chest, his heart beating steadily under it. A reminder that he ishere.That he is alright. “I’m sorry, that was probably too soon to say,” he admits. I snort but don’t move my hand. A few quiet moments pass before he asks, “How are you feeling?”
I nod, exhaling slowly as I force a small smile to my face. “Good. I’m good.”
Flynn watches me for a moment before he swiftly sits up, catching my hand as I move to pull it off his chest. “You can tell me the truth,” he says, interlacing our fingers and laying them on his thigh.
“I’m sorry.” The words come out in a whisper as I drop my gaze from his. For so long, I’ve been alone with my feelings. Yes, I had Alexi, but while I always knew I could vent and talk to him about anything, our time together was too short to focus on my emotions for long. I didn’t want to weigh him down with howheavyI was feeling at times when I’d rather just enjoy his company. And while Bella has always comforted me when I needed it, it’s not the same as talking with someone and getting their advice. The majority of my life has been me tucking hurts—small and large—into boxes in my mind, locking their lids and throwing the key away into a dark abyss. And after Alexi died, it was easier to solidify those locks and build a fortress around my heart with layer upon layer of ice so thick, no one could break through. No oneshouldhave been able to break through.
