Page 113 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

My brother didn’t look convinced, I just couldn't pinpoint about what exactly he looked so doubtful of. “He lives, by any chance?”

“She would never talk to me again if I’d killed him.”

He shrugged and leaned against the door frame. “Could live with my wife never talking to me again if it meant taking another man out of her life.”

“Because you talk enough for the both of you. If mine stops talking, my mouth will get cobwebs.”

The bastard smiled and threw a look over the bed carrying his sleeping children. “Gods, Rain snores so loudly.”

At that exact moment Rain stirred and shot up, wild black hair everywhere, her little face scrunching up. “Papa,” she called like some wounded animal, and I swear I could see my brother’s heart well and fall inside his rib cage.

“Don’t act so happy, it's making me sick,” I said, giving him a shove inside the room.

“What monster do you want your papa to slay for you today,” I heard my idiot of a brother say as he crawled in their bed and hugged them both to his chest.

Nia was who I saw first when I stepped inside Koy's largest apothecary run by her. Grumbling as always as she did everything but spare me ten seconds of her time and day.

Though they looked nothing alike, her daughter who’d sat down on a massive wooden table gave me the same look of annoyance as her.

The two were loading and unloading a bunch of herbs from some massive crates and placing them in tiny glass jars, and for what reason, fuck knew.

“So?”

Nia shoved something to my chest. A small container with more herbs. “Took care of most, but you might have to check her through, I am nowhere as good as a true Empath. Gave her tea for sleep, too.”

I lifted the container she gave me. “What’s this for then?”

“That’s for you.”

“Poison?”

Karin giggled. “It tastes like it when ma makes it for my headache.”

My eyes narrowed on the massive crates with the red painted tree of life on them littering the shelved space. “Why are you restocking so much of the Medi-Healer boxes?”

“Mor caught more of Iskyla’s soldiers north of our border using the old tunnels, and all our units are preparing for potential war. They are restless when it comes to Isjord, and you know how Mor is about any slight threat. But aren’t we all?” She paused. Holding one of the jars in her hand. “Some of it is actually ingredients for the monthly potions we make to send Thora for the Verglassers Silas had turned into the beasts.”

“Potions? Why?”

“Did Thora not mention that some of those turned to beasts using the seedlings had their symptoms come back?”

“No, she didn’t. But she’s not been telling much if you have guessed.”

Nia’s usually stern and proud expression fell just slightly. “Silas is still torturing some of us somehow. Some more than most. Few of the Aura who turned took their own lives because the condition of their body became unbearable. Most were barely past sixteen when they’d been turned, and they didn’t even make it past their twenties.” She put down the boxes she was fiddling with and turned to me. “You weren’t there to see the mess she had to deal with after the war. She didn’t allow any of her soldiers to kill the beasts we had not managed to treat with the antidote. She did it all herself. She buried them herself, too. Some were children. Children, Mal. She was nineteen back then. A child herself. All alone, she dealt with all of it alone while you were gods knew.” Nia picked up another jar and threw it at me. “Next time you ask her to put reason behind something no one can put reason behind, I want you to remember that you weren’t there to help her give meaning to her reasons.”

I’d been a dick, that much I knew. I’d shown up at her door about a dozen times last night, and each time I’d ended up pulling away because I didn’t know how to say what a hypocrite I was for even getting mad at her.

I nodded and lifted the other jar up. “Is this for my stomach?”

“No, that’s actually poison. I want you to drink it if you think you’re going to do something that will hurt Thora again. Now get out.”

“Bye, Malik,” Karin muttered.

Elias was alone in the meeting room, the place I’d felt her last presence. “Where is she?”

“Shouldn't you know?”

“Answer me, Lord Venzor, or it will be the last time you will even have that chance.”