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What a mess. “We need a better understanding of her motives,” Kai said. “If she has Raana, even if she helped us once, we don’t know her, and she’s a witch. She’s afae.” An idea had struck him, then. One that may have been mad—or just agitating. “I think it’s time to pay Ezekiel a visit.”
“Ezekiel?” Isla had jumped back. “But he hasn’t been talking.”
Kai wouldn’t look at her as he answered, “If it came down to it, he wouldn’t need to.”
Isla’s brows had lifted in shock, in understanding.
Kai didn’t want to do it, and he felt disgusted for saying it, for thinking it even. Tonight, losing control had felt horrible. But the pack was in danger, his family was in danger, and Isla was, too, so if he had to debase himself to protect them, he’d do it—again and again. Though going through Ezekiel’s mind would be hislastresort, reserved as a threat more than anything. Hopefully, having the wolfsbane in his system would help the control…if the power would work at all with it.
“It would help if you were there,” Kai had said.
Isla had snorted. “You think I’d actually let you go without me?”
No, not really.
Once the exhaustion became too much to battle, Isla nuzzled beside him, tucked beneath his arm, her head atop his chest, and very much on his side of the bed. He didn’t mind at all…and it wasn’t long before she cried. Not violent gasping sobs, but those silent, despondent tears as she drifted into somewhere cold and dark inside herself.
Kai hated that all he could do was hold her.
* * *
Kai didn’t manage to see Olyvia in the Healer’s Sanctuary until midday, even if he was wrenched from bed an hour after the crack of dawn to meet with Marin, who’d been pacing the floor when he made it to his office. He’d left Isla since she’d finally been getting some rest. At least the secretary had brought tea, easing the blow as she greeted him with three words and three words only—this is bad.
Not just because of how this looked to the other territories—a warrior from Iapetus murdered in cold blood on Deimos’s soil, not in the line of combat— but because of how it also looked to his people. If a warrior didn’t stand a chance here, how couldthey?Little did they know, danger had always been lurking around them with the witch within their circle because of his father’s ambitions and plots, as well as the tunnels into the Wilds always being there but never breached until the Wall’s enchantments failed recently.
Kai could say he was trying his best, that no one understood the full scope of everything they’d been dealing with, but that wasn’t good enough. He would make no excuse for his failures. What was all this power worth if he couldn’t use it to protect the people he loved?
From where he sat on the ecru-colored examination cot, Kai reached for one of the wolfsbane elixir vials perched on Olyvia’s rolling worktable. Four remained, tucked neatly in the velvety material of a compact wooden box. One each for the next few days. His lip curled as he shook the slurry, watching its dark, sludgy form fold over itself.
“It will taste better than it looks,” Olyvia said, finishing cleaning her granite mortar and pestle. “Not by much, but I added some peppermint leaves.”
Kai brought the vial back down to the table. “Thanks.”
Olyvia turned off the faucet, the drain gurgling as it flushed the remnants of the mixture away. She wiped her hands on her pale blue apron, shaking an ebony strand loose from her braid out of her face.
A couple of years older than him, she’d been the protege to the former head healer when Kai was growing up. She ascended above her mentor only last year when the elderly mender stepped down. He, Ameera, Rhydian, and Jonah had gotten to know Olyvia well in their youth, their appointments with the former head healer frequent due to the ruthlessness of the Academy—physically and academically—as well as when Rhydian and Jonah’s parents had died long, long ago and they moved in with his family here in the hall. Though his father had never approved of the arrangement, balking at housing the sons of a criminal from a farming village in Surles, Zahra was a great friend of their mother’s and had strong-armed him into it. They’d lived here with him until they graduated from the Academy at eighteen.
“The bane won’t kill you,” Olyvia said, turning the lid back onto her bushels of wolfsbane flowers. “It might not work at all, not entirely hampering your shifting, but it should still quiet these surges of power. We just don’t know.” When Kai met her emerald eyes, wary and amused by her uncertainties, she elaborated, “Alphas typically don’t dose themselves with banevoluntarily.”
“Fair enough.” Kai leaned back on the cot. He likely should’ve been somewhere else, but it was quiet here, and he knew Marin had Isla. He gazed out at the rolling hillside, at the way the sunlight caressed the swaying grasses. No storms yet, and he couldn’t sense any rain. Maybe the goddesses had decided to give them a break.
He turned back, saying as Olyvia crossed the room to him, “I appreciate your discretion.”
A gentle smile slid across her lips that hadn’t changed in the near-decade he’d known her. “Of course, Alpha.” She pointed to the box of elixirs. “Take this for a few days and come back to me. I’ll assess, and we can adjust the dosage from there if need be.” She closed the rest of the distance between them, her eyes trailing over his face. With her jaw set and brow pinched, she touched two fingers to his forehead, drawing them across and down to his temple, following a path of energy. When she’d drawn the trail to his neck, she paused, laughing. “I see Luna Isla has gotten her fangs back.”
Luna Isla.He’d never get sick of hearing that.
Kai chuckled as the healer kept moving lower until she reached his heart. “That she did.”
She lay her palm flat atop his chest and closed her eyes. Kai hoped they’d trulybeenshut so she couldn't see his slight grimace, remembering when Raana had done this in order to find Isla beneath the arena. Maybe it had been the same technique.
“Anything else return?” she asked, the corner of her eye twitching as if she sensed something. It was like a gift of hers to perceive their wolves' energies, which likely made her such a skilled healer.
“Her claws,” he said. “And her eyes and lumerosi are glowing again.” Olyvia hummed, and Kai’s voice rang in admiration. “She’s resilient.”
She needed to be with all the shit going on around them that she didn’t deserve.
A lift of Olyvia’s lips. “A wonderful quality for a luna.”
