The Ippos King (Wraith Kings #3) - Grace Draven Page 0,5
held. I wonder what this news is about Megiddo?”
He leaned down to kiss her forehead. “I have no idea. I wish I did.” He saluted Anhuset, offering a warning that was as much serious as it was jesting. “Don’t kill my wife. I’m rather fond of her.”
A brief bow and he left the chamber, closing the door softly behind him, but not before Anhuset caught a glimpse of something that pumped ice water through her veins. For the space of a heartbeat, Brishen’s yellow eye had glowed ethereal blue.
“You saw it! I know you did.” Ildiko’s own strange eyes were wide, her gaze flickering from the door back to Anhuset in a way that made Anhuset’s skin crawl. “I can tell by your expression.”
Anhuset kept her tone neutral. “Saw what, hercegesé?”
“Stop playing coy,” Ildiko snapped. She pointed to the door. “The glimmer of blue in Brishen’s eye.”
“A trick of the torchlight.” A wishful thought more than an answer. She hadn’t imagined what she saw. Nor had the hercegesé.
Ildiko thumped the tip of her silabat against the floor, frustration and no small amount of fear threading her voice. “No, it wasn’t. I’ve seen it in the dark as well.”
Chills rose along Anhuset’s arms. That unnatural blue, sign of a Wraith king’s magic, had no place here, shouldn’t exist anymore except in the blade once wielded by Megiddo, and that weapon was hidden away. “This isn’t the first time?”
Ildiko shuddered. “I could only wish. I’ve seen it at least a dozen times before this. The first was after he woke from a bad dream. He called out Megiddo’s name.”
“Why didn’t you say something before now?” Anhuset’s leg muscles twitched with the urge to yank open the door and chase after her cousin, peer into his face, and demand he tell her why a Wraith king’s magic still manifested inside him.
The hercegesé gave her a disgusted look. “And who would I tell? The Elsod? That old woman is holding onto life by the tips of her claws at Emlek, wondering how she can keep the entire Kai history from collapsing in on itself now that there’s no one able to capture mortem lights.” She waved away Anhuset’s warning hiss. “I’m not saying anything everyone in this kingdom doesn’t already realize.” She spun the silabat back and forth in her palm, the movement highlighting her agitation. “Brishen barely sleeps as it is. His niece has inherited a country teetering on collapse, its capital shattered, its people still in shock, robbed of their magic for reasons unknown.” Her voice shook then, thickened with sobs that turned her eyes glassy. “I can’t put yet another burden on his shoulders.”
The two women stared at each other, bound together by a mutual love for the Kai prince and the terrible secret of his sacrifice which demanded he rob his people of their very birthright: their magic.
Anhuset understood and agreed with the hard choice Brishen had made, but she felt the loss of her magic keenly, an emptiness that couldn’t be filled, although her skills had been small compared to most and confined to practical things that others had mastered as juveniles. There were times when she envied humans like Ildiko, who never possessed magic of their own. You didn’t mourn the loss of something you never had.
She mentally sidled away from the melancholy her thoughts wrought in favor of worry for her cousin. “Why would Brishen dream of the unfortunate monk?”
Ildiko shrugged. “Regret maybe? Guilt? Who knows. But for a moment, when he woke, Brishen’s eye burned blue, just like now. Just like the several times before it.” Her features paled beyond their usual pallid shade. “What if the spell used to turn them back from wraith didn’t work completely? Is he becoming wraith again?”
A seeping horror filled Anhuset, the emotion reflected in Ildiko’s strange eyes. She batted it away, unwilling to believe, or even accept, that such a thing was a possibility. “No, he is not,” she said, and Ildiko took a wary step back at the low-voiced fervor of her reply. “This has something to do with Megiddo, and if ancient Kai magic still lingers, it’s due to the monk’s sword being housed here at Saggara. Brishen would do well to get rid of it.”
“I agree. I’ll talk to him about it, though I think he’ll be reluctant to put it somewhere other than Saggara. Maybe you can mention something as well.”
If Brishen heeded anyone’s advice most, it was his wife’s. He was a reasonable man,