“Hey,” I say when I reach his table.
“Hey,” he responds without looking up. I wait a moment then, when he still doesn’t glance away from what he’s reading, I pull out the chair across from him and sit.
My gaze sweeps across the table.
“You can read this?” Everything is written in a jumble of symbols and marks. I can speak Fae fairly well now, but even if I had years to study, I don’t think I’d ever be able to make sense of their written language.
“Kelia is teaching me,” Naito says.
I bite my lower lip, unable to ignore the fact that he’s still talking about her in the present tense. “Naito—”
“I understand enough to get by,” he says. His tone is firm, now, and his eyes have hardened.
Everyone’s been tiptoeing around Naito these past two weeks. I don’t want to make him hurt any more than he already does, but I think it’s time someone convinces him that he’ll never see Kelia again. She’s well and truly gone.
I ignore the way my throat burns when I swallow, then say, “Kelia would want—”
“To be with me,” he interrupts again. There’s steel in his voice. It’s as if he’s daring me to claim otherwise. Before I can do just that, he turns the book in front of him around so that it’s right side up for me.
“Banek’tan,” he says, pointing to a jumble of tiny lines.
The word sounds familiar—I’m pretty sure it’s a type of magic—but I say, “I can’t read that.”
He raises his eyes to meet mine. “It means ‘one who retrieves the departed.’ A banek’tan can bring Kelia back.”
Really?
I stare down at the book as an almost giddy feeling takes over me. A banek’tan could undo so much. With one’s help, Naito and Kelia can be together again. They can have their happy ending, and we could bring back the innocent fae who were caught up in this war: the merchants who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, the families who were burned inside their homes in Brykeld, the swordsmen on both sides of the war who were only following orders.
We could bring back the fae I inadvertently killed in Belecha.
We could resurrect Sethan.
But just as quickly as those hopes appear, they vanish. What the hell am I thinking? If that magic existed, Lena would have already tried to bring her brother back from the ether. And someone would have tried to bring back the king.
I close my eyes as a rush of pity flows through me. It’s tinged with pain, and it takes everything in me to keep it locked down tight. I swallow, trying to loosen a tight and raw throat, then, carefully, I ask, “Is that an extinct magic?”
Naito’s gaze doesn’t waver. It’s almost as if he’s waiting for the pity or skepticism to reach my face, but after a handful of heartbeats, some of the tension leaves his shoulders. “These documents are filled with references to banek’tan. And some of them are recent. This one”—he grabs a loose parchment from one of his stacks—“is only twenty years old. A false-blood’s bond-mate was killed. She came back.”
I bite the inside of my cheek and watch as he picks up another paper.
“Same thing with this one,” he says. “It’s a little older, but there were dozens of witnesses. A fae died in the silver mines of Adaris. His bond-mate was able to bring him back. I’ve found twelve stories like these from the past century. Twelve. There has to be some truth to them.”
There’s so much hope in his voice, I almost want to let him believe this. Would it be so wrong to? This is the best he’s looked in weeks. He has a reason to live, but these…these stories are just that. Stories. They’re rumors. Dreams. I want to believe them, too, but I’ve learned the hard way that life isn’t a fairy tale. People don’t come back from the dead.
No. I was wrong before when I thought it was too soon for him to go back to work. He needs the distraction. He doesn’t need to sit around researching dreams that can’t come true. It isn’t healthy.
“What happened to them?” I ask.
His brows lower. “What do you mean?”
“These fae who came back from the ether. Where are they now?”
He blinks, then stares down at the pages in front of him. “I’m not sure.”
I wait a moment, letting him think things through. “Naito, the banek’tan don’t exist.”
He looks up again, his expression hardening. “Neither did the ther’othi.”
And one point goes to Naito. Fae aren’t supposed to be able to walk the In-Between, but Micid could. He was a cruel, sick fae who worked for the previous king and his lord general, Radath. Instead of going through the In-Between, the freezing space fae pass through when they fissure, he waded in, taking me with him into a dimension within a world. We were invisible to everyone, but could still move and interact with the world. I suppose I can see why Naito is clinging to this hope, but it’s so, so thin. If a fae was ever brought back from the ether, there would be more evidence than what’s hinted at in these documents.
I draw in a breath, let it out slowly, then go for a not-so-subtle subject change. “Lena’s having a hard time keeping the palace secure.”
“Hmm,” Naito murmurs, leaning back in his chair and pulling a book closer. “She needs more fae to guard the Sidhe Tol.”
“The Sidhe Tol aren’t the problem,” I say. They’re not entirely the problem. A Sidhe Tol is a very rare and very special type of gate that allows a fae to fissure into an area protected by silver. We know the locations of three of them, but rumor has it there are more. No one’s been able to find them, and until two weeks ago, no one but the king and a few trusted advisors knew where they were. I wasn’t supposed to know where they were, but Kyol fissured me through one once. I gave the rebels its location, and then, they learned where the other two were as well. They used the Sidhe Tol to take the palace. Now, we have to guard them to make sure the former Court fae don’t do the same thing to us.
“The remnants are launching organized attacks from within the silver walls,” I tell Naito. “They have illusionists and all of the humans who used to work for the Court. Lena needs—”
“Not all of them,” Naito interrupts. “They don’t have you. I hear they don’t have that Shane guy, either.”
So he is aware of some of the things that are going on around the palace. That’s good. It means he isn’t completely lost in his research here. “Lena needs your help.”
“I’m busy.”
“Naito.”
“I said I’m busy.” His glare comes off as a warning not to press the issue further.
Too bad. I have to.
“And how much time do you think you’ll have for your research if we lose the palace?” I demand. “Do you think the remnants will just let you hang out here?”
His bottom lip twitches.
“You need to join the rotation,” I say. “With you and Shane, there are six of us working for Lena. We can keep all the entrances watched.”
Naito’s gaze grows distant, focusing somewhere behind me. “It won’t make a difference. We can’t keep watch indefinitely. Lena needs to take out the remnants’ leader. She needs to go on the offensive.”
It’s hard to argue with that because it’s true. The rebels’ other Sighted humans and I are almost burned-out already. We need a break, and while Naito and Shane will help lighten our workload, it’s only a temporary solution.