“How did you learn that mages can pass through the Spell?” It’s a question that I’ve been dying to learn the answer to.
“The short answer is because my father knew.”
“And the long answer?”
Kai exhales, long and full bodied. “The long answer is a story for another day.”
Fine. That’sfine.I’ve got weeks and weeks here to get it out of him.
He continues ahead, pushing the thick leaves of overgrown bushes out of the way until we step out of the jungle completely and right into the village. The homes are larger than those in the heart of the capital and more spread out, the style the same round shape made of dried palms, stone, and light wood. It’s busy, people meandering around as they carry long planks of wood on their shoulders or baskets of food against their hips.
“What is this place called?” I ask quietly, leaning closer to Kai, my hair accidentally brushing against his arm. The muscles there tense, rippling under the skin adorned with the lines of inked black.
“Leeta,” he answers while adjusting his body so that he is no longer touching any part of me. “The capital may be the center of the island, but places like Leeta are its heart.”
Kai’s reception here is vastly different from that in Molsi. Everyone who passes gives him a respectful acknowledgement, and even Kai himself looks more at ease, the tension normally riding his shoulders mostly gone.
He leads us between a row of homes—the scent of flora, tilled soil, and fired meats thick in the air—to a door where a small monkey and an eagle are carved into the wood. Kai knocks three times, and the door is swung open by a female dressed in an oversized long blue dress, the material ragged at the ends.
“Your Majesty,” she blurts out, eyes wide as she attempts to form a curtsy while the baby on her hip pulls at her hair.
I offer my hand out to her. “Hello. I’m Bahira. The king and I are here to speak with you about the blight.”
The female’s shoulders relax as she exhales, her hand folding over my own. “That’s right, I almost forgot. I’m Magda. Come in.” Magda’s house is cluttered, each corner filled with piles of trinkets and random collections of trash and torn-up leaves. “I’m sorry about the mess. He can’t help it, and with working as much as possible to earn enough coin in his absence, I don’t have much energy left to clean.”
“It’s alright,” I assure her, turning away from the largest pile of odds and ends. I take my backpack off and set it down, grabbing my journal and spelled pen from the biggest zipper. “Is it your husband who has shifted?”
She nods, a frown drawing her thin lips down. Exhaustion lines her forehead and colors the skin darker under her eyes. “He shifted about three weeks ago, and—” Her sentence is stopped abruptly when her baby yanks a chunk of hair harshly. She struggles to get his little hand free of the now tangled mess while her eyes begin to water.
“Go offer to hold her baby,” I say to Kai under my breath.
As if startled by my suggestion, his head snaps towards me, his brows drawn high. “Excuse me?”
“Go. Offer. To. Hold. Her. Baby,” I enunciate slowly. When his features remain stupefied, I grumble a plea to the gods above while laying my journal and pen down on the floor and walk over to Magda. “Let me help you.”
I work to remove the last remaining strands from the baby’s little chubby hand, his amber eyes wide on me as he decides whether or not he is going to cry in my presence. Once his mother’s hair is free, I look to her for permission to hold him. She nods gratefully, handing him over in a smooth motion. Returning to Kai, I bounce the little one on my hip, his toothless smile bringing out a grin of my own.
“What is his name?”
“Sione,” Magda says as she braids her long hair back.
“Hello, Sione. Let’s see if you can make the grumpy shifter king smile.” I hold him out to Kai, his little feet kicking in the air between us, but the king doesn’t move. “This is the part where you take the baby from my hands, Your Majesty.”
“I have never held a baby. They are too small—too fragile. I don’t want to hurt it.”
“Him. You don’t want to hurthim.And you won’t. Come on, take him.” When Kai still doesn’t move, I let loose a laugh. “Don’t tell me that you are afraid of a being a tenth of your size?” I let my eyes drag down his body deliberately, knowing he can tell when I linger on some parts longer than others. “No, more like a fifteenth of your size.” The small smirk he gives me leaves me feeling oddly victorious.
“You will not hurt him, Your Majesty. Babies are far more durable than most think,” Magda adds.
“See? You’ll be fine. Hold him.”
This time, Kai acts, lifting his hands—albeitslowly—to take Sione from me. He keeps his arms straight out in front of him, his large grip taking up Sione’s entire torso on both sides.
I laugh as I pat his arm. “There you go.”
“What do I do now?” he asks, but I’m already picking up my supplies.
I meet Magda in the small kitchen on the other side of a half wall made of wood and covered with potted plants that divides the home. I take a seat at the small four-person table in the middle of the room, dwindling sunlight streaming in from the window on the farthest wall.
