Page 5 of The Keeper of the Kingdoms

I frowned. “Let me make you a sleeping draft.”

He grabbed my hands, stilling them as I reached for the necessary ingredients. “The dreams are worse.”

I looked at him closer, my frustration fading. The circlesunder his eyes were deep purple and rimmed with black. He hid it well, but he didn’t look good. “Nyx, you can’t not sleep.”

“I know but—” He swallowed, closing his eyes. “When I dream, I see his—our face, our dragon, staring back at me, undead.” His words rocked me to my core.

What could I even say? Now I just felt bad. I was being an arsehole, avoiding him at all costs because I didn’t want to have a difficult conversation when his twin brother, his best friend and other half, had just died. He needed friendship and support. He needed me.

I closed one eye, steeling myself. This still felt like a trap, but I couldn’t deny him.

“I’m so sorry.” I pulled him into a hug.

“Please, just let me help,” he begged, sinking into the embrace and soaking up the support it offered.

“Only if you promise to keep your mouth shut about you know who.” I pulled back enough to meet his eyes, making sure he knew I was serious.

“I promise.” He nodded, letting me go so we could get to work.

Not sure I believed he could keep his word, I set up another cutting board with fresh herbs for him to mince. “As fine as you can make them. Then you can get the tubers and sea slugs.”

He pulled a face. “Do I have to kill them?”

“Says the dragon.” I hid a laugh. “I’ll kill them, but you have to cut them.”

“They are just little guys. They don’t deserve to face a dragon.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re something else.”

“Thank you,” Nyx said, getting to his work.

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“Maybe not to you.” He showed me his work and I pointed out the chunks he needed to go over again.

“You’re a mess. Not sleeping, happy, upset.”

“I don’t have time to be a mess. I have to keep it all together for the good of the Twelve Kingdoms.” There was truth in his words, but it didn’t make it fair on him.

“Do you think the attacks in the Second Kingdom will continue with Octavian dead?” I asked, not sure how much he would tell me.

“I don’t know.” He exhaled heavily. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to believe and every report we get contradicts what I saw with my own eyes.”

“What is it contradicting?”

“That we are up against an army of the undead never before seen by the Twelve Kingdoms, and it’s not the Vivi Mortui.”

THREE

JAXUS

This kingdom was a lot to get used to. So many different kinds of fae and such a densely populated city. I’d had to adjust so quickly, while acting as though nothing surprised me. Even with the story we had constructed about me having lived in a remote village, like Zaria once had, I still had to mask my reactions to so many things.

I was raised behind the veil of the Wild Mountains. I had never encountered anything that wasn’t a dragon until the day Nyx and Zaria had crash-landed in Kerani. When these outsiders arrived in our hidden world, the elders had been inclined to force them to stay to protect the secrecy that kept our dragon population safe. But Nyx appealed to them to let them go to save his ill-fated brother.

I didn’t fully understand what had driven me to petition the council to let me join them on their rescue, perhaps it was theGoddess’ will. But they agreed as long as we swore a blood oath which would guarantee that we kept their existence a secret, since we would die if we tried to speak of it once outside their wards. I had yet to regret the decision as it had led me to find Kiera, my ryder. Or at least she could be if I could pin her down to talk.

I never liked to assume someone was avoiding me, but after two weeks of vanishing into thin air whenever I was in the vicinity, I had to believe Kiera was. I was beginning to suspect her of being a very skilled mage with the power to simply disappear. And since I knew that was not possible, I was thoroughly confused.