The Pages of the Mind

by Jeffe Kennedy

  We devoured each other whole.

  Immolated in a blazing sun of endless climax.

  At last, utterly spent, I collapsed over him, his skin hot and slick under my cheek. Heartbeat thundering. With him inside me still, it seemed the boundaries between us blurred. His hand trailed up and down my spine, a comforting caress. So at odds with the nearly vicious way we’d taken each other—for I could not excuse my own behavior—and yet somehow another face of the same emotion.

  Just as my fury had somehow been the reverse side of my desire.

  I had no idea how to feel and, tired of thinking about it, I let it go for a few minutes, letting the kaleidoscope of our furious lovemaking spill back in sensory fragments. For it had been both—full of fury and love. Speak the words your heart already has.

  I didn’t believe it. All afterglow, as Jepp called it. And yet . . .

  “Nakoa mlai.” I murmured the words against his skin and his hand came up to cup my head, threading through my hair.

  “Understand,” he said, not quite a question, because he knew it wasn’t. I understood all too well. Completely without knowledge, I still understood. He was first for me, whether I wanted it that way or not.

  “You have my vow not to speak the secrets,” I said on a sigh of resignation. “I might ask you, if I think I need to tell, though.”

  “I am always here to ask.”

  His simple words struck me. He would not always be there, because I would have to leave him eventually. How I’d manage that, however, without causing war but still escaping his determined possession, I had no idea. Perhaps he’d be satisfied with the piece of my heart I’d leave behind, against all expectation.

  Magic bound us together—I couldn’t deny that. But that wasn’t real love. It made for a nice fantasy, to lie against Nakoa and imagine a true marriage, but I couldn’t trust my own heart, or his. I’d never known what real love felt like, but I knew that it grew between people of like minds. Not striking like lightning from the sky, ripping one open, the way I’d been with him just now.

  Maybe I could fulfill this role, help him with the dragon and this treasure, and that would satisfy whatever geas connected us. The smoke and ash from our fiery union would dissipate, our minds clearing of this induced emotion. That had to be the case, because I’d never felt any of these things before. I sat up, groaning at the protests of my body, aware I wore only the jewelry and the knife belt, with the dagger I’d never drawn. Nakoa touched my cheek, a bit of a wince in his expression. “Sorry for sore.”

  I contemplated him. “We both . . . lost our heads.” I tried the translated euphemism, not sure if he’d follow.

  He did, with a smile both rueful and full of male satisfaction. “Yes. And now your head is found again.”

  I sighed, not at all certain of the truth of that. I seemed to have lost all rationality. But I could at least gain the knowledge I’d paid this price to have.

  “Tell me about the dragon.”

  Nakoa watched me gather up my scattered garments, as he sat cross-legged, the kylte he’d never removed—and wore nothing under, I’d discovered—draping over his lap.

  “She is very old and slept a long time under the volcano. Long ago there were many dragons; then they died.” He looked full of sorrow. “Many, all at once.”

  “You saw this?”

  “No. Not me. Not my parents or their parents. Long, long ago—understand?”

  My skin prickled with unease, as I recalled the illustrations I’d seen. “There was magic. Then there wasn’t.”

  His face lit with appreciation that I’d followed. “Yes. Not all at once, but as the rains do.”

  Dwindling away in the face of drought. I nodded, thinking of the scrolls I’d seen in Annfwn that might have indicated when and how the barrier was first erected. Had that ancient sorceress realized at all the impact of her actions? Whether of malicious intent or accidental, the result had been the same. And the knowledge lost.

  “My ancestors”—he made a grasping motion—“took what magic remained.” He swept sand together, piling it into a cone. “See?”

  “Into the volcano?” I pointed at the quiescent mountain, copper brown against the blue sky.

  “Yes. The dragons, the magic.” He cupped his hands protectively over the cone of sand. “The secret, passed from king to king, queen to queen. The dragons slept, so as not to die.”

  So like the Tala secrets for controlling the magic, passed from mother to daughter. Fascinating parallels.

  “And then the magic storm came.”

  “Yes. I understood.” He tapped his temple, then gestured to me. “The dragon awoke, but”—he bumped his fist against a sheltering palm—“could not open.”

  Awake, but trapped inside the volcano. How awful. For all her fierce strength and ancient majesty, she’d been as caught in her prison of stone as I had been in mine. A chill crossed my skin despite the heat of the sun.

  Nakoa nodded, as if he followed my thought. “I needed you. And you came here.”

  “To help release the dragon.”

  He nodded, a wary look in his eye. I knew exactly why. “I did not ‘come here,’ Nakoa. You sent General Kral to take me.” I used his grasping gesture, expecting a return of my former anger. It seemed I’d spent it all, however.

  Nakoa held his palms up and shrugged his shoulders. “You did not know. I waited. I saw you, but you did not know.”

  “How did you see me?”

  He frowned slightly and waved his hands. “As I feel the rain, ready to fall.”

  “Why didn’t I see you?” It seemed eminently logical, that if we’d been magically or mystically connected, I would have seen him.

  “Not your magic.”

  “I don’t have any magic.”

  A slow smile spread across his face. “You are mlai. You have woman-magic. Not man/rain magic.” He infused the concept of rain with something more, similar to the tones for storms and also masculinity.

  I wasn’t going to argue that because we’d only go in circles. More than we were already. “What does Tane want you to do with the dragon?”

  “You and I, though he does not believe. He thinks to see us fail and then be king.”

  “Fail to do what?”

  His brow knit. “Open . . . her treasure.”

  Kral’s treasure. Goddesses take him. He’d thought the Thirteen had worked the storm to take it, then backpedaled when he realized we knew nothing about it. Suddenly the Dasnarian Empire’s keen interest in these islands made much more sense.

  “Is the treasure how you got Kral to bring me here?”

  “Not to take, to invite.”

  “You promised him treasure?”

  “What he believes and what I promise are not the same.”

  “Just as you know more Dasnarian than you let on.”

  He grinned. “They are not wise. I told him if he could get past the dragon, he could have access to the treasure. But I needed you for the dragon first.”

  “How did you tell General Kral who I was?”

  “I painted a picture. You, in your white palace.”

  I had to believe it, as impossible as it seemed. “Okay. So, Tane wants us to try to open the dragon’s treasure, thinking we will fail, as he thought to make you fail the test of the ancestors.” I pieced it together, Nakoa nodding slowly as he followed my mix of tongues. “Tane wants the treasure. The Dasnarians want the treasure. The treasure belongs to the dragon.”

  “The dragon keeps it for the people,” Nakoa clarified.

  “Nice of her. What is the treasure?”

  He held up his hands and shrugged.

  The problem with passed-down secrets—they still left out the salient bits. “How do we release it?”

  Nakoa tilted his head meaningfully. “You know.”

  “No, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”

  He reached over and tapped over my heart. “Here.”

  25

  More of the mystical clap
trap. “Nakoa . . .” I sighed out the frustration. “I don’t know any of this.”

  “You know. This is yours to know.” Nakoa spoke with quiet urgency, taking my hands in his. “I bring rain and you bring this.”

  “What is ‘this,’ though?”

  Nakoa rubbed his thumbs over my hands, frowning at them, then huffed out a sigh. “It was not told me. Not for men. It’s said it comes from the mothers.”

  A terrific thing to tell an orphan. Though my mother, a minor nobleman’s daughter in Columba, could not have known these things to tell me, even had she lived.

  Nakoa shrugged with a rueful half smile and tapped my heart again. “This is yours to know. Not mine. Why I need you. I cannot do it alone. You are here and our hearts are one. You have it in you.”

  That heart he spoke of so glibly shuddered a little. It would be infinitely preferable if Nakoa didn’t affect me so. It made no sense that I felt so strongly about him. Of course he was fascinating, a compelling enigma of a man, but I’d been around powerful men all my life. He possessed keen intelligence that he seemed to use for the benefit of his people, along with all the charisma of a ruler—a trait I could admit to myself that had always been attractive to me. Perhaps I looked for in others all the confidence and decisiveness I lacked. No doubt much of the source of my tangled emotions for him was tied up in him being my first and only lover. Even with my body sore and throbbing from our encounter, a hunger for more of him hummed deep inside, as if I craved to make up for the starvation of a lifetime.

  I didn’t need for him to love me—particularly as I could not stay—but I perversely wanted this man, the only one I’d ever been truly attracted to, to truly want me, too. Not for some prophecy or the other half of this magic he expected us to work. But because he liked me.

  All foolishness. I’d thought I’d long since reconciled myself to the glaring truth that no one wanted me—only what I could do for them. As if having my family and home cleaved from me had rendered me somehow not a full person. Not someone worth having on her own. All along I’d understood that Nakoa, like everyone else, needed me for particular, if obscure reasons. My own fault some part of myself had wandered away from that rational understanding and began creating romantic fantasies.

  I was plenty old enough to know that sex and love were decisively not the same thing. Even more so when politics were mixed in.

  If I accepted what he was telling me—and what choice did I have there?—then the sexual connection between us served to also affect the dragon. Magic didn’t always fit into logical lines, so I’d have to suspend disbelief and go with that reality. The solution, then, would be to do what Nakoa and his people needed. Open the treasure, solve this puzzle of a destiny, and then go on my way.

  Perhaps at that point, he wouldn’t even object to my departure, as I would have done what he needed me for. Leaving this place was what I wanted, so the idea shouldn’t make my heart ache.

  “Dafne?” Nakoa’s brows drew together. “What is wrong?”

  “I’m fine. I want to go to the library. May I?”

  He gave me a funny look. “You are queen. You do as you like.”

  “I mean, you don’t need me in court? To be seen.”

  “You were seen. Tane will sow his seeds of storm. But the books do not hold the answers you seek.”

  I wasn’t at all sure I agreed. “Is there more you can tell me?”

  He thought, then shook his head regretfully.

  “Then books it is.”

  We rinsed off in the sea, the water blissfully refreshing even if the salt stung in my abraded tissues—which included a few bruises and bites from Nakoa that I hadn’t noticed at the time. Nothing like what I’d left on him, and he, in the midst of washing a deep set of scratches on his chest, caught me watching and grinned. “My dragon queen.”

  The term caught me off guard, hitting home in a disorienting wave, like when I felt as if I’d already read a book that I well knew I’d never before laid hands on. Did he know we’d called him the dragon king? Not possible, and yet . . .

  Further rocked, I quickly dressed again, my skimpy outfit doing nothing to hide the sex marks. Nor on Nakoa. “Everyone will see and know,” I said ruefully.

  “It is good.” He lifted my chin, bending down to kiss me. Perhaps mindful that I’d complained about being picked up all the time. “Beautiful.”

  He meant the sex, not me. I felt sure of it.

  We walked back to the palace, he holding my hand until we parted at the hall that forked to the throne room. “You’ll go back to court?” I asked, feeling vaguely guilty to be skipping out on my responsibilities.

  “Yes. I will see you in our rooms tonight.” He gave me a distinctly smoldering look, as if he hadn’t just thoroughly sated himself with me. My body, already well attuned—absurdly so, given a lifetime of abstinence—heated in answer. Only a short time ago I hadn’t understood how Jepp and Kral could have gone at it all night. Now I couldn’t seem to go even minutes without thinking about wanting more of Nakoa.

  “To play kiauo, yes,” I replied in a flippant tone to cover the need, making him laugh.

  “That, too.” His smile turned wicked. “We shall see who wins—and the kama.”

  He’d certainly won that exchange. Flushed, I took myself off before I could get into any more trouble.

  Akamai joined me in the library, clearly sent by Nakoa and thoughtfully bringing my journal and papers and laying them out as I’d last had them. An excellent memory he had.

  “Don’t you have to be in court?” I asked in Dasnarian, relieved to abandon my stilted fumbling in Nahanaun. The height of irony, that Dasnarian felt so comfortable in comparison.

  “No, Queen Dafne Nakoa KauPo. I am your servant in all things.” Akamai beamed at me. “I belong to you now.”

  “Belong? You are no slave.”

  “True. But you took responsibility for me, so I belong to you.”

  “What about your family?”

  He shook his head. “They all died when I was a baby, in a great storm. I was found washed ashore, so the people brought me to the palace. But I have nothing. King Nakoa KauPo allows me to serve in the library. Then you took responsibility for me.” He bowed deeply. “I am grateful, as I am otherwise vulnerable.”

  “Vulnerable how?”

  “I have no status. No wealth of my own. I would leave here if I could.” He shrugged. “But I have no means to do so. I am happy to serve you, Queen Dafne Nakoa KauPo.”

  Far too close to home on many levels. Dwelling on it wouldn’t make him any happier than it would have me. “All right, then. You can help me find everything this library holds on dragons, no matter how incidental.”

  My feet barely bothered me—almost miraculously so—and it was such a treat to be able to explore the library under my own power. Akamai explained the organization, how the books, scrolls, and other texts were grouped first by subject, then by culture of origin, then by age of the document. Astonishingly I found copies of texts not only from various kingdoms of the original Twelve Kingdoms, but from some of the bordering countries and even from Annfwn. Some I’d never seen before and might be the only copies left in existence. All were in nearly pristine condition, too.

  I felt terrible touching them with bare hands, but when I asked Akamai for gloves, he said he didn’t know that Dasnarian word. It made sense on one level—no shoes and socks, no gloves. But how did they keep everything in such good condition?

  A huge proportion of the library was devoted to materials in another language altogether, a style I recognized as quintessentially Tala and yet not that at all. This written language, much as it evoked the simple forms the Tala used, seemed to be hugely more complex. A scan of the variety of characters used made me think it could be hundreds of times more dense. What the Tala language might look like in written form, if they’d ever cared enough to give up their devotion to oral histories and make a scholarly pursuit of recording their language. Over and over, I recal
led those scrolls I’d barely had time to study in Annfwn.

  A tingle of intuition thrilled through me. “Akamai—what is this language?”

  He didn’t even have to look, pursing his mouth ruefully. “N’andanan. An ancient language we no longer know how to read.”

  “Who collected all of these, then?”

  “The people of N’andana sent them for safekeeping, before their land disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Yes. To preserve their knowledge, since their people were doomed.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Perhaps the books say.”

  “The books no one can read.”

  I growled to myself when he nodded at that. This was important. I knew it in my bones. Why would a people facing disaster go to so much trouble to preserve all of these texts without providing a key to translation? There had to be one. In this library, somewhere. Or had been.

  “How long ago did this happen?”

  He merely shrugged in that relaxed Nahanaun fashion, saying the books had always been there. As he seemed to be no older than twenty, at best, and as everything I’d seen predated that, I’d no doubt it would appear that way to him.

  It took stern self-discipline not to lose myself in side research, each new find as tempting as an array of pastries, each begging to be devoured immediately. For the first time, instead of wanting to hurry the days until rescue arrived, I entertained a wistful desire for them to slow, so I’d have just a bit more time to try to decipher N’andanan. As if I didn’t have enough riddles already. Ironic that I wouldn’t allow myself to indulge in a similar wishfulness to shirk my duty and vows of fealty to stay with Nakoa. That lay in the realm of impossibility. But studying this ancient language . . .

  The difference lay in that I understood and knew how to study a language. I could spend my entire life in this library and not get through all of the materials preserved in it. Conversely, I did not understand Nakoa or being with a man at all. He wasn’t for me, something I needed to continually remind myself of. Much as that dreamy, recently discovered romantic corner of my heart might dwell on the fantasy of spending my days in study and my nights melting in the crucible of Nakoa’s embrace, the long-practiced logical part of my mind knew it couldn’t be. Life didn’t work out that way. At least not for me. If I’d learned nothing else, I knew that much. My role in the world—a good role, one I’d become good at—was to open the doors for others to walk through. Believing otherwise caused only heartache.