Barbarian King’s Mate by Ivy Sparks
Chapter Sixteen
Garath
My eyes floated open,but all I could see was a blur of blue, green, and a few splashes of color. I felt myself bobbing through space, but that couldn’t be right because I was still lying down.
For several minutes, I drifted in a haze of glorious bliss. I never felt better in my life. All at once, without warning, a blinding jolt of pain smashed me out of my mind and I plunged into unconsciousness again.
In a split second, I was wide awake and looking up at a stretch of skin above my head. Dried herbs hung between the weird symbols painted on the ceiling, and I smelled incense burning.
I twisted my head and saw an old Kavian woman sitting next to me. She smiled at me. I recognized her, but I couldn’t remember how. All these things combined to form a picture in my mind.
I struggled to put the pieces together. Then I remembered. I was in the healer’s tent. I barely grasped that fact before I drifted off again. I floated back to Kavius and came to rest in my father’s old palace where our family lived before the Ranxi invaded.
Somehow, I drifted inside. My mother stood in the central hall before the clan King’s throne, but no one else was around. She turned and smiled at me. The sight flooded my heart, and I stepped forward to embrace her.
Just then, Daphne appeared from somewhere to the side. She wore a Kavian ceremonial dress as lavish and decorated as Queen Vassa, but she didn’t seem to see me. Daphne approached the Queen and Vassa turned to her instead. She put her arms around Daphne and kissed her on the cheek. Happiness overflowed my heart. Mother accepted Daphne. I couldn’t ask for more than that.
Everything went fuzzy again. I came to my senses, lying on a soft couch in one of the palace rooms. Through the gauzy white curtain that waved in the gentle breeze, I saw Daphne and Mother talking and laughing together out on the terrace. Their features glowed with delight, and that delicious feeling brimmed in my heart again. What a good time they were having. They must’ve really liked each other.
Daphne stood up. She and Vassa embraced again and kissed each other on the cheek. From nowhere, a little boy dashed over and flung his arms around Daphne’s waist. She hugged him and stroked his head. Two little horns protruded from his brow, and he chattered up at her in rapid tones before he ran off. In the mystical understanding of a dream, I recognized Daphne’s son—our son—the son she shared with me. She was my mate, and this was our child.
Daphne said something else to Vassa. They both laughed, then Daphne padded into the room where I lay. She walked right over to me like she knew I was waiting for her.
She bent over me. Her eyes glistened and her hair brushed my cheek with intoxicating softness. Her lips came to rest on mine, and I collapsed in such bliss as I’d never known in my life. I raised my arms to draw her down on top of me. My heart cracked with aching love for her, and my body throbbed for her.
Daphne… Her name echoed in my mind. Daphne, I love you. Don’t ever leave me. I can’t live without you.
Her eyes shone even brighter, and she smiled as though she understood me, but she didn’t speak. Some veil separated us. As much as I yearned for her, I couldn’t reach her. She existed on another plane.
The scene blurred again, and when my eyes swam back into focus, I was looking up at the healer’s tent stretched overhead. The same herbs and symbols in the same places told me I really was awake this time. I wasn’t dreaming.
“Oh, hello. You’re back.”
I turned my head to the side and stared at Daphne sitting by my bed. She smiled down at me with that same smile I’d seen in the dream. For a second, I scrambled to distinguish the dream from reality. Did she kiss me like that? Did I tell her I loved her, or did I just dream it?
A bunch of foreign equipment lay strewn across the floor in front of her. She was twisting something into a contraption. I didn’t recognize any of it.
I rolled over and sat up. My head teetered for a second before I got my bearings. “How long have I been out?”
Daphne glanced over her shoulder at nothing. We were alone. “You better lie down before the healer comes back. You have no idea how difficult it was to convince her to let me watch over you while she went out. She’s one tough nut, I can tell you.”
I rubbed my head. “I can’t lie down. I need to move. How long have I…?” I glanced around. The more time I spent upright, the more details came back from the attack in the glade. “Where exactly are we?”
“We’re back in Caverncall. Tenner, Nissaya, and I brought you back. It wasn’t easy. You were out of it most of the time—raving about all kinds of stuff.”
I rubbed my aching head again. “I’m sure Father is furious. I’m lucky he let me back inside.”
“Oh, he’s not mad. Withdrawn, maybe, but finally accepting what you were trying to tell him all along. We brought back a carcass of the Vorlax we killed, so everyone can see it’s been modified by the Ranxi.”
I groaned. I still wasn’t feeling completely back to normal. “Amazing. I thought we were out of luck.”
“Nissaya stashed the body in the deep freeze—or whatever you call it. They’re waiting for us to study exactly how the Ranxi modified them to make them so much more dangerous.” She went back to tinkering with her gear.
“What is all this stuff, Daphne? Is there anything here you can use?”
She gave me a strange look. The next minute, it was gone. She couldn’t be thinking about changing her plans to return to her people, could she? That would be asking too much, especially after we all went to such trouble to bring her equipment back here.
“This is my scanner. I used this to find a plant that contains the cure for Vorlax venom.” She noticed my blank expression. “You don’t remember, do you?”
“Not much,” I admitted. “I remember getting stung. That’s about it.”
“Well, when you got stung, my scanner picked up some compounds in the venom that match a known poison from Earth. It also picked up a nearby plant with an antidote to the poison. That’s how we cured you.”
I studied the device. “That was a lucky stroke.”
“Now we have to maximize it. The healer, Nissaya, and I have been working out how to manufacture the cure and weaponize a few other forest plants to use against the Vorlax. We’ve been trying to find something toxic to the Vorlax since we found something that neutralizes their venom.”
I blinked at her. “You can do that?”
“Yeah. It’s amazing what you can do with technology.”
“Show me how to use it.” I scooted over closer to her. “I want to learn.”
She rotated the device around and showed me the screen. “This is where the chemical components turn up when you scan something. See? Watch this.”
She took down a bundle of herbs from the ceiling, laid it on her lap, and pointed the device at it. A bunch of symbols turned up in rows.
“This shows the molecular structure of the plant and its chemical makeup. See? This plant contains sterols with unstable nitrogen groups. It also contains free radical electron pairs that make it even more unstable. That must be why it has medicinal effects. The free electrons react with Kavian physiology that…” She looked and burst out laughing at the confused scowl on my face. “Never mind. It works. That’s the important thing.”
I looked back at the pile of jumbled gear. Was one of these the device that would take her away from me forever?
As if reading my thoughts, she dug into the stack and pulled out a different thing. “This is the radio you almost lost your life retrieving. You’ll be happy to know it’s broken beyond redemption, so your suffering was in vain.”
Was she joking? She twirled the thing in her hand, barely looking at it.
“Are you… are you sure it’s completely broken?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s broken, all right. I already tried hailing the Quest. The device doesn’t even power up even when the battery is fully charged.”
“Well, maybe the cavern blocks the signal.”
She gazed up at me with wide eyes. That smile radiating from her countenance snapped me back into the dream. “Nice try, genius, but wrong. I tried outside the cavern.”
I frowned at the device again. If it was indeed broken, maybe Daphne would have no choice but to stay. Did I dare to hope for that? She wouldn’t be able to stay if circumstances forced her to. She would constantly be searching for a way to leave. She would drive herself crazy. I couldn’t stand that.
She tossed the device back on the pile. “I suppose I ought to at least try to fix it, but everything else seems so much more interesting—the anti-venom, the anti-Vorlax weapon, studying the Vorlax brains—I have too much work to do. I don’t have time to fix it.”
Before I could say a word, the tent flap pulled back. I expected the healer to return and drive Daphne off, but instead, Nissaya and Tennar ducked inside. “Oh, hello, Garath.” Nissaya turned straight to Daphne, as if picking up a conversation they’d been having for days. “Father is calling you to his throne. He wants to question the three of us about the attack in the glade.”
“Haven’t we already explained enough times what happened?” she asked. “What good can explaining it again do?”
Nissaya chopped the air. “Don’t ask me! I tried to tell him everything, but he insists on you being there too. I think he wants to interrogate you in an official capacity in front of the rest of the clan. He hates outsiders, so maybe he wants to blame you for Garath nearly getting killed.”
“Great,” Daphne muttered.
“Don’t worry,” Tennar chimed in. “Nissaya and I will be with you. He can’t ignore us, and even if he does, the rest of the clan won’t. They won’t let him take it out on you when you had nothing to do with it.”
“I did have something to do with it,” she returned. “I’m the one who got Garath stung.”
“Don’t you even think of saying anything like that in front of Father,” Nissaya fired back. “He’s already looking for a way to throw you out. It wasn’t your fault. It was Father’s stupidity that sent Garath back to the glade without enough men. You and your equipment saved Garath’s life. He never would have made it back to Caverncall alive if you hadn’t been with us, and it’s thanks to you that we even have a chance to fight the Vorlax now.”
Daphne took a deep breath. “All right. I guess I better go.”
“I’m coming with you,” I interjected. “I’ll make sure he listens to reason.”
“You better not,” she replied. “The healer could come back, then we’d all be in hot water.”
I started to protest, but just then, the tent flap opened a second time. The healer stooped inside, and her face went black when she saw me sitting up and the other three talking to me like a normal, living man. Her expression left no doubt that I was staying put.
Daphne put out her hand and squeezed my arm. Her touch electrified me as never before. The slightest graze of her fingers brought back all the ecstasy of my dream. She really was my fated mate. Just watching her walk out of the tent to cross the village made me ache.
She looked me in the eye. “I’ll come straight back as soon as we finish. Don’t worry. I won’t be gone long.”
Her auburn eyes gleamed so brightly, and that vibrant blush shone so nicely on her cheeks that I half-expected her to kiss me. She didn’t, though. She scooped all her gear into her backpack, propped it in the corner, then followed Nissaya and Tennar outside.
As soon as the tent flap fell into place, cold settled over my heart. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be wherever she was. But I now felt she was safe with my sister and best friend. She talked so easily with Nissaya and Tennar, as if she had grown closer to them since I had been out.
They must have gone through the tortures of the damned, carrying me and the dead Vorlax back from the glade. I could just imagine the journey with Tennar doing most of the heavy lifting and Daphne calling the shots. The other two would have been hanging on her every word after she found that plant to neutralize the venom.
I settled back on my bed under the healer’s harsh glare, but my mind kept wandering back to Daphne. She moved so easily through this world that once was mine. She fell into the village like she belonged here. Our meeting must have been meant to be. I knew it, but did she know it too?
