“Keep listening to your mother, and I'll keep listening to mine,” Iefyr said. He unhooked his bundled prey from the back of his saddle and hoisted them. “Know how to pluck a prairie chicken? I've already field dressed them.”
“I'm better at skinning rabbits.” I ducked beneath the tarp and held back the flap so Iefyr could join the rest of us in the shelter.
He handed me a pair of scrawny rabbits. “Go for it.”
Marita ignited a small fire while Iefyr and I worked on the game and the others rushed to secure camp. The rain became a steady drizzle. The waxed canvas tarps weren't completely waterproof, but they would offer enough protection to keep us dry overnight.
We skewered the meat and placed it over the fire to roast. Shan dug an armful of potatoes out of his rucksack and arranged them around the embers. I wasn't sure why he had so many potatoes with him, but I was too hungry to care or ask.
Ragan retrieved an oilcloth roll from one of his saddlebags and laid it on the ground. He tapped Rose's forearm and said, “Hey, I think I've got a Faelands map in here somewhere. Help me figure out where we are.”
“I haven't been to the Faelands since I was a child, you know that.” Rose settled next to Ragan, her knee touching his.
“I know, but you're the only one of us who's been to this part of Bacra. All I know is what you told me, and most of that was when I was too young to grab onto any of the details.”
“And most of the things I told you were lies.” Rose sighed and shuffled through the stack of maps on top of the unbound oilcloth. “I shouldn't have lied to you about something as important as where we came from. I shouldn't have told you that this was a beautiful and welcoming place, because for the most part it is not. Now you're as unprepared as everyone else here.”
Shan sat at Ragan's other knee and looked down at the maps. “Just how long have you two known each other?”
“My entire life,” Ragan muttered. He shook his head and pursed his lips. “Can't find it. Was sure I had a proper Faelands map in here, but all I can find is this general one of Northern Bacra. Damn it. Sorry. Had no idea I'd be needing something like that.”
“None of us did, Ragan.” Rose rested her hand on his thigh and smiled at him. “We'll figure it out based on my memory and what you do have. I trust your maps more than my memories, though. Fanciful dreams of little girls are guaranteed to be flawed.”
The fire crackled and the sparse fat on the meat began to sizzle. Rose and Ragan were busy studying the maps, but I was more interested in their faces. I'd taken their resemblance to be due to Faeline blood, but it went further than that. Their colorings were different, and Ragan's features were overall more human than Fae, but there were similarities in their faces that were unlikely due to racial affinity alone.
“Are you two related?” I asked.
Marita rotated the skewers, then sat back and rubbed her nose. “I think they would have told us by now if they were.”
Rose looked up from the maps just long enough to glance at my face, then Marita's. “I'm his mother.”
“Wait, what?” I said. I scooted closer to Shan so I could hear Rose more clearly. “Did you just say you're Ragan's mother? Why did we not know this? Does my Mom know this?”
“Rin doesn't know,” Ragan said. He squinted at the flames and sighed. “Part of the whole Covert Services thing, unfortunately. Safer for both of us if no one knew. That's why she changed her name from Rosalia Dannis to Rose Stargazer. Kept her kids safe until we were old enough to endanger ourselves by joining her as operatives.”
“And it hurt my heart to pretend we were no more than acquaintances, and then it hurt even more when I couldn't call Alon my grandson. I'm grateful I got to know him, even though it was under the guise of a family friend.” Rose wiped a tear from her eye and returned her attention to the maps. “I am sorry, Tessen and Shan. Lies and deceit are an unfortunate necessity for people in my profession.”
“Was anything about you two sincere?” Shan asked. His eyelid twitched and his lips drooped into a pouted frown. “You infiltrated our lives and left us with nothing but lies and broken hearts.”
“They loved us. That was real. Still is,” I said. Nothing else was real. Rose spent years coming and going from our house, even before Mom and Ragan were together. She recognized Shan's shadow-skill before anyone else and helped him learn to control it once he began to display it. We only saw her in Jadeshire twice after Alon died, but I figured she was busy with her mercenary work.
“Nothing is real anymore. Nothing.” Shan rose from Ragan's side to join Marita across the fire.
“I'm sorry we couldn't be truthful with you. Couldn't even be truthful with each other.” Rose's golden eyes widened as she pointed at a map near the bottom of the stack. “Here. I think this is as good as we'll get.”
Ragan pulled out the map and set it on top of the others. “Northwest Bacra. Not detailed enough, but I don't have anything better.”
“Here.” Rose traced a circle around a large, incomplete section of the map. “I think we're somewhere in this area. Southwest Faelands. It's not notated on here, but I think it's called the Ralda Desert. We're out of that now and up in the Hadgar Steppes, but I think that's where we started. If we go west, we'll end up at the ocean in a couple days. We don't want to go that way. Lots of nasties on the Fae Coast. Hedolar, sea wyverns, water drakes, reef walkers. Can't go due east or back south beyond Ralda, either, or we'll be stuck on the salt flats for longer than we can survive. If we can find our way here, to the Mala Basin, we have a better chance of getting back east where we belong. It's a huge canyon and it's warmer than the rest of this realm, so most of the Fae population lives there.”
“The boreal rainforest of Mala. Yeah, heard of it,” Ragan murmured. “Any idea how far it is?”
“A week, maybe. If we come to the Crystal Forest, we'll know we're going the right direction. If we end up looking at a nasty swamp, we went too far west. Drowning Morass, that one's called. Might even be worse than the coast.”
“Do you think the Fae can help us get to Anthora faster?” I asked.
“I don't know.” Rose tried to hide her shiver within a tense shrug. “There are mountain passes east of the Fae capital, Belise, that lead toward the Diamond Realm and Anthora. If we can get to Belise, we can get to Anthora, but I don't know how welcome we'll be along the way. I left this land so long ago that I don't remember how to be a proper Fae. We don't have much of a choice, though. We need to find civilization. We need provisions as much as we need to find our bearings.”
“Just better hope they don't decide to kill us,” Ragan said. He pulled a skewer off the flames and held the meat up so it could cool. “Bunch of half-breeds, non-Fae, and you. We're a sarding damned mess, the lot of us.”
“I don't know what they'll do to us, but asking for help from the Fae sounds better than dying on the salt flats,” I said. My head wobbled as I yawned. I grabbed a skewer and dug a potato out of the embers. “I think I need to eat this and go to sleep.”
“You mad at us like he is?” Ragan asked, cocking his head toward Shan.
Shan scowled. He left his empty skewer next to the fire and followed Marita under the drape of an adjoining tarp.
I touched a fingertip to the charred meat on my skewer. It was still too hot to eat. “No. I'm sad, not mad. I'm starting to understand what you both had to give up to keep the Jade Realm safe.”
“And we failed at that. Daelon's dead and his heirs are in hiding. Some shit operatives the Dannis family ended up being.” Ragan rolled up the oilcloth and tucked the maps back into his saddlebag.
“We failed our Realm and now we have to live with that,” Rose added.
“Just don't fail Shan,” I said. The rainfall increased to a torrent and the wind whipped at the tarps. “I'm forgiving you for a lot of things, but I won't have any forgiveness left if something happens to him.”
“Wouldn't expect you to. Wouldn't forgive myself, either.” Ragan picked at
the meat on his skewer. “Rabbit. Not my favorite. Was hoping I'd grabbed the chicken.”
“Trade me.”
I fought to keep my numb hands under control as we switched skewers. The more tired I was, the less power I had over my finger movements. I'd be lucky not to drop my food on the ground before I was done with it. The rabbit was a little charred, but I liked it that way.
Rose reached across Ragan to touch my arm. “Eat, my dear, and go to sleep. You can barely keep your eyes open. This rain is bringing out the chill tonight, so don't go sleep on your own.”
I forced my heavy eyelids open long enough to swallow a few more bites. I reached for my blanket and Serida's crate. She was already asleep when we stopped to make camp, so I'd left her alone. I'd save her some of my rabbit for when she woke up hungry. “I'm just going to sleep right here. Well, maybe back a little so I don't kick the fire. Wake me if anything exciting happens.”
Chapter 17
A weight sat on my chest. It wasn't uncomfortable, just enough pressure to pull me out of a deep sleep. I thought at first that Serida was sitting on my ribs, but even an overnight growth spurt couldn't explain this weight. I tried to will my arms to move so I could touch it, but they were firmly locked to the ground by my own sleep paralysis. I couldn't move or open my eyes, so I waited as I continued to breathe and wonder what was touching me.
The numbness in my limbs gradually faded and I was able to lift my hand. The weight on my chest was roundish and covered in tangled hair. Someone was using me as a pillow.
“Get off,” I mumbled. I shoved at the errant head. Its owner responded by pressing a cold palm against my cheek. “Hey, get off me.”
A faint, pitchless whisper reached across the pounding cadence of the rain to tickle my ears. “Shh. I'm listening to your heart.”
My eyes flickered open. I saw the hair first, pale silver-blond in the gray light, then a pointed ear and a fair, scarred cheek. Shan.
“Get off me, Shan. Stop being weird. If you want to listen to a heart, go listen to your girlfriend's.”
“I already did.” Shan looked up at me, a quizzical shadow in his blue-green eyes. “I want to know if it feels different to listen to a heart that is bound to mine by blood.”
“And does it?” I asked. It seemed I was waking up to a rather strange version of Shan this morning and I wasn't sure if I should approach him as light-hearted or potentially explosive. I decided to keep my mouth shut until he indicated it was all right to joke with him.
“Yes. Marita's heartbeat is intriguing, but foreign. It makes me uncomfortable because it's a new rhythm, but I also have an urge to acclimate to it.” Shan's hand drifted from my face to my collarbone. “Your heartbeat is safe and familiar and all things home. It's the dance of dust on top of the kitchen cupboards, the wind through the rosemary, the brittle flutter of textbook pages, the embrace of a memory until now forgotten. Marita's heartbeat is not part of my soul, not yet and maybe not ever, but yours is. It sometimes bothers me that we look nothing alike and strangers do not take us as brothers, but it's so easy to find the truth in your heart.”
“This is odd, Shan.” I tried to sit up, but he pushed down on my chest and forced me to stay on my back.
“I know. I'm sorry. Your heart is becoming agitated so I'll only stay a moment longer. I was . . . I was feeling disconnected from you and needed to remind myself that no matter what, I'll always have you. Right?”
I understood a little better now. I went through a long period of intense grief when I thought he'd died and it was like a part of me had been ripped away. Shan was such a constant in my life that I couldn't quite figure out who I was without him. We'd always been together, but now we were older and growing apart. He was afraid of losing me to more than death. He feared losing me as his best friend.
“Right.” I picked a twig out of his hair and tossed it toward the remnants of the fire. “Now get off me.”
Shan sat upright. He clicked his tongue and Lumin scurried into his lap. He held the little dragon up and pressed his ear against the gold-scaled chest. “You see, Lumin and I share a rhythm. I think his adjusted to match mine when we bonded. Two bodies, interlocked souls. I know it's the same for you and Serida.”
“Yeah, sure.” I had no idea what Serida's heart rhythm was. I didn't know what my connection was with her yet, but I didn't want to let Shan know that. I sat up and reached back for her. I didn't have to look to know where she was. She scurried up my arm and wrapped herself around my neck.
We were the only ones awake. Despite Rose's warning that we needed to stay close, I had apparently been left to sleep on my own. I didn't know where Marita was, but the other four were huddled together on the opposite side of the fire.
I pulled my blanket around my shoulders and shivered. The damp thoroughly saturated everything now, and the chill reached straight into my bones. Shan scooted close to me and I held out my arm to include him under the blanket.
“Where's Marita?” I asked.
Shan shrugged, then rested his head on my shoulder. Lumin and Serida nuzzled at each other behind our necks. “She's doing some sort of divination. Said she needed to be alone for it.”
“Do you love her?”
“Not yet, but I feel like I will soon. Last night, I showed her what Ranalae did to me and she wasn't disgusted or frightened. She was compassionate, but didn't smother me with pity like some people in our family have. And she's a full-blooded elf, which would conveniently help quell some of the malice the Jadeshire aristocrats have toward me.”
“Don't pursue her out of convenience. Pursue her because you want to be with her.”
Shan held his hand to his mouth to suppress a laugh. “Oh, I do. But who are you to give anyone love advice? You've never even crushed on anyone, have you?”
“No. Is that strange?” I asked.
“For me it would be. For you it's not. You're not me.” Shan winced and reached back to pull Lumin off his neck. He set the dragon on his lap and said, “No, Lumin. No biting.”
Serida eased herself off my shoulder and burrowed under the blanket so she could sit on my knee. She was gentler and more docile than her brother. Her personality alone made me glad I ended up bound to her instead of to Lumin. I didn't think I'd have the patience for his aggressive antics.
“I just had this random memory pop into my head.” I smiled as the memory resolved from hazy to clear.
“Tell me,” Shan said. Lumin rolled onto his back and Shan tickled his rounded belly. Marita ducked under the tarp flaps and smiled at Shan.
“Remember the fruit bat?”
“Unforgettable.” Shan raised his head from my shoulder and giggled.
Marita stepped over Nador and cuddled up next to Shan. She reached across him to hold my hand and said, “I want to hear about the fruit bat, Tessen.”
“Oh, you do? I guess,” I said. Shan held his hand to his mouth to cover his ever-widening grin. “So, Shan and I must have been seven and six years old and–”
“Five and six.” Shan pried Marita's hand off mine so he could weave his fingers between hers. “Was about a year after we moved into our house.”
“Okay, five and six. Anyway, we were little kids. Our house was . . . is, our house is behind our Aunt Nora's house, and there's a little thicket separating the yards. We were always building forts back there with our cousin, Arteo. Built them up, the neighbor kids destroyed them, built them up again. Anyway, one day we were playing around in the trees while Mom and Aunt Nora worked in the garden. Shan was looking for sticks a little bit away from Arteo and me, and suddenly he yelled, 'Hey, come see! I found something. It's an animal. I think it's hurt.'
“We gathered around to look at this animal in the leaves. It was brown, fairly large, and had a lot of extra skin along its sides. We stood over it and stared for a couple minutes while we tried to figure out what it was. My brilliance revealed itself and I decided it must be a puppy. Shan and Arteo argued a little before agreeing. It was certainl
y a lost, injured, ugly-as-hell puppy, and we needed to take it home and nurse it back to health.
“We wrapped the animal in my jacket and smuggled it into the house. Mom didn't like dogs, so we knew there was no way she would let us keep a puppy if she knew we had it. We set it in an open drawer in Shan's bedroom and then we went into the kitchen to forage for something it might want to eat.
“Of course, we weren't as sneaky as we thought we were. Mom and Aunt Nora saw us run into the house with some sort of animal. They came inside to confront us and Shan immediately broke down and admitted there was a hurt puppy in his bureau drawer. Mom went right over to the door and flung it open. There was this loud shriek that I thought at first was coming from Mom, but then this huge screaming bat swooped over our heads and attached itself to a ceiling beam in the great room. Mom slowly walked back into the kitchen. Her eyes were huge as she rubbed the back of her neck and stared up at the bat. She just stood there, sighing and rubbing her neck, sighing and rubbing her neck, while Shan, Arteo, and I cowered behind Aunt Nora. We'd never seen anything like it before. It must have gotten knocked unconscious by something, and then it revived when we moved it. Mom put a hand on each of our shoulders and said, 'Boys, that is not a puppy. You've brought home a fruit bat. Nora, would you take your son home and send Tristan over with a ladder?'
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