“But you’re both alive, that’s what matters.” Bee offered her jacket to Aesira which she took and draped over her shoulders.
She closed her eyes, her breathing deep so Stone guided her back down until her head rested in his lap. He brushed her hair from her face. “Hey,” she said. “Looks like us nobodies have cheated death, again.”
Aesira was still asleep as the first beams of sunlight bled through the treetops. Stone was grateful he’d woken up early enough to start packing the camp and still get to steal a few minutes of unbridled staring. Orange light kissed her skin, highlighting the shape of her strong nose and full lips. Small bits of dried blood still lined her nose, making his stomach wretch.
Fuck.
Last night.
They’d been so close to doing something that they'd never be able to take back. If they hadn’t been interrupted, who knows how far things would have gone. Who knows how it would have changed things between them.
He’d walked away from her once before, before he really knew her because even then he knew there could never be a future between someone like him and someone like her. She came from a family of power. Royalty. Money.
And he was a rat on the street people like her family were constantly attempting to get rid of.
An insect under pristine boots.
“Good morning,” Aesira groaned, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Morning.”
She sat up and stretched. Stone joined her. His muscles were stiff from the last several days of travel but the ache reminded him of how far they’d come, how little time they had left until they found Ravki.
“I’m starving.” Aesira smiled as Stone handed her a few handfuls of dried meat. “Where are Birdie and Bee?”
“Back at the spring.” Aesira stopped mid-bite. “Just filling canteens,” he said. “Under no circumstance are they to go in the water.” Her shoulders relaxed and she finished her breakfast in silence.
After Birdie and Bee returned, they packed up the rest of the camp and continued on, following the map.
The sun was warm as they set out again and while they hadn’t seen any birds, their song drifted on the breeze as it rustled the trees. If he closed his eyes, it’d almost be a perfect day.
Almost.
If it wasn’t for the suffocating thoughts swirling in his head.
Stone dragged his feet, buying himself a few minutes alone under the broad span of trees while the other three took the lead.
He believed the map. Believed in the books he’d studied, but a small voice inside of him questioned the practicality of Ravki still being there after all this time. The journey had not been an easy one by any means. The monsters that lived beyond the wall of Vargah seem to thrive in the uncharted west—the Strix, the Dreamweavers, whatever that was last night—but the trek wasn’timpossible.
With the right resources, an armada could easily conquer the area. Could find the remains of the magical city. The questionthat infected Stone’s mind–as he ate breakfast that morning, as he packed his bag, as he set forth down the other side of the mountains–was why?
Why, if Ravki was real, had it been left unattended all these years?
If the rumors of the magic that dwelled there–the dragons–were real, surely someone would have made this attempt sooner. Certainly someone other than a lone king with a decaying mind.
Why would the king go looking for it now?
It was a parasite burrowing in his brain.Why, why, why,it gnawed and chewed and spat and the only way to kill the questions were the answers he didn’t have.
No one has attempted to find Ravki,he thought,because maybe it truly does not exist.
The terrain changed again, the further they descended from the mountains and away from the desert. The red rocks and trees remained but it was the over abundance of life that stole Stone’s breath away. Green-ladden rocks and tree trunks. Green on the ground, soft and spongy. Green in the trees. And not just that–there was more water.
Everywhere they turned, there was water. Flowing freely from the mountainside. In small lakes nestled between the trees. In a bubbling brook that was too reminiscent of the spring with the beast for him to dare to go near it.
They stopped to fill their canteens from a small waterfall off a cliffside, the cool, crisp taste coated his tongue and he thought for a moment what they would have done had they not been so fortunate to find all of this.
Even if it was a miracle that the water existed, it felt wrong to use it. To drink freely from it. To bathe in it.
