“Who would lead to the third…” I guessed.
He nodded. “Yes, and the fourth had a map to the location of the stone. This map is connected directly to the Draygo, so if they moved the stone, the map would change. It meant that there was no way for the stone to ever disappear without humans knowing.”
“My parents were killed because someone wants to find the stone?” It was all starting to make perfect, horrifying sense now.
“This is what the council believes.”
“Which of my parents was birthed in Overworld?”
Lexen’s broad shoulders lifted in a half-shrug. “No way for us to know now, but it seems that whichever it was, they might have revealed the location of the second family. Which means we could very well be facing a serious problem.”
A memory flickered on the edge of my mind then, something I had not thought about in years, and I fought to recall even more. “My mom used to tell me this bedtime story,” I said, my voice catching again as the memories grew stronger. “Every night for years. She stopped when I was about six or seven, which is why my recollections are so vague, but I’m sure she told me about a boy who would ride on the back of dragons. She called him ‘the one.’ No … ‘the chosen one.’ I can’t really remember, but he was best friends with a merboy. The three of them, dragon included, would swim in the lake.”
When I focused on Lexen again, he was still wearing a solemn expression. “It sounds like she was quite well acquainted with our world,” he said.
“It was you, wasn’t it? The chosen one, the boy who rode dragons?”
He reached out and brushed his hand against my cheek, pulling away with droplets of moisture on his fingers. The last of my tears.
“When I was younger,” he said, “before my metamorphosis, Qenita and I would travel across the sectors. Xander Royale is one of my oldest friends. He’s the caramina she spoke of, the merboy.”
“So you’re how old?”
“Sixty-five,” he said quickly.
Whoa. “You are old as shit,” I said with a snort of laughter. “But … you were still a boy when my parents were here.” How was that possible? My parents had been in their early forties when they died. Again, the math was not adding up here.
Lexen crossed his arms, leaning back against a nearby garden pillar. I noticed then that I’d actually run into a maze of sorts, large hedges surrounding us. An area which could have kept me lost for hours.
“In Overworld we age … differently,” he said, hesitating minutely over the last word. “We’re children for a long time. Much longer than Earthlings. We mature slowly, and then, when our bodies decide that we are ready to grow, we do, in a large ‘metamorphosis’ burst. We don’t age year by year.”
“Have you stopped now?” I was impressed by how well I was handling these obvious differences between us.
He shrugged. “More or less. My father is hundreds of years old and no longer has growth spurts, as my mother so eloquently puts it. Not physical ones, at least, but mentally we never stop advancing. Unlike humans, our minds do not deteriorate.”
Lexen held out a hand for me. “Come on, let’s go get some rest. Father said the meeting is to take place early in the morning. This is where we’ll put pressure on the council to give us more information on your parents and your guardians.”
I took his hand without hesitation, craving the safe way he made me feel. I expected him to let go as I followed his steps. But he didn’t. If anything, his grip tightened and he pulled me even closer, his huge bulk towering over me. We were silent, traversing the twists and turns in and out of hedges. How far had I run in my grief? I didn’t even remember coming this way.
“Thanks for finding me,” I whispered when we neared the front door. “I would never have gotten out of that maze on my own.”
He didn’t say anything, but it felt like he gave my hand a gentle squeeze. When we reached the third landing we walked down a long hallway until we finally reached a wing of bedrooms.
“Mother will have had a room made up for you,” Lexen said, stopping before a door. He let my hand go and I tried not to feel bereft about it. Stockholm syndrome or not, Lexen was fast becoming my comfort in this crazy world.
When he swung the door open, he stepped aside so I could enter first. Peering inside, I was taken aback by the beauty. The flooring was white, carpet style, but somehow fluffier. There were billowy curtains, a lilac-colored bed, and off-white walls. Just enough purple accents to give the room a pretty tint. It appeared that a lot of their décor was styled off the colors of the stones and crystals of this mountain.
“Thanks … for everything,” I said again, stepping inside. My heart sank as I stared at the bed, knowing that my dreams would be haunted tonight. I was too close to the tragedy again, to my parents’ deaths. To these new revelations about them being born in Overworld and possible secret keepers. There was no way I was getting any sleep tonight.
But I would bite my tongue off before showing any more weakness this day. So I gave Lexen a wave, and as he turned away I shut the door.
Leaning back against the door, I let out a deep sigh, straightening to explore the room. That would kill some time. Hopefully their sleeping hours were shorter here than on Earth. Maybe I wouldn’t have to keep myself occupied for long.
14
There didn’t turn out to be much in the bedroom, just the bed, two side tables, and an empty armoire. A pretty white door, with ornate carvings of roses and symbols across it, led me into a bathroom with a huge round tub built into the floor. It was almost like a mini-pool, with tiled steps leading into it.Here is the perfect time killer.I hadn’t had a bath in almost a year. None of my rentals with the Finnegans had tubs, only showers.
It took me three attempts to figure out how to fill it; it turned out to be pretty simple once I got the hang of the levers that adjusted the hot and cold water flow. As I ran my hands across the surface of the rapidly filling tub, I understood what Jero had meant about their legreto not being quite the same as water. It was thicker, encasing my hand, and sticking there for longer than a water droplet would. When it dripped from my fingertips, it felt like they were left extra-clean as it absorbed whatever was on my skin.
