She was being foolish again.
It wasn’t the whisper of her grove’s ghosts that admonished her. They had been curiously silent since the man appeared in her kitchen. Even when she ran into the woods, seeking shelter amongst the roots of her trees as her people had done since the dawn of time, they said nothing.
She thought, perhaps, that they might have something to say about her leading the man she’d been so frightened of back to her home, but they murmured no warnings, no urgent instructions to run. That gave her a tiny bit of hope that she wasn’t making a colossal mistake.
Averytiny bit.
Taevas stomped behind her, his footsteps heavy and uneven. When she risked a glance back, she found his face heavily grooved with exhaustion, discomfort, and some other nameless thing that made her pity him. He looked lost — and not just because he had no idea how to get back to the house.
There was something unnatural about seeing a dragon in the forest. He didn’t appear to understand how to move. He was clumsy, loud, and tense. Those impressive wings were folded tightly against his back and his tail remained coiled around histhigh like he worried a creature might pop out from behind a bush to bite it.
The forest didn’t seem to know what to do with him, either. The two beings — one small and one a vast, interconnected network — appeared at odds with one another on a fundamental level.
“You don’t walk in forests much, do you?” she observed.
Taevas’s eyes, a violet so bright they nearly glowed in the night, fixed on her with hair-raising intensity. “Dragons don’t like tight spaces. Even if I had the time to go for hikes, I wouldn’t choose a setting where I can’t spread my wings.”
She nodded, though she couldn’t relate. “You must like mountains.”
“Not as much as gargoyles do, but yes. I prefer cities, personally.”
“Ah.” Alashiya faced away from him. Her pitiful attempt to understand Taevas had failed with impressive swiftness.
There was a long stretch of tense silence before he asked in a strained voice, “Do you like cities, Shiya?”
“I’ve never been to one.”
They sounded wretched to her. Her books sometimes made them out to be places of wonder and activity, but the concept of living so close to strangers, with no green land to connect to, made her skin crawl. She’d tried to imagine it many times, what it might be like to live in an apartment, to ride a train, to raise a child in a place where they couldn’t run with their shoes off.
Must be miserable.
Taevas’s tone was as bemused as she felt when he replied, “Notonce?”
“No,” she said, giving him a quick look. “I’ve never needed to leave home. Why would I?”
He appeared to be at a loss for a moment. Gathering himself, he asked, “Ah, where is home, exactly? I haven’t been able to put that together. You told me the town is Birchdale, but I’ve never heard of it before.”
“Didn’t you fly here? How could you not know where you are?”
“I was drugged and injured. My sense of direction still isn’t right. Even when I try to pinpoint which direction my roost is in, it keeps guiding me back here.” The skin around his eyes and mouth tensed. “I have no idea how long I’ve been gone or where I am, so I need you to tell me.”
Alashiya rubbed the pad of her index finger along the edge of her thumbnail, mimicking the hold she used for needles. A nervous habit. “This is my land. It’s part of Birchdale Township. The outskirts of it, anyway.”
“And where is that? What territory’s jurisdiction does it fall under?”
“It’s the border between the Northern Territories and the Shifter Alliance,” she answered. “Minneapolis is about five hours south by truck. And if it helps, it’s July fifteenth.”
There was a terrible crash behind her. Alashiya swiveled around just in time to see the dragon catch himself against a tree. He’d tripped over a fallen log, half-rotten and nearly hidden by ferns.
Alarmed, she deftly navigated the forest floor to reach him. He’d seemed terribly fearsome when he chased her through the woods, but now he appeared breakable. Touching his arm, she asked, “Are you all right?”
Taevas shook his head. His eyes were wide when he rasped, “Over two weeks? I’ve been gone overtwo weeks.”He let out a sound that was very muchnota laugh, but something like its evil twin. “Good gods, they probably think I’m dead.”
Her stomach sank. “Were youkidnapped?”
She hesitated to believe anything a stranger said, but the distress on Taevas’s face was extremely convincing. “Yes,” he answered, his voice weak.
It seemed obvious, but she had to ask, “And your family has no idea where you are?”
