“They’re floating!” she gasped, open-mouthed.
Keeran chuckled. “Not quite. The whole town is built on foundations that reach all the way to the lake bed. The people who live there are exclusively artemian, and almost all of them Shift into water creatures of some description.”
“You’ve been there?” Aelia leant over in her saddle, squinting at the peculiar town; if she really focused, she could just about make out the indistinct shapes of people walking between the low, sturdy buildings.
“No, the Peregrinians never stop at Aquila. The artemians there are fiercely independent and don’t take kindly to visitors. They won’t even allow boats to dock there, so the only way to access it is to swim or fly.”
“How?” Aelia stared, uncomprehending. She’d heard of Aquila, but only when it was casually mentioned in conversation. She’d had no idea such a place could even exist. “How did they build a town in the middle of a lake?”
“Centuries ago, water artemians put down wooden stilts into the lake floor. They’ve petrified over time, making the perfect foundations for the residents to layer stone on top of them,” Keeran explained, and Aelia reluctantly twisted away from Aquila to turn towards him. “The buildings sit on that.”
“They made an island?”
“Exactly.” Keeran nodded. “But the lure of Aquila lies not in the town above the water, but the one beneath it. Apparently, they’ve transformed the bed into a paradise for water creatures.”
Aelia turned to look out over the lake once more. What would that even look like? She would have given almost anything to see it. But even if they’d had time, she had no way of surviving a swim down to the bottom of the lake.
She’d thought she was content in Callodosis, despite the constant struggle to get by, the struggle to prove herself. But as she watched birds flitting over one another towards Aquila, she wondered if she even knew what contentment was. The world was clearly not the place she thought it was, in more ways than she could have ever realised, and she wondered how much she’d been missing out on.
They continued past the town in distracted silence, each lost in their own thoughts.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Keeran didn’t waste any time getting a fire going when he set up camp that evening. Aelia had gone out to hunt shortly after they passed Aquila, offering to catch them something if he cooked again. It was an offer he’d leapt at, not only because he wanted to avoid fighting to keep his food down, but because it meant he could whip her up a medicinal tea. Or at least that’s what he was going to tell her it was.
He chucked some wood in a pile, flung some flames at it with little more than a flick of his eye, and went to fetch some water from the lake. He set it over the fire to boil, before chucking in an assorted mix of useless leaves to steep.
Keeran raised his head from where he crouched in front of the pot, scanning the grasslands to make sure he was alone, before taking a knife from his hip. It was one of several he carried, most of the others tucked out of sight but within easy reach.
It was fiercely sharp, slicing through the skin of his palm like butter. The pain hardly registered, his heart thumping wildly at the unlawfulness of what he was doing, but it didn’t stop him from making a fist and squeezing several drops of blood into thetea. They dispersed amongst the leaves, the green pigment more than enough to obscure the pink.
Dashing back to the lake, he washed the blood from his hand, the cut already sealed in an angry red line. It would soon be just another scar.
Returning to the camp, he put his hands on his hips and stared down at the tea. He could still throw it away. His lips pressed tight, his brows knitting together.
No, he couldn’t. Aelia was still recovering from the beating the Astraea had given her. Last night had hardly helped and he needed her fighting fit.
There was no way he could stay with her, not with the pair bond alive and thrumming between them, especially now that he suspected she felt it too. Sure, she had no idea what she was feeling, but that was irrelevant. Keeran would get her to Beserkir, reunite her with Fenrir, then leave them to return to Callodosis. But he’d be damned if he was going to let her walk away defenceless.
He glared down his nose at the tea, his jaw set resolutely. What he was doing may have been sacrilegious amongst his kind. The illegality of sharing the magic in their blood had been drilled into him since he was a child, but there were no Dragons left in Demuto to stop him.
So, he turned his back on the tea and got to work setting up camp.
Aelia returnedwith two waterfowl bouncing on her saddle. They plucked them together, but that was as much help as he accepted from her, telling her to go wash whilst he cooked.
His body was acutely aware of her in the water behind him, hidden by the rushes, but Keeran didn’t let his mind dwell on it. Instead, he focused on skewering the marinated waterfowl over the flames and leaving it to cook over the mixed vegetables he was grilling on a huge flat stone he’d positioned in the fire. He used the herbs and spices in his pack liberally, packing the meal with as much flavour as he possibly could. Yes, he might resent that he was magically predisposed to want to make her happy, but he didn’t see the harm in putting a little extra effort into dinner.
By the time they’d both washed in the lake, it was ready.
He piled her plate high and handed it to her, along with the tea.
“It has chamomile in it,” he explained when she looked at it questioningly. “It will help with the swelling.”
“Thanks,” she said, looking surprised. She took the tea and set it down, her attention immediately focusing on the food in front of her.
She didn’t disappoint. She closed her eyes after the first bite, chewing slowly, and he watched her surreptitiously from over his own untouched plate. He didn’t think he’d seen anyone enjoy food as much as she did.
It meant she forgot about the tea until she’d scraped her plate clean, running her finger over it and licking the juices off in a way that would plague him, despite how quickly he’d averted his eyes.
