“Before we leave, you should put this on.” Taeven pulled a thick jacket out of his satchel and handed it to me as we stepped back into the clearing we'd arrived in earlier. We had an amazing lunch in a little cafe—a meal I would never forget. The food was incredibly delicious, everything tasting exotic but also simply better. For instance, a carrot in Varalorre tasted more carroty than one in Stalana. I don't know how else to describe it; the flavor of everything was more intense.
“Why?” I frowned at it; the jacket was lined in fur.
“This time of the year, Wynvar is cold.”
“How cold?” I asked warily.
“It will likely be snowing,” he said with a soft, wistful smile.
“Snowing?!” Part of me was intrigued; I'd never seen snow. But most of me was wary. The upper portion of Stalana got cold, but never cold enough to snow, and I was from the lower region—where the Falcon Camp was. “I'm Lekian, we're a tropical people.”
“I believe Lek is considered too arid for that description,” Tae mused. “To be tropical, there has to be—”
“All right, we're a desert people.”
“No, it's not desert either. I thought you've been to Lek?”
Tae's knights snickered.
“Well, what do you call it then?” I huffed.
“I believe it's somewhere between the two.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever it is, that's what I am. I'm not good with cold.”
“Technically, you're fae now, so you should be fine,” Tae said calmly.
“I've never seen snow,” I whispered.
“Then this will be a treat. Put on the coat, Shane.”
“Don't I need a hat too? I've heard that people wear hats in cold weather.”
Tae frowned at that.
“He's right; hats are just as important as coats,” Azla, the only female knight in Tae's Guard, said. “He'll lose a lot of body heat through his head, my lord.”
Taeven sighed. “Could you run back into town and get the Valorian a hat, Az?”
“Yes, my lord.” Azla turned and started for the village.
“I thought you'd been to Wynvar,” I tossed at him teasingly. “How do you not know about hats?”
“I've never bothered with them. But now that I think about it, I do recall a lot of faeries wearing them.” Tae cocked his head at me. “Are you truly worried about being cold?”
“A little.” I grimaced. “You said a lot of Avian cities are in the mountains, right?”
“Yes.”
“Is Wynvar?”
“Yes.”
“Then the air will be thinner too.”
“Your new lungs will handle it just fine, Valorian. Come here.” Tae pulled me further away from the other men, off into the trees a bit. “What's really bothering you?”
“I don't want to live in a place where it snows,” I whispered.
