“Are you sure she’s telling the truth, brother?” Rynez asked, his gaze fixed on me, as if he was deliberately ignoring—or not believing—everything myluwaeriwas saying.
“How about you respond to myluwaeri’squestion and tell her what happened to the device you discovered?” I countered, pulling Viola closer to me.
On another day, I would have preferred to see Viola stand beside me,but Rynez despised outsiders, and the state of his hometree indicated that he was agitated. It wouldn’t take much for him to snap, given how disheveled he appeared.
“I destroyed it and threw it into one of our planet’s active volcanoes, hoping to cleanse it of its evil.”
“You threw it in a fucking volcano?” Viola spat, her grip on my chest tightening as her body shook in my arms. “Why would you do that to something you know nothing about?”
“Because it made my hometree sick!” He growled, fists clenched, his nails digging into his faded gray-blue skin. “If it had been harmless, I would have kept it to return to you because it was on your land, but instead, I’m paying the consequences of my curious actions.”
“What do you mean it made your hometree sick?” She tilted her head and stared at him, perplexed. “It was a broken phone, not—”
“Your broken phone was alive and wanted to take over my hometree,” Ryzen explained, his voice strained. I could see the pain in his eyes from the damage he had inadvertently caused to his own hometree. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be a guardian today if I hadn’t dived into my Giving Pool to fish it out.”
“It can’t be true,” she muttered, covering her mouth as her eyes opened in shock. “I knew there were crazy inventions on my planet, but I thought they’d gotten rid of their evil creations.”
My body froze as memories of our first encounter with the IPA flashed through my mind.
There had to be another explanation, something else.
The Mother Tree would not let it happen to her children again, this time through the hands of my ownluwaeri.
Every fiber of my being begged me to stop, to have faith in ourluwaeri, but I needed answers and the truth from her mouth.
I gently placed her on the floor and stood between her and my brother. The last thing I needed was for my brother to attack her in rage over the damage done to his hometree.
Placing my hands on her shoulders, I peered straight into her eyes, searching for the answers I needed.
“Explain to us everything you know about those nefarious inventions.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
VIOLA - VIOLENTVIOLET
“It all started a few years ago,” I explained, looking back and forth between the two brothers. Rynez had let us sit along the edge of his Giving Pool so Zyre could clean all the blood off of me and examine my skin for any wounds. Rynez finally agreed after some back and forth, because I had single-handedly protected his land from the bold pafeldae.
It turned out that Zyre was correct about females being revered in their society, which made sense given that they are constantly sending prayers to their Mother Tree.
“A few years ago for you could be thousands of years for us,” Rynez grumbled as he crossed his arms. “And don’t even get me started on the differences in time measurement.
“ We’d spend the rest of the day debating something that wouldn’t matter in the end because we were here and you were there.”
“Can I continue?” I asked, sugary-sweet as I batted my eyes.
Both brothers snapped their faces in the direction of the other and shrugged.
“She’s yourluwaeri.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Zyre burst out laughing. “After all, she has the ability to defeat the pafeldae.”
“How many pafeldae has she slain?”
“Two,” Zyre said, rubbing damp moss over my dragon scales. “Both independently and within a few days of each other.”
“She’s killed two?” Rynez jerked up in his seat, his eyes wide and mouth open in shock. “How can something so small as you be capable of killing such a large creature?”
“You just need to know where to stab them,” I joked. “All my life, I’ve been fighting deadlier creatures in my mind. I only needed to use my quick analysis of their weaknesses to execute a plan.”
