Aiko was a wreck.An absolute wreck. He got worse the further down the road to Elkthorne we traveled.
For the first time since I’d met him at the Stronghold, he was getting on my nerves.
“Aiko, please,pleasestop wringing your hands,” I snapped.
He fisted his fingers instead, but he was still a mess.
We stopped for lunch about three leagues from the city. We would be there by midafternoon after two full days of walking from Lick. Still no one would talk to us or bargain with us for a horse. I was glad that we were all in decent shape, or the walk would have done us in.
All during lunch, Aiko paced. And his pacing was more like a run because of the length of his legs—and the height of his anxiety.
“Aiko,” Rilen called. “What in the name of seven hells is wrong with you?”
He stopped only to glance at Rilen sitting on the rock and then started pacing again. None of us could get him to stop. Even when we packed up and started walking again, he was a hundred paces ahead of us in no time.
“Kimber…” Roran asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
“Blood madness?” Belshazzar asked. Roran and I turned our heads and stared at him. He shrugged. “What? Could be.”
“I highly doubt Aiko is suffering from blood madness,” Roran said. “As if you couldn’t hear that commotion last night.”
The king pretended to shiver.
I leaned into Roran’s ear. “Were you jealous?”
“I’m going to walk with Aiko,” Belshazzar snapped and disappeared down the road in a blast of wind.
Roran laughed. “Did you do that on purpose?”
“A little,” I admitted. “He really is as big of an asshole as Dorian.”
Dorian snorted and hiked past us. “We’re about the same level of asshole. Just different varieties. If you want to know why Aiko is nervous, think about his last name and where we are heading.” He paced himself faster to catch up to his brother and Aiko.
Elkthorne.
I’d already realized the connection, but there had to be something more. There was no reason for him to be acting quite this out of character. We had just been through a massive storm, he’d helped me survive the Stronghold, and I didn’t think there could be much more waiting for us that we couldn’t face.
Rilen jerked his head back and broke stride. He glanced at us. “Elkthorne. You don’t think hisparentsare still there, do you?”
Roran and I stopped walking and stared back at Rilen. Roran looked at me. “How old is he?”
“Just about three hundred? Two hundred eighty-seven or so?”
The twins traded looks, murmuring as one, “His parents are probably still alive…”
We stood staring at one another for a long moment.
“Are your parents still alive?” I asked quietly.
“No,” Rilen whispered. “They both took the Sleep at the same time, about a thousand years ago.”
“They were soul mates,” Roran said. “They were also very old when we were born.”
“Two thousand years old,” Rilen said. “We did know them and knew them well. Dorian knew them, too.”
“Aiko isn’t that old,” I said.
