“He’s right, you know,” Hero commented, though his eyes remained closed.
“Thank you for sharing your opinion,” she muttered, allowing the others to gain distance on her.
“I’ve been thinking . . .”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Yes. It is sometimes perturbing. I have been wondering though, why do you simply not return to the place you wish to be? Go back to the other world? I know you are unhappy here.”
“How is it you’ve become so eloquent?”
“You tell me.”
She sighed, watching Damion’s long, heavy strides and Honey’s skipping gait and Kaelan’s straight-ahead charge. She switched from verbal communication to telepathic. It took her a few moments, though, to separate the words she wanted from her stormy sea of thoughts and channel them towards Hero in a clear fashion.
“Even if I went back... I like to think I would be happy, but to be honest, I don’t know what would make me happy anymore. I’ve grown so accustomed to being responsible only for myself. Once there was nothing I wanted more than to be Radiant, but now... I was naïve then, short-sighted and self-centered, just like all the other Raes. I thought I understood what it meant to be Radiant, but I wasn’t thinking about my people or the Lands or the small folk. I was only thinking of myself. I felt because my mother had been Radiant I deserved to be also. I didn’t worry about whom to trust. I believed so firmly in myself. I was such a child. Now I worry I’m still a child, that I’m making the same mistakes of arrogance again. I shouldn’t have allowed Endreas to...”She tensed against the memories of him.“I can’t allow myself to be caught up like that, not even because I am a Rae and he is a Prince.”
“I do not yet understand the nature of your breeding habits.”
“That makes two of us.”
“The one who threw rocks at me, you will breed with him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, he’s in love with the nymph.”
“I don’t think I understand love. Please explain.”
“I’m not sure I understand it either,” she said.
“He desires to breed with you.”
She stumbled. Hero’s claws dug into her skin.
“Ow!”
Damion glanced back at her, raising a brow.
“Root,” she said, though the ground was littered with nothing but dead leaves.
Damion made a dubious face, but started walking again.
Once he had put distance between them again, she returned to her conversation with Hero.
“Why would you say that?” she asked.
“Say what?”
“About Kaelan?”
“He protected you while you were ill. Watched over you.”
“He was just being . . . kind.”
“And he puts out the mating scent whenever you are near.”
