Without trying to raise suspicion, I moved to Deirdre as she squatted by a patch of thistle berries. The large round berrieswere a ripe shade of red.
“Are they edible?” she asked.
I nodded. “Try one.”
She plucked a berry and popped it into her mouth. Her eyes widened, and she scrunched her nose.
“Tart,” she said with a puckered expression. “But really good!”
A crimson streak of berry juice stained her bottom lip, and she licked it away.
“Let’s head this way,” I said, pulling her from the bushes. “I’d like to show you more.”
You wed the human,Axelia said.
I did.
When last I had left, I’d ranted about finding a reason not to go through with it. Yet, as soon as I walked into the palace… each reason sounded less believable.
Deirdre paused, berry in hand as she gazed at my old home. “What is that?”
In the distance sat the home I’d grown up in. A safe place created by the dryads in order to soothe my fears. For decades, it had felt more like a trap than a home, until I had reconciled the idea that my mother was never coming for me.
Seeing the cozy wooden structure stirred too many mixed emotions.
Could I share this with her?
No, not yet.
Though things had been cordial between us, it would be a while before I shared my secrets. “Just an old home.”
She didn’t push the subject and we moved on, following the lazy river through the wildflower field where the view of the purple and pink sky was exceptional. A flock of red starlings chirped as they flew in the sky, creating swirls of red that melted against the painted landscape.
“To think this has been here among us the whole time…” Deirdre’s voice was soft as she took in the surrounding sight.
The beauty of the realm of dryads had been the one thing that helped during my years here. “Most people don’t believe it exists.”
“Is that because the way in is guarded? How does one even enter the realm? Do they all need a tattoo like you?”
“Slow down. One question at a time.” Reaching down, I picked a few of the pink and yellow primrose flowers. “First, the gates are not known to all, even I don’t know where they are located, even with my tattoo.”
She leaned back, eyeing my shirt. “Is your tattoo a map?”
Bunching the flowers together, I handed them over to her. “Not exactly. The dryads etched one of their runes onto me so that no matter where I went in Saol, I could find my way to them.”
Holding the flowers to her nose, she sniffed them. “It must be such an honor to be allowed to come here.”
“It is.”
Hurry, Kane.
There was only one other time Axelia sounded tense, and it was the day my mother called her to return me to the palace.
Something must have changed in my expression because Deirdre stared at me, the awe replaced by a worried brow.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. We need to keep heading south past that grove of evermoors.” The tall silvery-blue trees sat just past the meadow. Their spindly branches created a barrier to the south.
