“Leya, you had a traumatic experience,”Aerén said softly. “Give yourself time. It’ll be okay.”
Leya didn’t respond, still shaky from encountering the ghost snake.
She wasn’t one prone to having her head in the clouds. She’d survived enough of life’s hard knocks to prevent that. And Aerén lived in this mystical world, so he would know better, right?
With a self-deprecating grimace, she looked up at the thick tangle of branches and foliage and tried to put the snake out of her mind. Even here, the blue leaves appeared limp and tired, yet she could hear water gushing nearby.
“What is this place?”
“Naias Covert.” He grasped her hand again, giving her a much needed reprieve from the humidity. “It used to be the playing ground for the water sprites. They’d appear and entice the warriors to leave with them—”
She stopped dead.
“Have no fear.” A faint smile ghosted his mouth.” They vanished eons ago, long before I was born, or so the legend goes.”
At his teasing, she gave him the side stink eye. “Good to know.”
His laughter filled her ears.
A softer silence fell between them as they continued through the forest. Beyond the tree trunks with their peeling barks, her attention settled on a fast-flowing stream and the frothy white foam where it hit dark boulders. Several worn columns of rocks were flattened down from centuries of watery erosion.
Aerén stopped at the edge of the rustling watercourse,his expression somber.
Whatever was going on with him seemed to weigh him down. It had to be about the coming storm and the island people Thiorr had mentioned.
Needing time to get her thoughts together, Leya toed off her slip-ons and removed her hand from his. A gush of wet heat enveloped her, and she sighed in defeat, hastily stepping into the soothing but, unfortunately, warm water.
She waded to the middle, and the stream rose to her calves. “It’s been so long since I’ve walked in a stream,” she murmured, rubbing the itchy welt on her wrist against her tunic. “You said your world is dying. How? All I see is beauty around me, except for the scary forest the rebels destroyed in Na’Tol. Yes, it’s impossibly humid, but from what I’ve seen so far, everything looks…feelslike I’ve stepped into a fairy tale.”
“One with decay eating it at its core.”
He meant the rebels.
Frowning, Leya sloshed through the stream, then leaped onto a flat rock below the watery surface. He hadn’t answered her.
“Watch out for the moss. It’s slippery.”
Moss? There wasn’t any she could see. It was usually green or grayish green…even white. She peered closer at the dark, flat rock peppered with pretty, bluish-gray stubs with hints of pink clinging to it in several places.Right. With a toe, she stroked it. Yup, slippery when wet…then she bit her lip, so glad Aerén couldn’t read her horny thoughts.
She looked up and found him watching her.
“What do you feel when you stand here?” Aerén asked, sliding his hands into his jeans pockets.
Horny.
Jeez. That’s not what he meant, idiot.“What do you mean?”
“Look around you. Tell me what you feel.”
“Um, the trees are gorgeous…” She squinted at the overhanging branches and studied the bunches of leaves hanging listlessly in the humidity. “The leaves are limp here, too, and the blues have faded, but it is terribly humid…still, some plants thrive in this weather.”
“What else?”
“There’s nothing else.” She swept back her damp hair sticking to her neck and glanced about again. Except for the susurrant stream… “It’s too quiet. Even at the castle, I noticed this, there aren’t any animals or even insects flittering about.”
“There are no wild animals or insects at all. Even snakes,” he said quietly. “They went extinct millennia ago. We have livestock, but those, like farming, are all underground to keep them protected and flourishing, so my people don’t starve.”
“What happened? Wait, is all this connected to your shattered artifact?”
