And his eyes were chameleon green again.
“Yes, I do want to talk.” She pushed to her feet, dusting off her mud-crusted jeans. Something bit her neck. She slapped at the bug and brought back a bloody smudge on her palm.
Just great. Vampire bugs.
Tristan moved forward and she took a step back.
But this time he didn’t ram his body against the invisible force keeping him walled in. He sat on the ground and leaned against a gigantic tree that appeared to be growing half in and half outside his prison. His left arm pushed against a flat surface she couldn’t see, which must be the wall of the enclosure.
If he wanted to kill her, he could have done it inside his area. Maybe he wanted some company after all, but she wasn’t stepping back inside with him to test that theory.
In a show of camaraderie, she eased over and slid down on the left side of Tristan against the same tree. But she kept a few inches of separation from him even if he couldn’t touch her.
What do you say to a man you’d sent back to hell? “How you doing, Tristan?”
He ignored her, looking up into the canopy of tree cover. His lips moved with whispered words she couldn’t hear. She waited for him to say something to her next, but he sat quietly for a few minutes, then a monkey high above them screeched.
Tristan couldn’t leave his area, but any animal could.
She tensed and glanced up in time to see a yellow bomb falling at them.
Evalle dove away to her left.
Tristan didn’t even flinch.
He caught a large bunch of bananas that filled his hands. Snapping one free, he placed the rest of them on his right and said, “So what do you want?”
Could he direct an animal on her side of the wall to do his bidding, too? Like sending a predator to get her?
She sat back up and kept an eye on her surroundings while she considered how to answer him. What was the point in searching for a diplomatic way to put this when she’d already told him the same thing once? “I was sent here to find the three escaped Alterants.”
Tristan bit the banana and smiled briefly around each chew. “You ask Brina where she had them caged?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Evalle could see no reason to shade the truth, not if she had any hope of Tristan answering her questions honestly. “Because the Tribunal forbade my asking her and she’s sworn to secrecy about the Alterants for some reason.”
“Doesn’t matter. Brina doesn’t know where those three are right now anyhow,” Tristan said, smug with knowledge. He finished the last bite of the banana and tossed the peel aside.
Then why ask me if Brina knew?Evalle would not lose her temper with him. “But you know where those three are, right?”
“Yes.”
“Would you tell me?”
“Why would I do that?”
“I know you’re not going to see this my way at first, but give me a chance to explain.”
Tristan snorted and broke off another banana. “The same way I got a chance to explain before you used the Ngak Stone to send me back here?”
“I didn’t want to do that—”
“Tell it to someone who’ll listen.”
She was tired of constantly taking the blame for everything. He had some responsibility in all this. “You were the one who sided with the Medb and Kujoo. If you had helped our side I might have been able to talk Brina into not sending you back.”
