His shoulders flinch beneath me. “Anything sweet.”
“Really? I thought you were going to say bread.”
“We weren’t allowed to have anything sweet growing up. Riven and I developed a pretty bad sugar addiction when we got here.”
Well…that was suddenly personal.
I clear my throat as subtly as possible. “I’ll never complain about something sweet. Have you tried any of the mortal recipes?”
“A few, but their ingredients are different than ours. It’s annoying trying to match what they mean.”
I snort. “Like what?”
“Annalise and I attempted to make a tart once and one of the ingredients needed to make the filling was called dragon fruit. There are no dragons in the nonmagical realm, nor do they bear fruit.”
Surprised laughter belts out as a sweet memory invades my mind.
“I had the same issue but with strawberries. I hunted every field in Oddian looking for a fruit that was tube-shaped like straw or hay. Lambrit was able to find a book in the library that gave better descriptions, and I was pissy when I found out a strawberry is a round, plump red fruit that has black seeds on its skin, juicy, and sweet. Just like our—”
“Black-seeded red berry,” we sayat the same time.
“Exactly. Why couldn’t the mortals just keep the name straightforward like us? They did for some things and others not.” I chuckle.
“They probably wanted to pave their own way. Not to mention, they don’t have power to make anything easier. The way they grow, cook, make, do anything is probably vastly different than us or any other realm.”
“That’s true. It’s fascinating, though, how we’ve learned just as much from them as they did us. To be honest, we probably made their lives harder.”
“There’s no doubt we did. Gods are complicated, selfish creatures.”
I open my mouth to tell him he isn’t selfish, but a chuckle followed by the clearing of a throat sound from our left.
“You okay?”
I return Kyzen’s smile as he takes in my position. “Perfectly fine. Creed slung me over his shoulder to make me train, so I figured a ride back to the house was only fair.”
He throws his head back, laughing before shaking it at Creed. “I told you I’d be along in a little while. Did you really have to throw her over your shoulder?”
“Her attitude kicked in as soon as I told her what we were doing.”
I roll my eyes and shrug as Kyzen purses his lips at me playfully and falls in step beside us. “I trained without any attitude. He didn’t mention you’d be joining us.”
“I’ll be tagging along to keep the peace and help with whatever Creed needs me to help with.”
“Afraid of training alone with me?” I ask.
“No, but eventually, we’ll need to work on you fighting more than one opponent at a time.”
“So the two of you against me at the same time is the plan?”
“Stepping up to taking two at the same time, little burden? Freaky. I’m down.”
Kyzen flips Riven over his back and he hits the ground with a painful grunt. My nose scrunches as I stare down at him, coughing to catch his breath.
“Damn it, Riven. You know better than to sneak up on me like that. Why the hell did you jump on me?” Kyzen asks as he grabs Riven by the hand and stands him up.
Riven rubs his hands up and down his lower back to his ass as he groans. I try to stifle my laugh but fail.
“Not funny. That shit hurt.” He glares at me, then turns back to Kyzen. “She’s on Creed’s back, so I figured I’d jump on yours as we strolled through the woods like a bunch of creeps.”
