Page 66 of A Sweet Destruction

There was a larger swash of light over her lips, making them look so inviting I had to clench down on my jaw until I heard teeth crack.

Something foreign, a pleasure edged with the tiniest trickle of pain, punched me right in the gut. Like the ache of well-used muscles while lying in a soft bed.

The assault on my body and mind only continued as the tree line broke, exploding the horizon into a wide basin with a sprawling town nestled right in the center.

Chapter 16

Esme

Oh, wow. Wow, wow, wow.

I prided myself on having a good vocabulary, but the only thing that came to mind was a resounding wow.

Salona was an oasis. The cliff face to our left rose so high it broke through the clouds—still an insane height even with our elevation—curving ever so slightly as it ran across nearly half the basin before melding back into a large mountain. The same one our camp was nestled at the base of, that the Bridge was at the base of.

Still, a nearly four hour ride away, keeping a steady pace the entire time.

A large enough distance to hide this gem.

Spilling off the cliff was a crashing waterfall, producing a comforting rumbling sound and casting rainbows into the sky.

The town we were approaching was built low, no building more than three or four stories high. Even from afar, I could tell everything was built from natural materials. There was something about the way what was man made blended perfectly with what was carved from nature.

It made my heart skip a beat. Literally.

I wondered for a moment what it would be like for someone from Muli to be brought into Vir for the first time. How they’d react to the expansive desert that housed the Bridge, dotted with oases. Or the southern islands, with a tropical climate and crystal blue waters and the most colorful wildlife. The northern islands, jutting up out of the sea with their crashing cliffs and low-hanging clouds and haunting beauty.

The expanse of Florus, a city of over four million people, a living organism in itself with a new corner to discover everyday.

If they ever made it to Florus on anything other than an invited visit, the war would have progressed beyond control, probably taking my life with it.

I shook my head, unable to focus on that spike of fear, entirely powered by the Bond’s masochistic imaginings of what would happened if I died.

“This is insane,” Ford said under his breath, more of a slip up from wonder than anything.

He’d always loved hiking, often the first person to volunteer for a brutal climb in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly it was imperative to me that he find time to explore our surroundings, maybe the top of the waterfall.

Surely someone had gone up there before. Maybe if I asked Elijah nicely, he’d—

No, no stay focused, I had to forcefully remind myself.

Faster than I expected, the town was in front of us, the roads turning well-paved and starting to dot with large, carefully laid stones. I could see equin around, so there must be some sort of stables, though I didn’t want to stray too far from Sky in any regard.

At that thought, he rumbled under me, a show that he would be just fine. I was sure that he would be but I was not about to risk it.

The blare of a horn broke through the comfortable buzzing of life—not quite a warning, but not quite a celebration. That sentiment fit the way people started streaming out of their homes and shops following that bellowing sound.

Some people ran with pale faces and hurried movements, like they were seconds away from grabbing the most valuable thing in sight and sprinting into the forest. Others came out with wide eyes, standing on their tip toes to look over shoulders and get a better view of us.

I kept my back straight and my chest proud. I didn’t like this much attention on me, trained to think that bad things followed soon after someone noticed you, but I had to get over that.

Especially now, when people were staring at us like we were alien.

We were and we weren’t.

We shared gods, a language, that unknowable thing deep inside each of us that could connect us to another person’s soul.

Even without those similarities, we were all mortal. Flesh and bone and people who lived a precious and finite life.