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He lay on his back beside me, his head tilted to the side as he watched me sit up and stretch.
“I like hearing you say that you’ll come back to me again,” he explained, relaxed and steady as he continued watching me while I checked on my success bag. I shrugged, called for Keia—who washidingthe entire time—and looked back to the Spider lounging beside me.
It was time for me to go. I had done my daily visit.
He sat up abruptly and placed his soft, warm lips on mine again, lingering before he withdrew with a smirk.
The skin under my cheeks heated, and my heart made an odd jump in my chest.
“So mean.” I puffed my cheeks and stood up, blushing more when I heard his husky laugh.
But it sounded forced.
“Go,” he whispered, turning his back to me to rest on his side.
I studied him with a frown, then shook my head before I jumped from his land, running back to my home.
But when I reached the portals, I stood in front of the Fairies’ for a moment too long.
He behaved strangely today—stranger than the past two days I was with him. I contemplated going back to check on him, to know what had caused this odd change, but it didn’t matter.
It shouldn’t matter.
He was a Spider and I was an Elf. He was a top predator and my enemy. I couldn’t walk myself to his web.
I didn’t know him at all, but compared to the previous times I’d interacted with him, he seemed a little… unhappy?
10
To an outsider—someone who wasn’t an Elf—a Soul Garden could be mistaken for a pretty field of endless colours and beauty. But in these Gardens, each colour—each flower—was a soul, and so much could be known about how that soul left the world from the condition of their flower alone.
“And his wings!” I exclaimed as I sprinkled water on my sister’s blue hydrangea, my fingers twitching from using my gift. “They were so pretty and big and bright and—and—oh, you should have seen him!”
I caressed the blue petals delicately, giving them a gentle bath before my fingertips brushed one of the green, hole-marred leaves. I paused, my smile dimming as I raised my gaze to the blue petals again.
“I think you would have liked him, Am,” I whispered, leisurely rolling my fingers to draw another thin strand of water from the nearby river towards me. I thinned the liquid until small droplets hovered over Amnestria’s flower, and then, with a flare of my fingers, the droplets burst into tinier particles that scattered on my sister’s flower. The petals quivered and the leaves bounced, as if shivering from the water.
I touched one of the leaves again, cautious, gentle, as if that caress alone would cause her more pain.
“What did you do to deserve this?” I asked her once again, and I waited despite knowing my questions would not be answered. I stared at her petals, sprinkling more water on the ground for her hidden roots to soak up. “Why did you go there?”
Her flower bobbed to the side.
I sighed, my shoulders slumping as I played with my fingers. Even knowing I was the only physical being in the Soul Garden, I glanced around me a few times, chewing on my bottom lip before I picked up the flowers I’d brought with me and began threading them together.
“I… met his brother.” I cringed away when Amnestria’s flower shook. “It was an accident. I was on my first trip to the Fairies’ and I was unaccompanied—and I succeeded! I’d brought back so many things with me, and our parents were proud! Faelyn was upset because I’d taken too long, but that was only because I got—” I paused again and glanced around me, lowering my voice. “I got chased. By a Velli.”
Her flower shook again, but this time it was a more violent vibration.
I held a hand up. “I’m in front of you, aren’t I? And when I tell you I ended up being caught by a Cyrva, a Velli becomes mild in comparison.”
She vibrated again, and rather than being alarmed or ashamed, I giggled, reaching to caress one of her delicate petals with the tip of my finger.
“It was an honest accident. The Velli chased me, and I couldn’t lead him right here, so I went into that portal and…” I paused again, squinting at the distance. “To be honest with you, Am, I didn’t have hope of returning alive.”
This time when her flower vibrated, it was intense, and I jumped with a yelp, scattering some of my flowers.
“I was scared! There were these huge snakes, and he was fast, and I ended up injured after throwing myself at rocks to scale up a cliff!” I huffed and picked up my flowers, frowning as I returned to threading them together. “He stopped chasing me and disappeared because that land belonged to the Cyrva. And as you see, he let me live.”
