“Oh. Well...” I withdrew it from my pocket and showed it to him. “This is actually my uncle’s. He invented it.”
I opened the small metallic box and showed him how the thick needle, which floated over a flat piece of babbo wood, moved in the direction its magic guided it. “It’s similar to a compass, but it follows an object that you alert it to. It can follow anything. Its magic is incredibly precise and accurate.”
“May I?” He held his hand out, and I placed it on his palm. He picked the box up and inspected it more, then handed it back to me. “How interesting. And your uncle invented that?”
“He did. He’s a brilliant inventor.”
“So brilliant that he knows how to create a device that can find anything?”
“Indeed. He’s one of the most brilliant fae I know. Normally, we use this device to find our way home. If I activated the magic on our residence in Whiteolf, that’s where the needle would be pointing right now.”
“But Whiteolf is behind us, so what’s it alerting us to?”
“The Wishing Stone.”
His eyebrows shot clear to his hairline.
I giggled, unable to help it. “You look surprised.”
“You said it’s pointed toward the Wishing Stone. I think that warrants some surprise.”
“True, but considering that until yesterday I never saw any emotions on your face, you can perhaps understand my delight at how you look right now.”
His eyes narrowed, but his eyebrows dropped back to a normal level. “Okay, I’ll bite...how do you know that deviceis leading you to the Stone? Nobody knows where the Stone is.”
“Seekerill.”
He cocked his head. “What?”
“Technically, it’s called aseekerill.That’s the name of this invention.”
“All right, in that case, how do you know yourseekerillwill lead you to the Stone?”
“I don’t, but I’m hoping it will.” I grinned again and didn’t bother telling him about my book or constellation scroll. It was too fun to observe his confused reactions.
He continued watching me, and a small smile played upon his lips. “You are a strange one, Miss Hollaran.”
“Perhaps, but delightfully strange, no?”
His mouth cracked more, then lifted in a genuine smile. My heartbeat inadvertently raced.
“Aye, I can agree that you’re delightfully strange.”
My chest locked up, my lungs refusing to work. Heart thumping, I shifted my attention to the Wood and took a deep breath, using the cold air to ground me, and cold it was. It’d grown darker, which was odd considering the sun was still rising, but the swamp of trees around us could explain it, along with the thick cloud cover. The Wood here was denser than I’d ever seen it. Patches of foliage even drifted entirely across the road, as though the Wood refused to be tamed in these parts.
“And your uncle, you said he’s an inventor?” Kole’s deep voice pulled my attention back to him. I couldn’t have ignoredhim if I tried. Something about his tone, his scent, his feel, hiseverything,had latched onto me, as though a rope had been cinched around my head and forced it to turn in whatever direction he lay. Perhaps Kole was my personal seekerill. “Are you and your uncle close?”
I cleared my throat. “Yes, very. Even though he’s my uncle, he’s more like a father to me. I’ve lived with him and my aunt nearly my entire life.”
“Not with your parents?”
I shrugged, but the old pain that had once caught me in a death grip as a child anytime somebody mentioned my parents didn’t appear. Enough seasons had passed that I’d grown used to their passing. “No, my parents died when I was an infant so my uncle, who’s my father’s brother, has been the only father I’ve ever known.”
“May I ask how they died?” he asked quietly.
“It was a carriage accident.” I swallowed, dryness creeping into my throat, but I also knew Kole didn’t ask questions of other fae like this, and I hoped that if perhaps I opened up to him, he would do the same with me. “It happened in the Clawfur Mountains. That’s where I was born. I was told their carriage slipped off a mountain road during a freak storm and plunged into a river below. If I’d been in that carriage with them, I would have died too. Following their accident, my aunt and uncle came to take care of me. They were so supportive, and even though I was only a baby, they still allowed me to grow up in my parents’ home until I turned eight, then wemoved back to the capital so my uncle could be closer to the palace for his work. He works for the king and queen of Mistvale Kingdom.”
Kole was quiet again, his gaze intense. “Did your uncle continue working for the crown while he lived so far away?”
