“A child,” he repeated, shaking his head, and Florian laughed. “Really. Well, I guess when you get to that age, everyone seems like a child.”
“How old do people in the Veil usually live to?” Florian asked, realizing he didn’t know. In the studying he had done with his father, it seemed most fae lived around two hundred years or more; but if it was different for shifters, or if the people in the history books were outliers somehow, he had no idea.
“Hmm. I’d say somewhere around a hundred and eighty to two hundred is pretty normal,” Kade answered.
“Do you know how old my dad was?” he asked. Kade sighed, visibly hesitating.
“About a hundred, I think,” he said. Florian winced, wishing he hadn’t asked. His father still had half his life ahead of him, yet...
He shoved the thoughts out of his mind. If he dwelled too much on his father, he started to feel... distant, somehow, as if his mind and his body were not quite syncing up. And sometimes he would see flashes of that terrible moment in the mine: nightmares of cold water and sharp teeth and blood soaking through all his clothes. No, he couldn’t afford to think of it now.
“You okay?” Kade asked, his voice soft, but still enough to snap Florian back into the present.
He blinked, shaking his head to clear his thoughts and quickly answering, “Yeah. I’m okay.”
Kade lifted one hand to lightly touch his back. His mouth opened, as if he were about to speak; but he paused, then closed it without saying anything.
They walked on, Florian following Kade deeper into the forest and looking for the faint shimmer in the air that he knew would reveal the location of the curtain; but amidst all the trees, he couldn’t make anything out. Kade seemed to know where he was going, though and after a few more minutes of walking, he paused and looked around slowly. “It’s around here,” he said.
They separated to make a slow circuit around the area, but it was Kade who finally called out to Florian. “Found it.”
Florian darted around the trees that had blocked his view of Kade to join him. The spot looked just as mundane as he expected, a faint shimmer in the air that hovered between two tall trees. Kade held his hand out to it, his fingers disappearing into the light.
“Ready?” he asked. Florian took in a steadying breath.
“Yes,” he said, and they stepped through back into the Veil.
