Perhaps I should welcome the silence, but with his frosty gaze constantly pinned between my shoulder blades, and with the memory of his mouth on mine as our souls brushed against each other, the heavy patter of rain couldn’t be more of a relief.
We reach a wall of vines, and he sets his hand on my shoulder, slashing a path through the squiggle of gnarly drapes in a few powerful strikes.
“Thank you,” I say, stepping through the severed gash into yet another bushy, humid, tightly packed segment of the jungle.
Fantastic.
I readjust the sheath bound across my chest, the holster down my spine stuffed with the sword I took from the cabin. I stretch my shoulders, then my neck.
Get back to massaging my temples.
My foot hooks on a stone, and I lurch forward. Rhordyn’s hand snakes around my middle so fast I don’t register what’s happening until I’m tugged against his hard chest—heaving breath, heart pounding. A flock of moths the size of my head launch off the surrounding tree trunks in a waggle of blue tones, swarming toward the jungle’s canopy to resettle amongst the lofty trees.
“Brakenmoth,” Rhordyn rumbles so close to my ear I feel the brush of his chilled lips devastating my nerves.
I swallow, loosening my grip on the dagger at my thigh. “Pretty.”
“When threatened, they birth a stinger longer than your thumb, their venom potent enough to kill a child.”
My blood chills. “I … take back what I said.”
“There are beasts that live in the gloom that have learned to hide from the Irilak,” he mutters as the death moths shimmy their wings against their new resting spots, shifting their colors the slightest amount until they’re one with the trees, vanishing before my eyes. “They’re masters of camouflage and masking their scents.” He looks at me, frowning. “The jungle is unpredictable, and your footsteps are getting sloppier by the second. Trip again and I’ll carry you.”
This headache has its claws dug so far into my skull that the thought of being carried is actually kind of nice, though I’ll never admit that to him. There’s not enough space in this dense jungle to escape the crippling tension strung between us as it is.
“Message received,” I murmur, trying to wriggle out of his arm.
He tightens his grip, reaching up to grab one of the cupped leaves above my head. He eases it down until it’s at my eye level, and I see the puddle of rain sitting in its deep hollow.
“Drink.”
“I’m not thirsty.”
In fact, my throat kind of aches, and the banana Rhordyn climbed a tree for a few hours ago isn’t sitting too well inside me, despite being the best banana I’ve ever tasted—sweet like taffy threaded with notes of pineapple and melon.
“I can stand here all day,” he says blandly, and I groan, lifting my hands to cradle his so I can gauge how much he tips the leaf.
Despite my reluctance, I welcome the crisp, luscious rainwater as it cools me from the inside out, nudging his hands when I’ve had my fill.
“Happy?” I ask, wiping my mouth.
He grunts, escorting the leaf back to its spot in our cramped confines.
Easing out of his hold, I continue forward, weaving around trees and an endless crumble of big, blue boulders threaded with veins of gold. So when I spot a black slab of stone peeking through a gap in the foliage, my heart stops.
“I can’t believe it,” I whisper, a bubble of hope swelling in my chest, the backs of my eyes burning as I dash through the trees.
Are we almost at the border?
Is blue stone, humid heat, and slate foliage about to become fluffy grass, black rock, and ancient, gnarled trees with leaves the color of emeralds?
I burst past the large dark slab into a blessed clearing four times the size of my room in Stony Stem. I count twelve flat stone spires punched through the circular perimeter, some clothed in silver vines of grayslades poking their heads toward the unsettled sky. There’s a small, simple dwelling in the circle’s center made from a bunch of logs all leaning against each other, meeting in the middle with a bind of vines keeping them in place—big enough to provide a night’s shelter from the rain but not much else.
And the rain … it’s a treasure I swirl beneath, arms outstretched, face tipped to the sky. Drawing on air that’s light and crisp.
For the first time since we set off this morning, I canbreathe.
I stop, crouch, and thread my fingers into the thick, fluffy grass as Rhordyn stalks past me, poking his head inside the hut.
