I turned around toward the sound of the voice. I was outside of Palm, sitting by the edge of the woods. Savannah was dressed for the cold. Tennebris was still in their dark season, but I could make out her features from a mile away. Her lavender hair was tucked into a black hat and a matching scarf was so tightly wound around her neck that it covered the tip of her chin.
Her boots crunched in the frost-filled grass before she sat down next to me. I kept staring at her as I noticed the tip of her nose turning bright red. I knew the cold bothered her just as much as it did all humans. But it was easy to forget. Mainly because she was crazy enough to travel to the dead river in the human territory for fun, but it was weird seeing how fast the weather affected her now.
“Hi,” I finally said, turning my gaze from her to stare back out at the woods. We were leaving for Allium tonight, and as much as I knew it was the right thing to do, I felt uneasy about leaving my home. “How are you doing?”
She shrugged, but I knew her real answer. She wasn’t good and it was probably stupid of me to even ask. I definitely didn’t want to talk after my father was killed, so why I expected her to do the same was beyond me. And she actually liked her father.
“I’m sorry,” I managed to get out. “I know you probably don’t want to talk about it, but I wanted you to know.”
I kept replaying what happened during the battle. I kept hearing her scream as I teleported her away from Dravenburg. They were bickering and yelling at each other while they were fighting Luxian soldiers. Dravenburg was scolding her for coming, and Savannah kept saying it was all she’s ever known and that she wanted to help her friends. I was fighting next to her, something I kept subconsciously doing without knowing why, so I overheard everything. Their last moment together was a fucking fight.
Savannah was distracted by something he said and was about to get sliced in half with a sword before her father stepped in front of the blade to save her. She stood frozen for a moment with his blood splashed over her nose, painting red freckles across her face. She didn’t move,wouldn’tmove. She was in shock, and I knew she couldn’t fight. So I teleported her away… away from her father. It wasn’t until I brought her into the safe room that she flipped out and started screaming and hitting and yelling at me to take her back to Dravenburg.
“He’s gone, Savannah. He’s gone. You have to let him go.”
“No,” she sobbed as tears ran down her face. “No, he’s not! Take me back to him.” She kept hitting me over and over again until I finally grabbed her wrists and pulled her into me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I kept repeating the same phrase into her ear, not letting go of her arms, until she finally collapsed and started crying into my shoulder.
I wasn’t sure how long we stayed like that before Tezya and the others found us. She took a step back from me once they did. Her glossy eyes and watery face met mine, before she walked toward the corner of the room and sat down.
But looking at her now, if I hadn’t seen her grief from losing her father, I never would have known. She had her emotions in check. I wasn’t sure if she was just strong-willed, hated breakingdown in front of people, or if she pushed it so far out of her mind that she refused to think about it, and I found myself curious which one it was.
I knew her brother probably had something to do with it. She was the older of the two, and I kept watching her the past couple of weeks. The mortal boy broke down all the time, and Savannah was there for each one, comforting him in ways I knew were probably destroying her on the inside. Because unlike her brother, she had the added guilt of his death. Same as I did for my father. They both died because of us.
“I didn’t come find you to talk about him,” she said after several moments, and I couldn’t hold back my shock at her admitting she sought me out.
I turned to face her and was mesmerized by her hazel, gray eyes and how her lavender hair seemed to reflect in them. She was sitting closer to me than I thought, and it was only now hitting me that this was the last time I was ever going to see her.
“I know what I want from my bargain with you,” Savannah said, pulling me from my thoughts.
“Bargain?” I nearly forgot I made one with her. That I would have to say yes to one thing she demanded in exchange for her training Vallie and Lilia.
Of course she hadn’t forgotten it. If this was my last time seeing her, she was going to use it. I was stupid for thinking she came for anything else. “What do you want?”
“I want to go with you. I want you to take me to Allium.”
EIGHTY-TWO
SCOTLIND
I wokeup to warmth surrounding me. I smiled before I even opened my eyes, knowing the cause behind it.
Tezya.
We’d been inThe Miles—the name given to the spacecraft—for a month now. I could understand why our ancestors agreed to the Peace Treaty all those centuries ago—being in space sucked.
Without Tezya warming the air around me, I was pretty sure I would have been freezing twenty-four-seven. But I couldn’t believe it—we actually did it. We were both alive and heading to Allium together. Everything felt so surreal.
“Good morning,” he murmured onto the top of my hair. His hand wrapped around my back, pulling me closer to him.
“Morning.” I kissed down his chest, something I hadn’t been able to stop doing since we’d been in space. Every day felt like a dream, and I was too scared to wake up from it.
He’s real,I kept telling myself.He’s alive. He’s here with me.
I felt guilty being this happy. Anytime I saw Kallon or Vallie, my heart sank a little.
Kallon was doing better than my best friend, or at least that’s what she wanted everyone to think. She put a mask on her emotions and pretended like everything was okay, but I knew it wasn’t—she wasn’t okay. Whenever Tezya and I weren’t in our shared pod, we tried to spend all our free time with her. Rainer was by her side whenever we couldn’t be, but she tried to brush us off.
