But it was only because she was my reminder that I was free. That was it.
We were silent for a while. I wasn’t sure how long we sat there with the snow seeping into our clothes. But I felt like, for the first time since I was rescued, I could breathe. I could just exist without the constant reminder of everything I’d lost.
“Come on, follow me.” She stood, wiping her palms across her thighs. “There’s a hidden path to the river about a half mile down.”
“What do you meanhidden?” I asked, but she was already walking away from me. Sighing loudly, I followed her more out of frustration. I was tempted as hell to just leave her here, but I didn’t doubt she’d eventually find her way back to the new camp. She seemed to have a knack for navigating the mortal territory, and to my surprise, had a fair amount of knowledge of both Advenian kingdoms too.
And I had no desire to deal with a pissed off Dravenburg if I came back without his only daughter. Despite her never listening to him and constantly running away, he was overprotective to a fault.
A soft hum sounded as Savannah vanished before my eyes. It looked like the river just stopped, meeting with a harsh tree linetoo thick to walk through. There was no way in hell I’d fit through the gap, but the girl just disappeared. I hesitated for a moment before following her. As soon as I did, the river stretched out before me. The temperature rose multiple degrees, the warmth a telltale sign this was the work of an air user.
“Why is there a shield in the middle of the mortal territory?” I asked in a daze. A few paces out, the river dropped into a pounding waterfall. The sound was deafening. I turned back to face where we just came from. Snow and ice stood at my back, but past the shield everything was vibrant and green. More of the lavender flowers were scattered throughout the riverbank.
Air shields fascinated the hell out of me. How one thing could do so much: control the temperature, cast invisibility, block sounds, act as a protection barrier. It was the one ability I wished Tennebris had. It was a match against the Dark’s psychic powers, and one of two abilities that blocked out Tennebrisian compulsion.
“Because Dove and I love this place so much, we wanted it just for ourselves.”
“And did you find this place by stealing a folder and wandering through the middle of nowhere?” I asked.
She leveled a stare with me. “I like to hike and be outside.”
“I didn’t really take the princess to be a nature buff,” I said, and for some reason it didn’t surprise me that Savannah was. But Dovelyn coming here sounded laughable. I didn’t really take her for anything other than a stuck-up snob who wouldn’t sit on anything that wasn’t cushioned or cleaned prior, but I didn’t add that part.
She huffed a laugh to herself. “She’s not, but this place is special to me, so she sucks it up. We needed a place to escape to, and we both fell in love with the solitude of it. And since I love it here and come much more frequently than she does, she overlooks the whole water thing.”
“Water thing?”
“Oh, yeah. Dovelyn hates water, and I meanhatesit.”
“Good to know,” I started to say, but she was already walking over to the cliff’s edge where the waterfall started, removing her clothes as she went. She stepped out of her pants first, walking backwards, and not taking her eyes off me. Her shirt came off next. Feathered wings covered her rib cage and dipped over her stomach. I was mesmerized by it until she spun around and her bra came off next.
The same flowers that spanned the area of this place went up her spine. The clusters stacked on top of each other in a vertical manner, covering each knob of her vertebrae. They didn’t hold any color, just the bare bones of the flowers that I wouldn’t have known they were meant to be purple if we weren’t surrounded by them now.
I couldn’t get over my fascination with her markings—or mortal tattoos as she called them—it was weird to see black patterns over someone’s body when they weren’t exposed to water. I kept staring at them, too busy getting lost in the designs, that I wasn’t prepared for her to jump. I hadn’t even noticed she fully undressed before she leapt off the soft grass and fell into the roaring water below. Her thick winter clothes were in piles before the bank.
“Fuck.” I bolted toward the edge, then teleported the rest of the way. I managed to catch her awkwardly right before she landed in the uproar, but we were tumbling too fast. I couldn’t teleport us away before we were sinking into its depths, the pounding water above pushing us further and further into the deep. I felt her wet skin against mine as she pushed me off and swam to the surface. The heavy coat I was still wearing was weighing me down, taking me longer to swim to the surface.
When we both sprang free, inhaling mouthfuls of air, she spun to look at me. “Why did you do that?”
“I saved you,” I answered. “You fell into the water. I think a thank you would be nice.”
She laughed. Hard. The sound was light and carefree. I watched her bob in the water a good distance away from me, her chin dipping under the surface with each giggle. I was surprised to find the temperature tepid, enjoyable almost.
“I jumped, you idiot,on purpose, and now your clothes will be soaking wet when we head back.”
Irritation rang through me. I hadn’t thought of that. I looked up at where we came from, at least fifty feet above us. “You could have died.”
“I’ve made this jump multiple times before.”
I stared at her in shock. She was a human.Mortal.Their bodies were supposed to be so fucking fragile. And yet she willingly did this. “Why did you jump?”
She splashed water at my face. “For fun. Haven’t you ever done anything for fun before?”
No. But I wasn’t about to tell her that. “Aren’t you scared of dying?” I asked instead of answering. I tried to focus on our conversation and not on the fact that she was naked, or that the water was clear, despite it being dark, and it did little to hide her body. She dipped underwater, and I held my breath as she started swimming toward me. I couldn’t look away.
“No, I’m not scared of dying,” she answered when she came back up for air, only a few inches in front of me now. Her hair was now a deep purple instead of its usual light lavender coloring. “I’m scared of not living.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
