Page 4 of Aryn

“Of course you don’t, gingersnap,” he says, eye gleaming.

“Oh, fuck off. I don’t.” I yank my shirt up and glance at the freckled skin underneath.

Xeni is absolutely delighted as his smile spreads. “Look at those adorable rolls!”

“Oh my gods, they aren’t rolls. That’s what happens when you sit down, Xeni. Skin folds. It’s called physics.”

“So defensive,” he purrs.

I pull a face at him but drop it. Arguing with Xeni is pointless. He’s stubborn on a good day and downright obnoxious on most. My jaw tightens as I turn my head, and my eyes catch Aryn’s for what has to be the fiftieth fucking time since he flung his shirt at me earlier. His gaze drops straight to my exposed stomach, and I fumble the hem back down, heat crawling up my neck.

“Bet Aryn doesn’t have those little rolls,” Xeni coos, way too close to my ear.

I shove my palm into his face and push him back. My eyes flick over to Aryn, but he’s focused on his food now. Xeni wrinkles his nose and brushes off his cheek like I’m something filthy he needs to clean away. He opens his mouth to keep arguing, but Sovran clears his throat from the next log. The whole group falls quiet, every head turning toward him like children waiting for story time.

“I suppose we should start at the beginning,” he says without preamble, though those of us that knew him in Atlanta don’t seem surprised. He’s not one for theatrics, and doesn’t seem interested in wasting unnecessary words.

“The beginning would be when the portals opened?” Cameron asks, leaning forward. “When the barrier between the worlds broke?”

“No,” Sovran answers. He sets his empty plate aside and stares into the flames. “The beginning was long before that. The fall of the veil took hundreds of years, and it wasn’t an accident.”

“What do you mean?” Bash asks, eyes locked on him. “Someone did this on purpose?”

Sovran looks more uncertain than I’ve ever seen him. “They did. And it was my fault.”

“Your fault?” Bash presses. “Like, is that an analogy? Some weird self blame? Or was it like…” He gestures at Sovran as the rest of us wait for an answer.

Sovran nods, gaze fixed on the ground in front of him. “The story starts as most wars do.”

“With a power-hungry dictator?” Cameron guesses.

Sovran shakes his head. “With a broken heart.”

I scoff under my breath and lean back, arms crossed. Bash does the opposite and leans in closer. “Yeah,” he drawls, “I’m gonna need you to expand on that.”

Sovran’s eyes lift to meet his, flick briefly to Xeni, then return to the fire. “My kind rarely leave our own realm,” he starts. “We are… how to explain it?” He picks up two stones and drops them in the dirt between his feet. “One stone is Earth. The other is Elyra.”

“Ely-what?” Cameron asks, brow furrowed.

Ronan frowns and shares a look with Elas. “I haven’t heard that name in decades,” he says quietly. “It was the formal name for our world. Humans call this one Earth. Ours was Elyra.”

“Indeed,” Sovran says with a nod. “There are other worlds… realms that exist on the same level as these two, but none are so close. Your worlds are an anomaly. They sit so near that the edges of their realities nearly touch. The divide between them was thin as a sheet of paper, but it held. For millions of years, these two worlds existed with no knowledge of each other.”

Sovran glances around, then picks up his plate and holds it above the two stones. “My realm sits on a level above yours. We can observe the actions of those on the lower planes.”

“What about above you?” Bash asks. “Are there higher realms?”

Sovran gives him a small, tired smile. “If there are, they have never revealed themselves to us.”

“Alright,” Cameron interjects, “so y’all are basically in some golden version of Heaven? Floating up there in the clouds watching the mortals scramble around below?”

“A crude comparison, but not entirely wrong. My kind are free to travel between the realms beneath us, though we rarely do unless intervention is needed.”

“Is that why you came down?” Bash asks. “Something needed fixing?”

Sovran pushes out a long sigh, shoulders hunched and far too defeated for a guy that could bench press his van without breaking a sweat. “No. I came because I was… curious.”

“Curious,” Ronan repeats flatly.