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June nodded.
“Right now?”
“Yup.”
“All right, sure. Let’s get this Houdini shit over with.” Determined to ferret out any tricks, Jessie marched outside…and was awestruck by the view. They were several hundred feet off the ground overlooking a tantalizing forest that stretched out for miles, scored by winding rivers and rolling hills. On the edge of the horizon, light glinted off a sliver of blue ocean.
“My god! This place is beautiful.” She had always dreamed of visiting far-off wildernesses like the Amazon Jungle. Now she was smackdab in the middle of one-ish. “Is it safe out there?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” June assured. “The jungle around the castle is very safe. The guards have made sure of that. And anyway, big predators are rare in this world.”
“Unless you count witches,” Orik grumbled, sounding as though the word was a foul taste on the back of his tongue.
“Or dragons,” Jessie quipped.
His lips actually quirked at her rebuttal, and she caught a hint how a true smile might lighten his grave features.
Could there truly be such a thing as witches? She didn’t know why, but her thoughts jumped back to her vision of the eerie blue flame that had enveloped her hands. It was just an adrenaline-fueled illusion, nothing more.
The blue sky was clear and went on for eternity, broken up only by the faint ghostly outline of two moons, one slightly larger than the other.
Two moons.I really am on another planet. No one was going to jump out from some hidden production room and yell,“Gotcha!”
The air smelled so crisp and fresh, and she indulged in one long inhalation.
Now that she’d accepted it, a strange kind of excitement filled her. A new world in need of exploring. New discoveries to be made. She always felt free when she was combing through some wilderness. Her gaze shifted to the treetops once more. “Would it be all right if I explore out there? Take a good look around?” She was already itching to get her boots dirty.
“Of course,” June chirped, smiling.
Orik swiftly added, “With an escort.”
Both he and June patiently waited while she took in the view a little longer. When she was finished, she turned to face them. Was she really about to see a person change into a dragon? Her knowledge of physics told her that wasn’t even possible. Yet they believed in magic here. Could that be real, too? How utterly cool would that be?
If it was true.
What would be their motive for deceiving her? She was helpless here in their world. They could toss her in a dungeon and throw away the key, and no one would kick up a fuss. She shuddered at the notion. To be trapped and forgotten, left to waste away? Like she would have if left on that ship. It was suffocating just to think about.
Again, the world around her seemed to roil, like tectonic plates shifting within her. She felt her hands grow warm and furtively glanced down. A matching set of tiny blue flames ignited in her palms. With a gasp, she clenched her fists, extinguishing the strange hallucination.
No one else seemed to have noticed, though Orik’s head cocked her way. It must be the weeks of stress followed by an encounter of the fourth kind.
She reminded herself she was free of that fate, and these so-called dragon people had yet to treat her like a prisoner. Instead, they’d offered her food and tea and lodging, giving no indication that they intended to do her harm. They seemed to want to make her comfortable…even if Orik was still tensed up like a terracotta soldier, beefy arms crossed, a hard crease stabbing between his brows. Next to him, June looked so small and frail and glamorous in her sparkling dress.
“Well, let’s see it,” Jessie said, feigning nonchalance, though her adrenaline was spiking.
“I’ll need room. You should stand over here.” June indicated the spot next to Orik. “It can happen really quickly, and if you’re too close, you could get hurt.”
As the two ladies traded places, crossing past each other, Orik’s gaze sharpened, laser-like, as though he were visually measuring Jessie’s every move. The color swirling around him deepened to a ruthless metallic red.
She didn’t mean to, but her gaze darted to her knife at his waist. His eyes narrowed, and the moment she landed by his side, he clipped the Ka-Bar to the opposite section of his belt, farther away from her.
“Oh, come on,” she scoffed. “Like I’d be able to wrestle my knife from you.”
“Of course no’. But I’ve seen what you are capable of and would no’ put it past you trying.”
“I feel like there’s a compliment in there somewhere.”
Amusement lit his features, though she could tell he was trying not to smile.
