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And… falling in love with him.
Which I really needed to let go of.
I’d managed not to think about him more than once a day or so in the many years since we’d been apart. That was pretty good, right?
Shit.
Maybe it wasn’t.
Maybe I had never really moved on.
Seeing him the night before, talking to him, hearing his sarcasm…
It had brought me right back.
I’d move on again, though. I had to believe that.
I plucked a few lilanos from a tree before plopping down on my ass and peeling the first fruit. They were small and round, with bright red skin that was somehow still coarse despite the red fur covering it. There were many bumps and sharp bits protruding from it, but I knew the bumpy bits were good for opening them up. I’d been living on lilanos for long before any of us knew they also functioned as birth control. They were basically healthy ice cream, so why the hell wouldn’t I?
While I ate in silence, I considered my options.
Pretending Teris wasn’t there would be the easiest, but also the loneliest, and my chances of finding the klynna cave were nearly zero on my own.
Vevol had told me it was in the eastern part of the old unseelie territory, and that I’d recognize it by the swoop of white stone in the mountains around it. But there were so damn many miles of white stone mountains, and they were all covered in massive trees. I’d flown over all of them, and seen many swooping shapes, but I’d never found the entrance to any kind of a cave no matter how much I poked around them.
So, I was stuck.
And if I wanted Teris to tell me where to go, I was going to have to tell him the truth about the mission Vevol had sent me on.
If I did that, he would probably drag me back to the Stronghold kicking and screaming. Teris wasn’t like Aev; he wouldn’t just accept it if I turned him down or made my own decisions for my own reason. He was wild, primal, and dominant.
Or at least, he had been all of those things when I’d known him. I supposed two decades was enough to change anyone permanently.
Then again, I never would’ve imagined him as the kind of man who would let me go without a fight, back then. And he’d done exactly that when Aev stole me away, so maybe I hadn’t really known him at all.
With all those thoughts running through my mind, I decided that I wasn’t quite desperate enough to turn to him yet. I’d keep searching until I couldn’t handle it anymore, and if I still hadn’t found the cave by then, I’d tell him the truth.
And fight like hell to stop him from hauling my ass back to the other fae.
Another week passedbefore I reached the end of my rope.
I couldn’t spend any more time poking around the damn mountains cluelessly. Or sleeping on the forest floor. Or so entirely alone. It was bringing back memories of that first year I’d spent hidden away on my own in the unseelie version of the Stronghold, and those had been the worst days of my life. Even worse than the Earth ones.
I forced myself to eat slowly, so Teris wouldn’t see my desperation. The more confident and comfortable he thought I was, the better odds I probably had at convincing him that I was sure about my plan.
After I’d dropped my lilanos’ peels on the ground, leaving them for the small scavengers I’d seen up in the branches a few times, I leaned my head back against the tree and waited.
A few minutes later, I called out, “Alright, I’ll give you the truth in exchange for directions to the cave.”
There was no immediate movement in the trees around me, but I didn’t see any reason to believe that Teris would’ve headed back to the Stronghold after so much time spent following me through the forest. So I didn’t panic.
A few minutes passed before I finally saw a sabertooth slink through the trees. He leapt smoothly to the ground, and I swallowed my sudden surprise at the size of him. It was rare for me to be around male fae at all, so I would’ve been just as surprised if he were any other creature.
He shifted forms, sliding his hands into the pockets of the ripped pants he always wore.
As far as I knew, I was one of the only people in Vevol who knew why he wore pants instead of the shorts most male fae preferred.
I wasn’t about to bring that up, though. Not when I was about to try to pull off telling him half of the truth for the sake of finding the cave.
