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“Plants are the best communicators,” he said, ignoring me completely. “They rely on it. Speaking to each other is part of their survival.” Drops of suspended rain sprinkled from the petals above as he shook the vine. They spattered against his cloak.
“You’re saying you can speak to the plants?” I asked in wonder.
Riven nodded and the vines wrapped between our hands started to glow. I could feel heat anywhere the plant touched my skin and something else. Something like...
“Sadness?” I thought aloud. Riven’s eyes opened immediately, and the glow stopped.
“You could feel that?” he asked, letting go of my hand as the vine swung along the wall.
“Was I not supposed to?” I blinked. What had the hand holding been for?
“Some warmth from the magic yes,” he said. “But reading the plant is something only the gifted should be able to do.” Riven’s jaw clenched, his brows stitching themselves together. This was becoming the expression he usually wore around me.
“I didn’t read the plant. It didn’t say anything to me.”
“They don’t actually speak to you,” Riven said, his words tense and short. “Not in words. It’s more like a feeling. With practice, a Fae can learn to sense one plant from another. Eventually, we can use them to sense others nearby.”
“The plants can sense Gerarda?” My mouth hung open. This was how Feron had known I was in Aralinth. I wondered how far these powers could be tested.
“Not exactly, more her essence. That she’s new,” Riven explained, his loose hand waving in the air. “Feron makes sure I can sense every resident of Aralinth, so newcomers are easy to identify.”
I leaned my head back against the wall. “So Gerarda is sitting next to a plant?”
Riven’s eyes flicked down the street and back along the roofs again. We were spending too long answering my questions, but I couldn’t find the will to move without answers. “Everyone is next to a plant in Aralinth,” he said. I looked up to the canopy of vines and closed blossoms above our heads but Riven looked down.
My eyes widened. “The ground?”
Riven nodded slowly. “Their underground network is much wider. Most of the buildings were formed with tunnel systems for the plants to grow through the walls.”
That’s why Feron didn’t send scouts to watch my every move. He could track me from the comfort of his palace.
The Fae were more powerful than I’d thought.
“The king believes the Fae magic has completely faded,” I whispered.
Riven’s mouth was a straight line. “The king is mostly right. Many of our powers have faded. What we still have access to is usually... restricted somehow. Especially mine.”
I tilted my head. “What kind of—”
“I need to make sure she’s still there. We’ve been stopped too long,” Riven said, cutting off my question. He wrapped his wrist with the vine again. Part of me wanted to reach out and feel the sensation of the magic once more, but I didn’t.
“What are your expectations for this?” Riven’s husky voice cut through the rain that had started again. The rain would provide good cover for us as we raced to beat Gerarda to the mountain pass. I wondered if that was another product of Fae magic. Did Riven have the ability to call forth rain? Had the stories told across the kingdom held some truth?
“Expectations?” I shot him a sideways glance. We had left the last of the inhabited dwellings behind. Only empty stone houses lined our path now. The blinds staked along their windows clapped in the heavy wind, so we had to speak louder.
“For this alliance,” Riven said. We were standing under the stables of the pub. He leaned against the post I’d climbed up earlier. His head almost grazed the rafter as he glared at me. He wanted an answer.
I dropped my saddlebags onto the ground. I rubbed my shoulder, a stinging rush of blood returned to where the strap had cut off circulation. “They depend on yours,” I said as I stared back. It was the truth. I was taking a gamble just as much as he was.
I could see him weighing our options in his mind, his violet eyes were on my skin, but unfocused. Like he wasn’t seeing me at all.
“Are you willing to put all your cards on the table?” he asked, his attention cutting back to me again. “Tell me everything I ask you?”
“Absolutely not.” I held too many secrets. Most of which would cost people their lives if Riven betrayed me. And the rest were secrets I’d never spoken aloud. If that was the cost of the alliance, it wasn’t one I was ready to pay.
“Wouldyouagree to that?” I asked, hanging my cloak along a stall door to dry.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “But an alliance between two parties that don’t trust each other is doomed to fail.”
