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Wiping a hand over my eyes to clear the muck that glues my eyelashes together, I swallow down the need to throw up and ask with sarcasm, “Do they know me now?”

Laughter is thick in Aruan’s voice.“They’ve certainly made your acquaintance.”

“Great,” I grumble, wiping my sleeve over my face.Long dregs of slime stick to the fabric.“Eww.”

The Slitheax who addressed Aruan first says something in its lisping language, and then they retreat to let us through.They push up onto their front paws, watching us with their long tongues flicking from their mouths.In the light spilling from the exit on the other side of the tunnel, I can make out the vibrant orange scales on the undersides of their otherwise black bodies.

Outside, I shake the hand I cleaned my eyes with, trying to dislodge the slime, but it only stretches like melted cheese before bouncing back to my splayed fingers.

“Come here,” Aruan says, chuckling as he guides me to a pond in a hollow of the rock slab.

He crouches down in front of me, pulling me with him onto my haunches.He scoops up a handful of water and gently rinses my face.I don’t miss the quirk of his lips as he tries hard to suppress his laughter.

I narrow my eyes.“You think this is funny, don’t you?”

He flashes me a grin.“Don’t worry.The price is worth the gain.They never forget a scent.Once they’ve smelled you, they’ll never mistake you for an enemy.You’ll always have a guaranteed passage through their terrain.”

“Did Kian give you the ability to understand them?”

He nods.

“So there are Slitheax in Lona too?”

“No.”He pauses.“On one of my visits, I crossed one that was injured.A dragon had chewed off his tail before he managed to get away.”

I shiver at the mental image.“What happened?”

“I took him back to Lona in the hope that Vitai could heal him, but he’d lost too much blood.His injuries were extensive, and he didn’t survive the shock.”

That’s sad.“So Kian transmitted his language to you.”

“We needed to communicate if I were to find his family.They deserved to know what had happened to him.”The look in his eyes intensifies as he says, “There’s nothing worse than not knowing.”

Oh, Aruan.I place a hand on his arm.“Is that what you went through when I disappeared?”

He continues to rinse my face, his lips pressed in a hard line.Just when I think he’s not going to answer, he says, “When my mother told me you were dead, I didn’t want to believe it.I kept on feeling your existence the way the mind tricks one into feeling a severed limb that’s no longer there.And then it was just gone.Dead.”His silver eyes grow hard and cold.“I had no choice any longer.I had to accept what the severed connection told me.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say, squeezing his arm.If I could, I would’ve taken that pain away from him.

“But you’re here now.”He brushes the hair back from my forehead.“And that’s more than I could’ve ever hoped for.”

“I’m staying,” I say on the spur of the moment, willing to give my soul to make right all the wrongs that have been done to him.

I can’t explain my impulsive need.I only know I can’t bear his suffering.Not from the past or the present.Even if it means giving up everyone and everything I love, I’ll do it.For him.Because it’s in my make-up.It’s part of my DNA.

Despite the heaviness of the moment, the possessiveness I’ve become so familiar with passes over his features.“I know, my sweet.”

We fall quiet as he takes care of me, each of us wrapped up in our own thoughts, but thanks to the bond, none of those thoughts are completely private.He knows I’m mourning everyone I’ve lost to find him, and I know he knows that a part of me will always long for the people I left behind and that my heart isn’t one hundred percent here.

He cups my face when it’s clean and wipes the water from my cheeks with his thumbs.“Better?”

Trying to lighten the mood, I say, “I won’t say no to a bath.”

He straightens and offers me a hand.“It’ll have to be a shower.They don’t have pools in Marikanea.”

“Why not?”

“In Lona, the Water Palace is fed from an underground source.Here, they have to rely on rainwater that accumulates in large containers.”