Page 31

Elsie

A ruan and I get ready to leave for Marikanea with the queen’s assurance that she’ll wait until our return before sending the humans home.

I’d like to say goodbye and, if I’m lucky, make peace with Sandy before they go.

I’d hate for us to part on bad terms, especially after everything we’ve been through together.

Having shared the same horrible fate makes me feel close to all of them.

I wrangle a promise from Gaia and Kian to take Karl and the women for walks and to keep them busy.

Since Eucabeth confirmed my suspicion that she’s developed a crush on Vitai, I prefer not to ask him.

There’s no point in making the situation tougher on Eucabeth than it already is.

If her blossoming feelings are left to run their course, she’ll be devastated when Vitai senses his mate.

She went as far as to suggest staying behind on Zerra while her friends return home, and the king and queen will never allow that.

The king pulls Aruan and me aside and ensures us he’ll continue the search for the person—or persons—who sabotaged the bridge. He makes it sound as if we’re going away for a month when Aruan agreed to a week.

My aunt and uncle leave straight after breakfast, going ahead of us. One minute, we’re saying goodbye to Aruan’s family in front of the portal his mother has pulled up in her reception room, and the next, we walk out onto a white shore that glitters like snow under a pale sun.

Aruan kisses the back of my hand. “All right?”

“Yes.” Just excited and nervous.

Gaia advised me to wear a nice dress, but I figured my pants, shirt, and boots were more practical for exploring. I hope I’m not going to stick out like a sore thumb. Aruan is dressed in his habitual tunic and boots, his hair tied at his nape. He’s scanning the surroundings with vigilance.

I look around me. Turquoise water laps at the shore.

The sea is calm and flat, not black and turbulent with crushing waves like back in Lona.

The water is so clear I spot pink, blue, and orange corals on the shallow reefs.

Hybodus are gliding over the sand bed. I recognize the prehistoric sharks by the strange horns on the tops of their heads.

How cool. They have two sets of teeth, one for gripping slippery prey and another for crushing shells.

They float by soundlessly, on the hunt for prey.

A kalligrammatid flutters by and disappears in the vegetation. Bright green ferns taller than I am sway gently from side to side despite the fact that there’s no air movement, not even a breeze. Their leaves rustle as they unfurl and curl up again.

See-through, tube-shaped plants grow on the fringe of the beach.

Black veins knit through their walls, contracting and expanding with a lazy rhythm.

Behind them, thin, black, stick-like trees the height of a three-story building sprout into the air.

At the top, their offshoots are connected, forming a circle of hugging branches without leaves.

Maybe it’s one big body and not several trees.

Pink clusters of delicate little bell flowers hang like chandeliers from the pin-like branches.

Beyond the border of the trees, cycads with red fruit resembling pineapples grow wild, each fruit sporting a white candy floss beard.

We must be on a high plateau because the air feels thinner and less humid.

It smells sweet, like lilies. The sky is light blue with a pinkish hue, and although it’s clear, the cries of pterosaurs are audible in the distance.

I can sense their presence all around us, the dinosaur population here much denser than in Lona.

I turn to Aruan. “Have you been here before?”

“Many times.” He stares off in the direction of a shimmery white cliff that frames the water. “I’ve been coming to this place ever since they told me you were dead. But I just got to know the surroundings and the animal and plant life here. I could never bring myself to go inside the palace.”

The forlorn, desolate feeling that reaches me through the bond is harrowing. The cold emptiness is like a parasite sucking the life out of every other emotion that’s left.

The bleak, grim hollowness jars me, unsettling me in a way I didn’t think was possible.

Is this what it feels like to lose a mate? All this time, Aruan suffered these painful emotions, and I was blissfully unaware of any of it. I lived my life on Earth, not knowing I had a mate in a different world, a mate who was slowly dying inside because a part of him—me—was gone.

I never really understood before. Now that I do, I don’t know if I can leave him. I don’t want him to go through something like that ever again.

I never want to hurt him.

Slipping my hand into his, I stare up at him. “Is this how I’ll feel if you’re gone?”

He meets my gaze, his silver eyes brimming with emotions, yet his lips curve into a smile. “That’s the fate of all men and women who lose a mate.”

That sad smile breaks my heart. “I’m sorry, Aruan. I’m sorry you had to go through that. I had no idea.”

He tightens his grip on my hand. “You don’t have to apologize. It wasn’t your fault.”

But rejecting him will be. Not being able to give him a completed bond is my fault.

He said so himself… on various occasions.

And I have no idea how to fix that. Maybe sending me to Earth harmed more than my body.

Maybe it damaged our bond for good. Now Aruan is forced to exist like this, having found his mate who came back from the dead, only to live with a bond that will never be whole.

The thought floors me. A stone sinks in my stomach.

I can never be the mate to Aruan he deserves.

I’ve wondered whether he would’ve been better off if the Phaelix had never decided to kidnap me, but now I know better.

His existence would’ve been nothing but loneliness and pain.

And I don’t know what’s more perilous for Zerra: my presence or my absence.

I suspect that an unfeeling Aruan is a hundredfold more dangerous than a feeling one, even when he’s angry.

If he had no emotions left, no remorse or affection for anyone or anything, there’d be nothing to prevent him from unleashing the full force of his lethal power.

Despite the pleasant warm weather, a shiver rakes down my spine.

“Come.” He tugs me toward the cliffside of the beach. “Your aunt will be waiting.”

I ponder everything our bond has revealed to me as we trudge across the fine, snowy beach that sucks at our feet like quicksand.

My gaze is trained on the distance, my attention focused inwardly, so I don’t spot the big hole opening in front of us until Aruan hoists me into his arms and carries me out of harm’s way.

I glance back at the hole of swirling sand, my heart galloping in my chest.

He lowers me to my feet carefully. “You have to watch where you go. Don’t step on the darker patches of sand.”

“Jeez.” I dust down the legs of my pants. “That was close.”

“Not with me by your side.” He takes my hand back in his. “I’ll never let anything happen to you.”

I let the reassurance of that promise settle me as he leads me underneath the thin trees. Jingling as clear as a bell rings through the air. In a second, the whole bunch of flowers above our heads are chiming, creating the most beautiful, haunting music.

I gape at the flowers, having a sudden urge to reach out and touch them. “What’s that?”

“An alarm system.”

Stopping, I turn in a circle with my head tilted back. “A what?”

“It alerts your family that they have visitors.”

When I raise my free hand toward a cascade of flowers, Aruan grips my wrist.

“They’re dangerous,” he says.

“What?” I utter a laugh. “These pretty little delicate flowers?”

“They’re disguised to deceive.” He picks an unassuming yellow flower from a scrawny bush at our feet and, holding it by the long stem, lifts it to the tiny flowers that drip like a purple waterfall from the high branches of the trees.

Immediately, the air smells sweeter. The chiming turns louder.

The flowers directly above us emit the high-pitched sound of an idiophone that vibrates through the air.

The moment Aruan touches them with the yellow flower, they close around it.

Their pitch amplifies as the petals of the yellow flower turn brown before disintegrating as if being burned by a flame.

Their music increases until nothing but the stem is left, and then they turn quiet.

“That’s creepy,” I say, equal parts horrified and fascinated.

“They feed on small winged water dragons and moths, but they’re capable of devouring something as big as a flying dragon.” He continues onto a pebbled path that runs through the undergrowth. “They lure them with their music and scent.”

Small tufts of the cycad beards drift into the air as we pass to float around us like fluffy white balls.

I point at one that passes in front of my face. “What are those?”

“They’re a different kind of alarm system. They float ahead of us to let the dragons know there’s prey on the loose.”

“What do they get out of it?” There must be a reason the plants would be so “generous.”

“Those cloudy pieces will land on the carcass the dragon leaves after his meal and absorb the blood. Once they’ve soaked up their quota, they become heavy and dense enough to roll back to the plants that released them. They ferment on the ground, and the roots of their hosts can reabsorb them.”

The mental image of the blood-soaked cottonwool-ish balls makes my skin crawl. “That sounds like something from The Little Shop of Horrors .”

He smiles. “What kind of shop is that? It sounds like a place of torture.”

“It is, in a way, but it’s just a story.”

At the end of the cycad field, we reach a flat slab of stone that drops away at our feet. A vast pasture spreads out in front of us with stegosaurus and brontosaurus grazing in the yellow-green grass.