Page 26 of The Unseen Hour (The Unseen Hour Duology #1)
“ Y ou distracted me so I’d calm down,” I observed.
“Did it work?”
“Yes. I appreciate it. It’s silly, maybe.
I was ready to risk the trip down here, without knowing what was awaiting me.
Now that I’m here, though, now that I know there’s a chance he could be in the Meadow as a Shade and not how I’d hoped to find him—it’s as though if I don’t face it maybe it won’t be real. ”
Orion squeezed my hand reassuringly.
“I can relate. When I first got here, when I realized what was happening … there weren’t so many Shades back then, of course. Not in that first hour, when it was only Emrys. I recognized many of the people who had been Taken. Seeing my brothers like that nearly shattered me.”
“Oh, Orion. I’m so sorry.” I felt ridiculously dense. Bloody ghosts, I’d been going on about my father and hadn’t even considered that he’d already found his family in the Ether. That they’d been here with him for years upon years.
If I’d been stuck in the Ether, with no guide and no way of knowing at first what was happening, and I’d seen Bram floating around, I might just have gone mad.
“You shouldn’t have had to go through everything alone,” I said.
“It took me a while to adjust to this place. At first, I tried to save them. I tried to find a way out, just like you’re trying to do. Then, when I’d come to terms with the fact that I couldn’t get them out, I avoided the Meadow for quite a while.”
I didn’t blame him.
“I grew used to it, eventually. But coming here with someone else, someone alive—it’s very grounding. I’m not glad you’re stuck here, but I am glad you are here,” he admitted.
In spite of the obstacles I faced returning to my family, and the threat that an angry god might descend, I agreed. I felt more at ease with Orion, wearing trousers and wandering through the woods, than I ever had in a drawing room or at a dance.
I wanted to tell him, but I felt as ill-equipped to express that feeling as he said he was, being human. I was out of my depth.
When I stopped walking, Orion turned to me, put his other hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes.
“Are you ready? I know you said you wanted to check the Shades, but I don’t want to rush you into anything, either. I want you to find him, but if you don’t want to see … if you’d rather I search the Shades …”
“I appreciate it, really I do. But I need to see for myself. We should go through the Shades. Although, looking at their numbers, I can see that it might take weeks.”
“It’s a bit easier when you realize how they’re clustered. They float and flit, but I find that they tend to be drawn back to certain groupings, just like they’re drawn to who they know in Emrys.”
He kept my hand in his as he walked me around the Shades, and it fought off the worst of the Meadow’s chill, warming me all the way through.
“Over there you’ll see people from Mejje, in their silks and flowy fabrics from the warmer environments.
That cluster adjacent to them is from Sez.
The leather and other thick fabrics are designed to protect them from snake bites and sharp teeth.
That cluster of individuals wearing warm furs is from Tang, not that they feel the chill here. ”
“And do you feel it?”
“I think I’ve grown used to it, after so many years. Honestly, I don’t remember ever being bothered by it; just aware of it.”
He was clearly thicker-skinned than I was.
We spent the afternoon walking the entire perimeter of the Shades. I could see, when we hit portions of the Shades wearing fashions like what my mother described from her grandparents’ generation, that they could be organized by relative timeline as well as region.
There were exceptions, Shades that had wandered farther than others, but they were largely bound by the location and time from which they had been taken.
We did our best to come up with a count based on Orion’s memory of each Unseen Hour and some admittedly questionable math on my part from tallying the Shades. Then we divided it by how many individuals we realistically thought we could approach in a day.
I kept a sharp eye out, but I didn’t see my father. A combination of relief and worry surged inside me.
We returned to the edge of the woods later in the day, stopping to eat under the sparser tree cover before walking all the way back to the cottage.
Orion passed me a pear.
We chatted a bit more about our lives before the Ether .
“And what about travel? Did you have a chance to do much of that before you ended up here?” I asked.
I knew, based on R.’s journals, that his brother had.
Orion shook his head.
“No. Well, technically yes. I did travel a fair amount, but it wasn’t the kind I would have liked. I accompanied my father on some journeys related to businesses our family supports, but I never had the opportunity to explore places in the manner I would have wished. And you?”
He had to know the answer, but he still waited patiently for me to respond.
“No. Ladies rarely get to travel. Although I would like to see everything. The islands of Sez in particular. They’re said to have some unique animals and plants. I’m betting I could bring them back with me … the plants, not the animals. Although …” I grinned at him, and he chuckled.
“I am hard-pressed to imagine the wild animals of Sez in an Emrys stable, but you distracted the slycat; maybe you’d have luck with Sez’s animals as well.”
“At least with the Ether, I’m getting to see some interesting wildlife. Honestly, this may be the best, and quite frankly only, adventure I’ve ever had.”
He tilted his head, flashing a grin at me. My heart stuttered.
“Glad I could do something for you, Starlight.”
“Thank you, Ry .” I waited to see what he would make of the new nickname. His face froze for a moment, then he laughed again. This time, his smile reached all the way up to his eyes, and the blue glinted within the grey.
“Ry and Starlight. A duo of would-be explorers who went farther than we ever anticipated,” he said.
When he said our names together, something thrilling and dangerous stirred in my chest.