Page 22

22

A Twisted Tangle

W e leave with first light. I didn’t sleep well; every noise of the jungle around us made me jump, and I lay awake for ages after a particularly loud screech that Daenn told me was “only a monkey.”

I’m not sure what a monkey is, so that’s not really comforting.

But this morning is calmer, quieter. The sun is cheery, and up above the oppressive closeness of the jungle, the air is cool. I imagine the wind is tugging all my worries away from me, and for a little while, I simply bask in the sunlight and the wind and the solid feel of Daenn at my back.

We touch down for lunch in a clearing, scaring away some sort of fuzzy wildlife that chatters at us from the trees for a solid minute after we land. Storm loses patience and shrieks in its direction.

It’s silent after that.

I leave Daenn to unpack the food, and I walk the edge of our clearing, stretching my legs and peering between the trees for any sign of snakes or monkeys or insectoid monsters. The sticky heat under the canopy is already getting to me, so I tug off my gloves as I go. There are a few flashes of color in this area—strange rounded flowers in shades of orange, white, and pink, with an opening that reminds me of a lowland lady’s slippers. Waxy deep green fronds are interspersed with lighter green bunches of a moss-like plant with long tiny strands I could see on an old, wizened man’s face in place of his beard.

I stop at a flash of deep color out of the corner of my eye. In the shade of the trees beyond the clearing’s edge grows a profusion of flowers. They’re almost a maroon or purplish-black, especially toward the centers. Delicate yellow pollen stems cluster there, seeming even brighter against the dark petals. A single flower is huge, nearly as large as my face, each petal glossy. I walk closer, pushing past the leaves of a frond. I reach out a hand to touch one—

A spike of alarm stabs through me from the bond, and Daenn’s gloved hand shoots out and grabs my arm before I make contact.

“Don’t,” he warns, his panic subsiding in my chest to a dull relief.

“What is it?” Clearly he knows, to have such a strong reaction to my attempt at touching it.

“It’s a death lily.”

The name is ominous, but it strikes a familiar note in my mind, a distant memory from time spent with my mother, watching her pound leaves into poultices.

“These are medicinal.”

“They are medicinal in small doses,” he agrees grimly. “And lethal in higher ones.”

“Mother used to grind them up to make a sleeping draught.” I reach forward again, but Daenn’s grip tightens on my arm.

“Don’t, Emana. We don’t have the antidote.” His calm voice is belied by the tight worry in my chest, the echo of his feelings .

I give him a side-eye. “Touching the petals won’t kill me. It’s dangerous when ingested, not when touched.” My tone turns teasing. “I promise not to lick it.”

His jaw ripples as I turn away, and that worry is still thick in my chest, but he doesn’t protest again as I reach forward and pluck a flower.

A potent smell immediately fills the air, something between lavender and rose. Milky pink latex beads from where the stem ends. The stalk is half the thickness of my pinky, and the leaves are waxy to the touch. I brush a hand over the petals; they look glossy, but they feel softer than velvet.

“It’s beautiful,” I murmur, trying to swallow away the swell of emotions. The smell, the name, it all brings me sharply back to spending time with my mother before I left the clan, before she…

“It’s nothing but death.” Daenn’s voice is laced with derision. It’s not much, barely even there, but I catch it.

I frown at him. “That’s not true.”

He steps back, and only then do I register how close he was standing in the first place. “Of course it is. A safe dosage is miniscule. All that plant really brings is a quick end.”

It takes me a moment to pinpoint the tension I’m sensing in the air, behind his words, but once I do, I tense.

Like me.

It’s unspoken, but the idea is clear in the way he turns away, hiding his expression, even though he can’t hide the pinch of pain he’s feeling or the tight set to his shoulders.

I dart ahead of him and press the flower into his hands. He takes it on instinct before recoiling, but I tighten my grip around his hands. I stare into his eyes, searching their green depths. When I speak, it’s with an edge of steel .

“These flowers are so much more than death. The tonics healers can make from them ease pain and allow restless ill to sleep in peace. Yes, a higher dosage can kill, but even that has its uses. Death is an important part of life—a vital part. The aspens on our mountains wouldn’t ever grow without wildfires first razing the ground. Mushrooms come from decay. Every living creature survives off the death of some other plant or animal. You can’t reduce something to only the death that comes from it.” My voice drops. “Fire is deadly, but without it we would die on our mountain. We need it. We want it. It would be absurd for fire to despise its own nature.”

I’m not speaking about lilies or fire anymore, and I’m not sure Daenn knows that. I’m not sure if I want him to.

But… from the way his eyes flicker, the way a twisted tangle of emotions I can’t sort through whispers from him, maybe he does realize.

My fingers tighten over his, and I drop my gaze to the lily held between us. “Appreciate the beauty of the flower instead of hating what it can do.”

His breath exhales over me, and I realize how very close he’s standing. I can feel his gaze boring into me. It’s too much. Too intense, too familiar.

I step back and turn, breaking the spell of our proximity, even if I can’t break the bond that shares every emotion between us. I try not to think about how that means he can sense my own tangle of emotions, how I ache for him, how afraid I am to care for him, how much I want him to be my Daenn. I can only hope they’re mystifying to him, since he doesn’t know the motivations behind them any more than I know his.

Never mind that he knows me well enough to figure out those details if he wants .

“I’m starving,” I announce too brightly. “Is there any fruit?”

I collect a few more lilies and wrap them in a spare waxed cloth before we set out for the afternoon. I don’t know why, but I badly want to keep them, maybe even try to make them into a sleeping draught like Mother used to make. Tangible proof of my words to Daenn earlier.

The afternoon starts as calmly as the morning was, but we’ve only been flying a few hours when I hear a strange buzzing noise.

I glance over my shoulder, but I’ve miscalculated the direction. Daenn swears and his own fear spikes as Storm suddenly swerves, dropping down and to the right to avoid the insect monster barreling up from the jungle beneath us. Daenn’s arm turns into a vise around my middle, pinning me to his chest. I lean back into him, grateful for the anchor, doing my best not to devolve into panic as my mind flashes back to falling from Raindrop, as my emotions try to claw into my stomach and shred it.

I dare to peek over Storm’s side. The insect monster has dropped several paces below us. A group of even more of the monsters rises from the canopy of the jungle, flying straight for us. There have to be at least half a dozen of them.

“Daenn—” I begin, but he’s already turned to look. He whips back and tightens his grip around my waist. Behind my legs, his press hard into Storm’s sides. The gryphon shoots forward like a bolt of lightning, flying faster than I knew he could.

The insect monsters’ sounds are lost to the wind whistling past us, but when I risk another glance back, they’re still there; I’m not sure if they look angry that we’re expanding the gap or if their buggy faces are just permanently terrifying.

Daenn tugs me into place; he’s pressed fully against my back, pinning me between him and Storm as we hurtle through the air.

I don’t know how long we fly at this frantic pace, but we do slowly lose the monsters. Storm’s sides heave and grow damp beneath us. Daenn hasn’t loosened his hold on me, and I can only imagine how his muscles must be protesting from being so taut for so long.

Finally, by some unspoken agreement between gryphon and man that I'm not privy to, we slow. It’s still fairly early, but with how hard Storm pushed, I suspect he can’t go on any longer.

Storm glides to the ground, making for a break in the trees that’s not quite big enough for him and that has him tucking his wings for a moment. He snaps them back out after we clear the top of the canopy, but we land with a slightly harder thump than usual.

Daenn drops to the ground and pulls me with him. By necessity I stay close; this spot they’ve chosen is barely big enough for two people, let alone two people and a giant gryphon. Storm immediately collapses to lie in the dirt. His sides continue to heave, and I can see frothy sweat on his hindquarters now that I’m off him.

I silently help Daenn tend to Storm. I pull out the dried meat rations we keep on hand for when the gryphon can’t hunt and offer them to him. He scarfs them down in one gulp as Daenn rubs down his sides.

“You did well today, Storm,” I murmur, scratching him on the side of his neck as he eats. “Thank you. ”

He makes a noise a bit like a grunt. Probably something along the lines of ‘of course I did.’

Once Storm’s cared for, I set out the charms, then I find a tree and lean against its trunk. Daenn continues to fuss over his gryphon and gear, checking the straps on the saddle and speaking to Storm in a low tone I can’t quite make out. He moves with a slow weariness. It may just be from the afternoon’s misadventure, but something tells me it’s not.

I glare at the glint of the bracer on his wrist. If I tune in to my magic, I can sense the tug as the bracer pulls at Daenn’s magic. It’s not strong, but it’s steady.

I can’t banish the worry, and, in the back of my mind, I hope Daenn assumes it’s about the monsters. But it’s not. It’s circling, an echo that won’t leave me alone.

What is the bracer doing to Daenn?