11. Scotlind
ELEVEN
SCOTLIND
My chest was rising and falling out of rhythm, and I couldn’t steady my heart long enough to hear properly. I was terrified of what would happen when Tezya and Sie saw each other, but I wasn’t expecting to see Tezya holding him down or Sie trying to attack him. I was in more trouble than I thought.
I did my best to ignore the two of them following me. Peter came up next to me, grinning stupidly from ear to ear.
“What?” I snapped at him.
“Nothing. I’m just really, really going to enjoy what you do next. Which is what, by the way?”
I gritted my teeth because I had absolutely no idea what to do.
“Rumor,” Tezya’s voice caught me off guard from behind me. “This way.” He pointed toward a large tent off to my left.
“Right,” I said as I turned to follow him. I had no idea why I decided I could lead the way to dinner. I’d never been here before and had no idea where anything was located.
I followed Tezya toward the dining hall with my head down. I could feel Peter still grinning beside me and knew Sie was somewhere behind us. Loud chatter and the clanging of drinks echoed throughout the tent—tent wasn’t the right word for it. It expanded so far in either direction that it seemed more like a building than fabric thrown together. There was a singular step to get inside with plank flooring covering the ground, giving the illusion it was a room.
A slight hush went over the hundreds of Advenians crammed inside the massive space, but it never fully quieted. An unsettling feeling washed over me as everyone’s eyes momentarily glanced our way. Numerous heads bobbed in time with one another before I realized they were just recognizing Tezya. It was eerie to see so many faces, knowing the King of Lux ordered them all dead. That they would have all been dead if it wasn’t for him.
A girl with lavender hair chopped to her shoulders ran over as soon as she saw us. “Tez!” she screamed and jumped into his arms. He picked her up, her feet lifting off the ground as he twirled her in a circle.
“Sav, I’ve missed you.” He smiled once he set her back down. She was tall, about a whole head over me, but Tezya still towered over her.
A flash of saffron and black whipped through the crowd as Kallon walked over to us, a pitcher of ale in her hand. It was the longest time I’d seen her sporting the same hair colors. “Let me introduce you,” Kallon grinned as she came up next to her.
The lavender-haired girl smiled and it was warm and sweet. She was breathtaking in a unique way. I’d never seen a female like her before. Her energy matched her bouncy form. A thick silver hoop jutted from the side of one nostril and large feathered earrings dangled from her ears.
My eyes drifted down her outfit. She wore a similar shirt to the one Tezya gave me when we visited the mortal world for the first time. It had the same ugly green man on it holding a beverage. This time reading, the froth is strong with this one. A jacket was tied around her waist, leaving a small sliver of her abdomen on display from where the shirt cropped. I couldn’t help but notice she didn’t have any scars—at least none that were showing—and I wondered what that was like.
“Sav, this is Scottie, Peter, and Sie. Everyone, this is Savannah Dravenburg,” Kallon said, in between taking a sip from her ale.
“Nice to meet you all.” Savannah grinned, and I hated how musically sweet her voice sounded. My gut twisted with unexpected jealousy as I kept wondering who she was to Tezya, and the image of him picking her up as she jumped into his arms kept replaying in my head.
“Sav is the daughter of the commander who runs the camp,” Kallon added.
“And how do you all know each other?” the girl asked, tucking a strand of her purple hair behind her ear. More earrings went up the entire length of her earlobe.
Kallon answered her. “Well, Scottie here was married to Sie, who used to be the Dark Prince of Tennebris, but he isn’t anymore. He’s technically a convict now. They annulled their marriage prior to him becoming a criminal-on-the-run-fugitive, and now she has a thing for my fiancé. Really, I can’t blame the girl, she has a hot prince complex.”
My jaw dropped. “Thanks for that, Kallon,” I muttered, heat rising to my cheeks.
“I’m just stating facts, babes.” Kallon winked.
Peter grinned so wide I thought his dimples would reach the inside of his skull. “I like you. A lot.”
Kallon returned his smile and offered him a sip of her ale. “And this is Peter, from Tennebris. No one knows anything about him, except he’s friends with these two, and he was kidnapped wearing a dress.” She gestured toward Peter who was taking a long sip from Kallon’s drink, but I could still see him grinning through the rim of the glass .
“It’s better that way,” I mumbled, knowing full well Peter was going to hound me for the introduction later.
The lavender-haired girl smirked at me. “You have great taste in men.” Her gaze shifted from Tezya to Sie, and I had to roll my shoulders to keep myself from doing anything stupid.
“How come your markings don’t fade from your skin,” Sie asked her. He’d been quietly taking everything in and hearing his voice shocked me. It was the first time he’d spoken since we left the tent, and I still hadn’t comprehended that he was back yet. “There isn’t a drop of sweat on you, so I’m assuming you’re not wet right now?”
The girl choked on a laugh, and Kallon spit out her drink she had just gotten back from Peter. “That is not something you ask a girl in front of others.” Kallon chuckled.
“She’s human,” Tezya answered over the girls’ laughter. He was the only person taking his question seriously.
“Human?” Sie repeated softly like he couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t either. I hadn’t anticipated running into a mortal here and with her height and slender frame, she looked Advenian. “Why does she have the Luxian markings then?” Sie asked as he pointed to Savannah. Her tan arms were inked with black designs, but they didn’t fade from her skin like ours did. Hers remained present. The phases of the Earth’s moon went up her right forearm while her left had a variation of numbers and letters I couldn’t make sense of. The sliver of her stomach that was showing had glimpses of black markings, but I couldn’t make out what they were.
I assessed her in a new light, taking a good look at her now. Sie was right—she didn’t appear to be sweating or have any form of liquid on her skin, so why weren’t the designs fading?
“Because they aren’t markings, prince,” the girl answered Sie. “It’s a tattoo.”
“What’s a tattoo?” Peter asked.
“Think of it like artwork for your skin. ”
“Is this rare among your kind to be born with art?”
She laughed again. “I wasn’t born with it. I went to get it done. It’s tiny needles filled with a special ink—”
“You stabbed yourself to look like that?” Peter asked in amusement.
“I wouldn’t call it stabbing . They’re small pinpricks. It barely hurts.”
“You’re mortal,” Sie said, still taking her in. “And you know about us?” He paused to look around the large gathering tent before his eyes rested back on the girl. “How many mortals are in this place?”
“Three,” she responded flatly, crossing her arms over her chest. “And seeing as this is my home, it would be odd if I didn’t know about your kind.”
“Where’s your brother?” Tezya asked, ignoring Sie’s shocked expression. Actually, all three of us probably looked dumbfounded as we processed the fact that a human was standing in front of us.
“Wells is here somewhere.” She shrugged. “It’s burger night, so you know he wouldn’t miss it for any chemical compound he could compose in his lab.”
Kallon huffed a laugh. “I don’t blame him. Allen can make one mean burger, which I desperately need right now to go with my ale.”
“Good, I’m starving.” Savannah turned around, eyeing the tent. “Let’s get a table.” She gave one last glance at Sie before locking arms with Kallon and walking off. Seeing them arm in arm, one head full of lavender, the other half black, half yellow, I could see where Kallon got her sense of fashion from. I’d always wondered how her hair kept changing and now figured it had something to do with her.
I was left standing with Peter, Sie, and Tezya. No one spoke as we silently followed them. We blended into the line and waited our turn for food .
I watched Tezya ahead of me, taking in everything he did, mimicking his motions, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sie and Peter do the same. I grabbed a circular slab of meat, then a piece of bread shaped the same and a few vegetables.
A little girl, who couldn’t have been much older than five, came charging at Tezya. “Tezzia! Tezzia!” she yelled, stumbling on his name. She leapt into his arms, nearly knocking the food out of his hands.
“Lamitte.” Tezya smiled. “You grew. How old are you now? Three?”
The girl laughed in his arms as she reverently shook her head. “No, I’m four!”
“Sorry, Tezya,” an older version of the girl he was holding said. “I told her not to jump on you like this.”
“It’s not a problem, Clarice,” Tezya said as he gently set the girl back down, and she ran to her mother.
The two of them left, but it didn’t stop the numerous Advenians from staring after him. I silently followed him toward the table where Savannah and Kallon were already eating when something dawned on me. So far, Tezya knew everyone by name. Several other people acknowledged him or patted his back as we passed, and almost everyone bowed their heads. Tezya regarded each of them, and despite the recognition, he wasn’t getting any special treatment here.
I tried not to dwell on the fact that I’d been openly staring at him, watching as he interacted with everyone. And now, I was full on glaring as he took the open seat next to the mortal.
I purposely sat away from him, forcing myself to look around the tent instead of at him and the girl.
There were variations of eyes within the tent. Most of them were the unique coloring of Lux—silver, purple, aqua, sage, yellow, opal, lavender, coral. But within the unique coloring, I saw mixes of black eyes, some brown, some hazel—the Tennebrisian coloring .
Sie must have noticed too. “Are these people only from Lux?”
“No,” Tezya answered. “Advenians from both kingdoms live here.”
Peter, only having a plate filled with bread, dropped the roll he was holding. “They live together?”
Tezya nodded. “This is a refuge for every rebel. It doesn’t matter what kingdom they’re from. Most of the time, the rebellions happen in Lux, so there are more Luxians, but Advenians from Tennebris live here too.”
“Rebel,” Sie repeated, his gaze whipping around the room at the same time Peter asked, “And do they like… sleep with each other?” His voice was obnoxiously loud, to the point of practically screaming it. Every table surrounding ours turned to glare at us.
The lavender-hair girl choked on her food and couldn’t stop smiling.
“They usually keep to their own families,” Tezya answered. “But what people do in private is their own business. There’re no rules like that here.”
“Other than the training rings and the dining hall, the two kingdoms don’t really mix,” Kallon said in between bites of food. I looked around, guessing the people in the camp had no idea that Tezya was living proof a child from both kingdoms could exist. They could mix. I wondered if that was why there wasn’t a rule against it. Did he wish more people were like him?
“Where is everyone else?” Savannah asked, steering the conversation away. “Father said you were staying for good, so I thought Dove, Brock, and Rainer would be here.”
Tezya’s jaw clicked at the sound of his sister’s and friends’ names. I only noticed because I realized I had been staring at him again. I quickly pulled my gaze away and focused on my food.
“They’re still in Lux. I’m due to fetch them in an hour,” Kallon answered for him, leaving out the information that they might not come back.
“Once Dovelyn returns you should train with her,” Tezya’s voice sounded. I looked up when no one answered him and realized he was staring at me.
“Me?” I choked on my first bite of burger, which was a shame because it was so good it melted in my mouth. “She hates me. She’ll probably kill me before she actually agrees to train me.”
“I’ll make sure she doesn’t.”
“Well, I don’t particularly care for her either,” I spat. “I don’t understand why I would need to train with her. Why can’t I train with Kallon?” I didn’t add ‘ or you’ even though I missed him teaching me. Besides hating the Luxian castle and being a prisoner there, I missed training together in the private gym.
“Because I want you to be ready. We will all start training,” Tezya announced to the table. “There’s going to be a war sooner or later.”
Savannah was the only person who looked thrilled by the idea, and I wondered if he meant to include her.
“War?” Sie repeated, and I forgot he knew nothing about what was happening.
“You didn’t think rescuing you from the prison would come without any consequences, did you?” Kallon arched a thin brow under her bangs.
“Who are all these people?” he asked, ignoring Kallon. “You called them rebels, but the rebellion is dead. You killed them.” He was looking right at Tezya now and the fire in his glare was menacing.
“Clearly I didn’t,” Tezya ground out, not really giving him an answer, before turning back to look at me. “If you can master your enhancement, Rumor, it’ll be a huge asset to us,” Tezya added. “You need to make sure you aren’t subconsciously using it on anyone around you anymore.” He didn’t need to explain why that was a priority.
“Practicing with an air user will be the best way to see your progress,” he continued. “You can enhance Dovelyn’s shields and expand her invisibility. See how much you can add to her powers and for how long.”
Sie’s hands fell against the table with an echoing thud. “You figured out your powers?” His voice was breathless and it brought me back to the lake when he tried to train me.
“Yes,” I admitted softly. I didn’t say anything else at first. It took me swallowing six times before I got the courage to add, “I have enhancement.”
No one spoke after that, and I wondered if he made the same connection Tezya had. That my enhancement was what he felt all those times I wasn’t wearing my Alluse necklace. That we never had a blood bond.
Sie didn’t say anything, but I noticed his jaw tightening, and his fists remained clenched on top of the table.
He didn’t eat for the rest of dinner.