36. Sie
THIRTY-SIX
SIE
“What is this place?”
When Savannah asked me to take her somewhere, I assumed it was close by, but I was beginning to question her judgment for what she considered a short trip.
Beads of sweat were dripping down my temples by the time she finally announced we were here. But I wasn’t about to admit I felt exhilarated instead of exhausted. It was the most amount of jumps I’d made in a long time, and it felt freeing to move that openly.
I was starting to notice the effects on my body from weeks of not consuming a daily poison. I was getting stronger, getting back to my old self again, and it felt fucking good.
I found I liked doing new things—things I never would have even considered before my time in the prison. My memories were tampered with. I had to constantly convince myself I was free, that I wasn’t stuck in some illusion a Tennebrisian guard projected onto me.
I was still having trouble waking up every morning. Even when I spent time with Peter, I found myself touching my forearm just to check for broken bones .
And despite the fact that this human girl annoyed me to no end, I savored that I knew I was in the present moment with her. I wasn’t cast in another illusion thousands of feet underwater in some suspended cage. I was out because there was no way in hell my mind could have conjured up something like Savannah. Whenever I was with her, I didn’t have to question my reality.
It made her annoyingly intoxicating.
I’d never let anyone dictate where I’d jump before, and I must be starting to go insane because I agreed almost immediately when she had asked. Maybe I just wanted to be with her for a little while longer. Maybe I didn’t want my mind to play tricks on me. Maybe I just didn’t want to think about Scotlind and how I failed her again… Trust me.
Fuck trust.
I just wanted a small reprieve from the current fuckery that was my life. I didn’t want to go back to a camp that was too cramped. I didn’t want to worry about whether or not this plan would work. And I definitely didn’t want to fucking think about what would happen if it did work. Scottie still wouldn’t be mine. I lost her and no plan I conjured would bring her back to me in the way I wanted.
“It’s called the dead river,” Savannah said as she headed for the bank. “I come here whenever I want to feel alive.”
I scanned the area, wiping the sweat off my forehead despite the chill in the air. There wasn’t another soul in sight, but the river still performed. A constant current flowed down the base with an occasional fish splashing and breaking the surface. Wildlife was hidden from us, but if I listened closely, I could hear that we were still surrounded by it. Lavender flowers, the same shade as Savannah’s hair, were sprouting on the other side of the bank. I couldn’t understand how something so delicate survived in a harsh climate. My breath was a constant cloud of smoke in front of me, and if it weren’t for the layers of clothes we were provided before we set out to scope the meeting grounds, my balls would have frozen off.
Savannah made her way toward the river’s edge, and despite the freezing temperatures, she sank into the snow, curling her feet behind her. “What are you doing?”
“Enjoying the water.”
“I mean, what are you doing here? Why did you want to come? Why make me bring you?”
“To enjoy the water,” she repeated as if that answer should’ve been obvious.
I ran my fingers through my hair in frustration. I was long overdue for a cut, it was almost as long as hers, stopping just above my shoulders. “You did not just make me teleport you for the past hour so you could look at water . There’s water back at the camp.”
She turned to glare at me, her palms sinking further into the snow, and fuck, she looked serene amongst the white powder. She was so out of place, just like the purple flowers amongst the winter, but yet somehow she still belonged.
I had no idea how she was managing because humans were even less adapted to temperature changes than Advenians. Tennebris was colder around the border of the shields, but we were never outside long enough to feel the numbness from it.
“I didn’t make you do anything. You agreed. And the water isn’t the same at the camp. I like it here better.”
“Why?” I asked as I started making my way toward her on the bank, mainly because I had nothing else to do.
“Because no one ever comes here. I like being alone and not in a camp full of Advenians—”
She cut herself off, but she didn’t have to finish her thought for me to imagine what she was going to say. I felt the same way. Even though I was in awe at what Tezya created, I fucking hated it. The camp was everything Scotlind ever wanted. She had asked me if it was possible one of the nights at the lake when we were still married, and I told her no. It felt like a reminder of everything I lost, and for once in my life, I didn’t know what to do next. I was supposed to be the king. I was supposed to be with Scotlind. And all the fucking Advenians at the camp who stared at me everywhere I went… they knew it. They knew, and I was growing sick of their judgment.
I sat down next to her in the snow but didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what Savannah’s life was like, but I saw the way some of the soldiers interacted with her. How she’d get pissed off whenever one of them called her Lavender . At first, I hated myself for watching her. The fact that I even knew what she did in her spare time was infuriating.
But it was only because she was my reminder that I was free. That was it.
We were silent for a while. I wasn’t sure how long we sat there with the snow seeping into our clothes. But I felt like, for the first time since I was rescued, I could breathe. I could just exist without the constant reminder of everything I’d lost.
“Come on, follow me.” She stood, wiping her palms across her thighs. “There’s a hidden path to the river about a half mile down.”
“What do you mean hidden ?” I asked, but she was already walking away from me. Sighing loudly, I followed her more out of frustration. I was tempted as hell to just leave her here, but I didn’t doubt she’d eventually find her way back to the new camp. She seemed to have a knack for navigating the mortal territory, and to my surprise, had a fair amount of knowledge of both Advenian kingdoms too.
And I had no desire to deal with a pissed off Dravenburg if I came back without his only daughter. Despite her never listening to him and constantly running away, he was overprotective to a fault.
A soft hum sounded as Savannah vanished before my eyes. It looked like the river just stopped, meeting with a harsh tree line too thick to walk through. There was no way in hell I’d fit through the gap, but the girl just disappeared. I hesitated for a moment before following her. As soon as I did, the river stretched out before me. The temperature rose multiple degrees, the warmth a telltale sign this was the work of an air user.
“Why is there a shield in the middle of the mortal territory?” I asked in a daze. A few paces out, the river dropped into a pounding waterfall. The sound was deafening. I turned back to face where we just came from. Snow and ice stood at my back, but past the shield everything was vibrant and green. More of the lavender flowers were scattered throughout the riverbank.
Air shields fascinated the hell out of me. How one thing could do so much: control the temperature, cast invisibility, block sounds, act as a protection barrier. It was the one ability I wished Tennebris had. It was a match against the Dark’s psychic powers, and one of two abilities that blocked out Tennebrisian compulsion.
“Because Dove and I love this place so much, we wanted it just for ourselves.”
“And did you find this place by stealing a folder and wandering through the middle of nowhere?” I asked.
She leveled a stare with me. “I like to hike and be outside.”
“I didn’t really take the princess to be a nature buff,” I said, and for some reason it didn’t surprise me that Savannah was. But Dovelyn coming here sounded laughable. I didn’t really take her for anything other than a stuck-up snob who wouldn’t sit on anything that wasn’t cushioned or cleaned prior, but I didn’t add that part.
She huffed a laugh to herself. “She’s not, but this place is special to me, so she sucks it up. We needed a place to escape to, and we both fell in love with the solitude of it. And since I love it here and come much more frequently than she does, she overlooks the whole water thing.”
“Water thing? ”
“Oh, yeah. Dovelyn hates water, and I mean hates it.”
“Good to know,” I started to say, but she was already walking over to the cliff’s edge where the waterfall started, removing her clothes as she went. She stepped out of her pants first, walking backwards, and not taking her eyes off me. Her shirt came off next. Feathered wings covered her rib cage and dipped over her stomach. I was mesmerized by it until she spun around and her bra came off next.
The same flowers that spanned the area of this place went up her spine. The clusters stacked on top of each other in a vertical manner, covering each knob of her vertebrae. They didn’t hold any color, just the bare bones of the flowers that I wouldn’t have known they were meant to be purple if we weren’t surrounded by them now.
I couldn’t get over my fascination with her markings—or mortal tattoos as she called them—it was weird to see black patterns over someone’s body when they weren’t exposed to water. I kept staring at them, too busy getting lost in the designs, that I wasn’t prepared for her to jump. I hadn’t even noticed she fully undressed before she leapt off the soft grass and fell into the roaring water below. Her thick winter clothes were in piles before the bank.
“Fuck.” I bolted toward the edge, then teleported the rest of the way. I managed to catch her awkwardly right before she landed in the uproar, but we were tumbling too fast. I couldn’t teleport us away before we were sinking into its depths, the pounding water above pushing us further and further into the deep. I felt her wet skin against mine as she pushed me off and swam to the surface. The heavy coat I was still wearing was weighing me down, taking me longer to swim to the surface.
When we both sprang free, inhaling mouthfuls of air, she spun to look at me. “Why did you do that?”
“I saved you,” I answered. “You fell into the water. I think a thank you would be nice. ”
She laughed. Hard. The sound was light and carefree. I watched her bob in the water a good distance away from me, her chin dipping under the surface with each giggle. I was surprised to find the temperature tepid, enjoyable almost.
“I jumped, you idiot, on purpose , and now your clothes will be soaking wet when we head back.”
Irritation rang through me. I hadn’t thought of that. I looked up at where we came from, at least fifty feet above us. “You could have died.”
“I’ve made this jump multiple times before.”
I stared at her in shock. She was a human. Mortal. Their bodies were supposed to be so fucking fragile. And yet she willingly did this. “Why did you jump?”
She splashed water at my face. “For fun. Haven’t you ever done anything for fun before?”
No. But I wasn’t about to tell her that. “Aren’t you scared of dying?” I asked instead of answering. I tried to focus on our conversation and not on the fact that she was naked, or that the water was clear, despite it being dark, and it did little to hide her body. She dipped underwater, and I held my breath as she started swimming toward me. I couldn’t look away.
“No, I’m not scared of dying,” she answered when she came back up for air, only a few inches in front of me now. Her hair was now a deep purple instead of its usual light lavender coloring. “I’m scared of not living.”