5
My eyelids squinted open, and my right eyelashes brushed against something. My cheek rested on a rough, uneven, and slick surface. Gradually, my gaze fixed on a boundless stretch of peaceful water, blue as my eyes.
The Thalion Sea.
I was sitting on the tree with legs straddled, arms hanging to the sides, and my fingers occasionally got splashed by the small waves breaking against the tree. I pressed my hands on the wet bark and lifted myself up.
I noticed two things right away.
The first was the constant and painful throbbing on my forehead, making me feel like my skull was about to explode.
The second was that Araton hadn’t come to rescue me after the fall. And I knew exactly why.
Annoyed, I touched the hairline near my temple. Feeling an instant burn, I pulled my hand back with a hiss and frowned at the sight of the vermilion stain on my fingertips.
“You must have hit your head on the tree when we fell.”
My eyes shot up, and I stared in disbelief. The soldier was alive. The Glawar waterfall was over two thousand feet tall, and even if someone miraculously survived the impact, the currents at the point where the sea met the river were too strong for a human to resurface.
Yet, this man had managed to do so. And for the second time, his presence had gone unnoticed by my elven senses.
While I was at the base of the tree, he sat near the now leafless frond, in the same position as mine.
Under the sun, his hair had already started to dry on top of his head, while water trickled from the slightly curled tips, drawing stripes on his armor.
He had a graze on his cheekbone and on his knuckles, his hands resting on his muscular thighs.
He was staring at me openly, a cocky smirk on his well-defined, full lips. His eyes hid a predatory gleam that made me wary.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” I asked, glancing at the dagger on his side as I instinctively wrapped my fingers around the hilt of my own.
Even if we had previously helped each other stay on the tree while the fury of water carried us away, that didn’t mean we were no longer enemies.
His grin widened. “I needed you to balance the tree.” He patted it as if it were a horse.
“You could have climbed up from the middle,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, well . . .” He scratched his beard, turning away as his cheeks slightly reddened. “Easier said than done.”
Especially given his heavy armor, I supposed.
With a sigh, I let go of my dagger’s hilt and looked back to gauge our distance from the coast, searching for a path that would lead each of us back to our own kingdom.
But I did not see the imposing jagged cliffs we had fallen from, nor the limestone crags that defined the Kingdom of the Elves or the golden beaches of the Kingdom of Men.
I didn’t see the Lands of the East.
Not even a thin line of earth on the horizon.
We were adrift.