Chapter 1 #2
Aela rolled her eyes. “I am not jealous. I just find it odd that you disappeared without a trace for five—”
“Eight.”
“—years.”
Jaelin followed her around her table, caught in her orbit. “Did you look for me?” He asked, with no small amount of huskiness in his tone.
Aela stilled.
“Did you miss me?” Jaelin crooned in her ear as he crowded into her space.
Aela swallowed. How could this mortal man have this kind of effect on her even after all this time? Aela squashed the humming flies that fluttered in her stomach.
“I did not miss you,” she said. Gaining back space between them as she rounded the other side of her table. “But I am curious. Where were you?”
A shadow fell over his rich brown eyes—the common color for the citizens of Prente.
“I was preoccupied.” He squinted, dismissing the truth before taking a sweeping assessment of her.
“How is it you haven’t aged a day since I last had you?
” Jaelin’s features seemed to carry the years that had passed since she had last seen him, yet somehow the new wrinkles at his eyes and grooves upon his forehead amplified his handsome, if sand-blasted, face.
Aela scoffed and ignored his non-answer and attempt at flattery, though her pulse quickened beneath her skin.
“I try to stay out of the sun,” Aela quipped, which earned a laugh from him. As patrons came to her table, Jaelin left, and she decided to put him and his annoying mortal charm firmly out of her mind.
As she helped the townspeople who stopped by her stall, answering their questions about the most beneficial uses for crystals, she kept a tight lid on her emotions. Otherwise, the roiling, unpredictable power beneath her skin might make an inopportune appearance.
And then I’d be chased out of the market. Again. Or worse.
She didn’t understand it. The planet’s wards should protect the unassuming citizens from her power, yet it had a way of breaking through.
Understanding that so-called gift was a futile task.
She had learned the hard way that her emotions were a catalyst for her magic.
Despite the wards containing her, she still felt her power build with nowhere else to go, so she sought refuge in her dreams where her power could breathe and kept to herself as much as possible.
I won’t let what happened to the mountain village happen again.
Jaelin was right. She had insisted they keep their relationship casual—as were all her dalliances over her mature life.
She wouldn’t put roots down on the desert planet, even stranded as she was.
She wasn’t supposed to be here. What would the inhabitants of Surya, or all of Prente, do if they learned what she truly was?
If they knew who really traded crystals and elixirs at their local markets year after year and who didn’t age like they did…
Aela shivered despite the heat. Being an outsider was better than being a savior.
How can I save anyone if I can’t even help myself?
Rendered in her mortal form, she was subjected to the same harsh climate of the planet and ailments of life along with its pleasures like the humans that lived and died around her.
But unlike true mortals, her appearance was merely a disarming husk, meant to put lesser beings at ease from who and what walked among them.
The market throng slowed to a trickle, and Aela began the work of putting away her displayed items back into her satchel.
She put concerning thoughts of her magic and ache for her past into the corner of her mind—where thoughts of Jaelin had taken up residence.
While she packed her satchel with fewer goods than she had come to the market with, Aela mulled over her own shopping list and didn’t notice when another patron had stopped at her booth.
An impatient clearing of a throat garnered her attention.
She barely registered him with a glance, “I’m done for the day, come back tomorrow—” The words died on her tongue as she looked up at the tallest man she had ever seen.
He was pale and clad in a rough brown robe. His hair was steel gray, and his eyes were a bottomless black. Unease pooled in her gut, becoming like a rancid pond.
“How can I help you?” she asked as she slowly stood.
“Packing up so soon? I’ve come a long way to browse your wares,” the man said in an accent that sounded displaced among the Suryans. Aela bypassed the Gods, who had never listened, and prayed silently to the Fates as she slid a hand into her pocket.
“An interesting assortment you had here...” he trailed an alabaster finger across the empty table.
“If you can come back tomorrow, I will set out my best pieces for you to browse.” With a feigned glance behind him, Aela calculated her escape.
“If you will excuse me,” she dipped her head and grasped her pack in her free hand.
“I think not, missy. I can assure you, you have everything I’ve been sent for.”
Aela was saved from the tall man’s intense scrutiny by a sudden commotion of a stall collapsing farther down the road.
As he turned his head toward the noise, Aela held her breath and pulled out a handful of hematite shards from her pocket.
In a blur of movement, she slammed them onto the table between her and the pale man.
A dark cloud exploded from the shorn crystal and concealed her inside its darkness.
Screams from neighboring stalls resounded at the sudden obscurity.
But within seconds, Aela had disappeared through the tent flaps at the back of her stall.
Her heart pounded with more than exertion as she ran for her life.
Her long, toned legs ate up the distance as she slipped past people who looked at her askance, while some shouted at her. She wanted to shush them all but couldn’t spare a second.
Don’t look back. Just keep running.
Surya wasn’t large, thankfully, and she made it to the border at the base of The Spine within moments.
Hiding behind a tree, Aela drew in a ragged breath.
She filled her lungs to the point of pain, then exhaled slowly.
Silently. Showing as little of herself as possible, she peeked out from the edge of the trunk and checked for signs of pursuit.
Nothing. But something told her to keep going.
Not questioning that internal whisper, she hurled herself away in a sprint again.
All her running to and from the mines in the desert had paid off.
Smiling grimly to herself, she quickly passed through the sparsely forested foothills and began her ascent up The Spine, confident that once she was far enough up the slopes, whoever that man was would never find her.
“I suppose it was about time to get chased away from there,” Aela panted into the arid air as she climbed the worn path up the mountain.
She tightened the straps of her satchel—thankful that the padding around the combustible vials had done their job.
A small pang of regret welled in her chest for the townspeople.
She did her best to ignore the guilt and reminded herself that, if they knew what she was, not one of them would hesitate to sell her out if they thought it would be advantageous.
It was just the way things were on Prente.
The soft clamor of civilization faded until all she heard on the desert wind was her controlled breaths and carefully placed steps.
Aela lost herself in the climb. In her escape, the landscape morphed from foothills with sparse greenery to gray and brown boulders, nearly bleached of color from the suns.
With the threat of someone chasing her, she didn’t have time to dwell on her fear of heights, and with the brutal pace she set, she could be back in the safety of her cave within a day.