Mavlyn frowned, not sure if she bought that explanation. But she wasn’t about to argue her way into spending another night in a jail cell, so she allowed the guards to lead her and Leap into a guest chamber. Fresh bedclothes, towels, and a bath with a privacy screen awaited, and Mavlyn’s entire body cried out at the sight of the two soft feather beds. She barely noticed the rest of her surroundings, nor when the guards shut and bolted the door behind them.
“Hey.” Leap waved a hand in front of Mavlyn’s face, and she blinked, realizing that she’d dozed off while standing. She turned to see him frowning at her, a concerned look on his face. “I was asking if you wanted to use the bath first.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah, if you don’t mind.” Mavlyn glanced down at herself, and her skin crawled as she realized how dirty she was. She couldn’t lie down on those pristine bedsheets without bathing first.
Grabbing a set of towels and bed clothes from the edge of the nearest bed, she hung them across the top of the privacy screen, then ducked behind it and stripped off her clothes. An involuntary moan slipped from between her lips as she sank into the bathtub, muscles she hadn’t even realized were tense relaxing as the hot water soaked into them.
“Hey,” Leap warned, though there was a note of amusement in his voice. “Don’t enjoy yourselftoomuch. There are children present.”
“Oh, shut up.” Mavlyn said, but the words came out more like a chuckle than a true admonishment. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Grabbing a bar of soap, she lathered it up and scrubbed herself down, washing off the travel dust and grime until her skin was soft and shiny. She knew she should get out now, let Leap have his turn, but the water was so warm and inviting, her limbs so lethargic, that she couldn’t bring herself to leave it yet.
Just one more minute,she told herself, leaning the back of her head against the rim of the tub.
Her thoughts drifted, and soon Mavlyn found herself floating in darkness. She felt weightless, as though she had become a formless entity with no physical body, and she let herself drift there for a while, enjoying the sensation of being free of all burdens. But all too soon, the darkness faded away, revealing a windowless room with grey walls. Mavlyn frowned as she stared around at the space—it was lavishly furnished, with all the creature comforts, and yet the stone walls felt oppressive, almost like a prison. Was she in some kind of underground bunker? How did she get here?
“Mavlyn?” a familiar voice said from behind her, bubbling with delight. “Is that really you?”
Mavlyn spun toward the voice, and would have toppled over if she’d had a body. Quye sat just a few feet away on a massive, overstuffed couch, her feet propped up on a matching stool, an open book on her lap. Her cloud of white curls were tied into a long braid that hung over her shoulder. Her heart-shaped face beamed with delight as she looked at Mavlyn, blue-grey eyes sparkling, cheeks flushed. Mavlyn could only stare, stunned speechless at the sight.
She’d forgotten just how stunning the Oracle was.
“Oh, I’m so happy you’re here!” Quye leaped off the couch, book forgotten, and rushed over to Mavlyn with outstretched hands. Mavlyn tried to grasp them, but with no corporeal form, she passed straight through Quye’s body. Still, the phantom touch sent an electric thrill through her.
“Where are we?” I asked, looking around the room. “Is this real?”
“Yes, and also no,” Quye admitted. She tucked a stray curl of hair behind her ear, and Mavlyn wasn’t sure why, but she found the gesture ridiculously adorable. “We’re on a different plane of existence, somewhere between the dream realm and the spirit realm. As the Oracle, I’ve always had a strong connection to both, and I’ve been using it to try and reach you for the last few days. I’m so glad it finally worked,” she added, looking around the room with a hopeless sigh. “Uncle Oren tried to make this place feel like home, but his decorator has awful taste. I need you to come rescue me before I perish from boredom.”
Despite the bizarreness of the situation, Mavlyn sorted. “Is that all?” she asked, a little dryly. “Just boredom?”
“Well, no.” Quye flipped her braid over her shoulder. “There is the fate of the world and all that, too. Uncle Oren means well and all, but my life is not the one at stake here. If you don’t get me out of here in the next few days, and we don’t do what needs to be done, Adara will die.”
Mavlyn’s mood plummeted like the temperature of a frozen wasteland. “What do you mean, Adara will die?” she asked, her voice rising along with her panic. “And how are we supposed to find you? Where is this place?”
“I—”
Someone shook Mavlyn by the shoulders, and she reared up from the bathtub, water sloshing all over the floor. “Mavlyn, wake up!” Leap shouted in her face. His nose was mere inches from hers, eyes wide with panic, and she realized it was his fingers curled around her shoulders, his nails digging into her bare skin.
“Giant’s teeth!” Mavlyn shoved him back, heart-pounding, then immediately regretted it when he went skidding across the sopping wet floor, nearly falling on his ass. She started to rise from the tub, then dropped back into the water when she remembered she was stark naked. “What was that for?” she demanded.
“You were out cold!” Leap snapped, placing a hand on the windowsill to steady himself. He glared at Mavlyn, his storm-grey eyes not quite meeting her own, and Mavlyn suspected the pink flush in his cheeks had more to do with embarrassment than anger. “You were in that tub for over thirty minutes and didn’t answer when I called your name, so I came over here to check on you and found you passed out. I thought you were dead!”
“Thirty minutes?” Mavlyn raked a hand through her auburn hair, still trying to orient herself. “Giant's Teeth. I’m so sorry, Leap. I had no idea.” Guilt stung at her as she realized the bathwater was now tepid, half of it spilled onto the marble floor. But the emotion faded as the dream began to come back to her, and she sat up straight in the tub. “That’s right! I had a dream—”
“Squalls!” Leap grabbed the towel hanging over the privacy screen and tossed it in Mavlyn’s direction, averting his now tomato-red face. “Will you get out of the tub and put something on first?”
Shaking her head, Mavlyn did as he asked, using the towel to dry her skin. Like most earth fae, she wasn’t particularly self-conscious about her body, but perhaps the air fae were more prudish, and besides, Leapwasjust a teenage boy. He kept his back to her while she wrapped the towel around her hair and put on the pajamas that had been left for them, working as fast as she could.
“You can turn around now.” When he made no move to do so, Mavlyn sighed. “Quye visited me in a dream. She was about to tell me her location when you shook me awake.”
Leap whirled around, and Mavlyn blinked at the scowl on his face. She’d expected him to be excited about this news, not mutinous. “She visitedyouin your dreams, but not me?” he demanded.
The back of Mavlyn’s neck prickled. “I don’t think it’s personal,” she said gently. “Quye might have tried to reach you first but found it easier to get to me. We have some kind of… connection.”
Leap’s eyebrows rose. “Quye is the Oracle. She’s got a connection to everyone.”
Mavlyn shook her head. “It’s different,” she insisted, though she wasn’t so sure if that was true. She’d definitely felt an instant pull when she’d met Quye, and had thought it was reciprocal, but maybe everyone who met the Oracle experienced the same thing. Shewasdifferent from the rest of the fae, with a direct connection to the spirit realm, able to see the threads of fate that connected all fae. Maybe everyone in her presence felt that connection.