He is silent. Hesitant.
“When we first met, you planned to happily watch the world burn from afar,”I pester, undeterred.“What changed?”
“I talked to you for ten minutes.”
I suck in a breath.“Me?”
“You,”he says quietly.
Skies.
For a few moments, we continue to channel, saying nothing more. I focus on the wind flowing out of me, a steady current filling the coal-hued sails that furl outward from the square rigging overhead, doing the same for our sister ship across the sea.
A sudden pulse of maegic down the bond catches me off guard. This one is not meant for the waves that thrash at the hull, nor for the deep currents that carry us along. It is exclusively for me, washing straight down the bond and wrapping around my soul. The maegical equivalent of a warm embrace.
A sigh slips from my lips.“Soren—”
“I have long despised my fate. I saw it as more a curse than anything, this endless existence,”he tells me in a voice devoid of all self-pity. He is purely stating a fact.“After these last few weeks, I am finally beginning to take a different view of things. I am finally beginning to look forward to an unending lifetime…for I no longer imagine spending it alone.”
My heart is pounding hard, my knees threatening to give out. Gripping the rail to keep myself upright, I try to cover my ownridiculous reaction with a lighthearted remark.“Has Vaughn agreed to move to Hylios permanently, then?”
“Rhya.”
“Yes?”
He waits. And waits. And waits, until I have no choice but to give a serious answer. I shake my head in the darkness and offer up the only thing I have: truth.
“You speak of forevers. But forever is a very long time.”
He is quiet for a long stretch, processing this. I fear he might sever the connection without saying anything else. But eventually he responds, his inner voice low with meaning.
“There is no amount of time with you that would ever be enough.”
There are no words I can muster to equal what he has just said to me. Instead, I send a pulse of maegic back down the bond to him—a soundless affirmation that, I hope, matches the one he gave me.
A moment later, he laughs as I send an errant tendril of wind to ruffle his hair. Even across the dark waves, I can hear his joy echoing to me beneath the green-streaked sky.
On our thirdday at sea, the strip of coastline that runs along the horizon off our starboard bow changes from the thickly forested tracts of Eastwood to an eerie expanse of peaks and plateaus that jut into the sky like disjointed fingers.
“The Reaches,”Soren tells me when I ask.“See that dark patch, farther south? Where there seems a near constant cloud cover? Those are the Shadow Steppes. The terrain there is nearly impassable. The silt storms never cease, whipped to a frenzy between the bluffs.”
As we sail closer, the air grows denser, the skies above darkening with the promise of inclement conditions. I cast nervous glances upward as we sweep along choppy blue waters.
If a storm breaks out here…
Sensing my tension, Soren strives to distract me. He points out landmarks as we pass by, his words a comforting current in my head, forcing out the anxious thoughts.
“Those high dunes there, off the starboard bow? The Shifting Isles, they’re called. Huge shoals of desert sand that change constantly.”
“Have you visited?”
“Once, and never again. The nomadic tribes that live there are not overly accepting of strangers.”He chuckles.“I suppose that makes sense. When your territory has a tendency to move overnight, you must fiercely defend whatever claim you manage to stake.”
“People actually live there?”I blink at the hazy island dunes, some nearly as tall as the walls of Hylios, marveling at the thought of such a transient existence.“It seems mad to live thus, packing up your whole encampment at a moment’s notice.”
“Life as a wanderer is preferable to that in the rest of the Southlands, from what I can tell. Just ask those who occupy the Soot Flats of Nythia or the Howling Plains of Carvage.”
I think of Carvage, that sprawling, sand-scorched kingdom at the southernmost point of Anwyvn. Once, it was a thick jungle, teeming with life. The most fertile land in all the realm…