“Wait, wait, wait,” I say, turning her so I can see her face. “I need to understand this.”
I raise my hand, ticking off fingers as I list the events.
“You tried to ride a skyreacher on your own, you got dumped at the top of a snowy mountain, got trapped by an avalanche, fell down a mountain, was almost killed by a… bullicorn, was attacked by bandits and… stabbed by a sandcrawler.” I look at her in disbelief. “Am I missing anything?”
“Well…”There’s more?“There was the snowprowler that tried to attack us on the mountain, the time I tried to make breakfast and burned my arms and then the same day some guy dragged me into the woods.”
I stare at her in shock. She’s like a magnet for disaster. “You say you only have three mates?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You need twice that to help keep you safe.”
“Why, you offering to be one of them?”Is that what she wanted? Or was that a joke?I stare at her, trying to read her expression, but she quickly changes the subject, and I’m not sure if it’s because she is afraid of rejection or because she didn’t mean it.
“You should probably know that I wasn’t raised here, where I’m from, we don’t care if you have brothers because we only marry one man. So marrying multiple men, and the whole brothers thing, is all rather new to me.”
“Where are you from?” I ask, confused. I’d never heard of a place like that before.
“It’s a place called the human realm. It’s a long story, but basically my soul was born into the wrong realm. It was supposed to be born here in Dyconia, but it was born in the human realm instead. One day, my friend Ria went missing. I searched for her for a year, with no luck. Then a couple months ago, this woman appears and tells me that she needs to send me to Dyconia, and that it’s where Ria was. Since Ria was my only family left, I didn’t hesitate to step through the portal.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to all of that, it was quite the story.
“It’s okay if you don’t believe me. I’m not sure if I would if I were in your shoes.”
“No, I… It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just a lot of information to take in.”
“I know, portal travel and another realm?—”
“No, not that part,” I interrupt her. “The factthat you just said all of that happened in only a few months.”
“Well, technically. Everything before the burning breakfast incident happened in the first few days. And I married Brax and Ry right after that, and your brother a week later.”
“You didn’t even know them a week before marrying them?”
She shrugs. “When you know, you know.”
I silently turn her so I can finish brushing out her hair before braiding it. I work in comfortable silence, I think we are both going over everything that was just said. She told me so much about herself, maybe I owe her something in return?
“Are you done?” she asks when I don’t move for a minute.
“Oh, ah, yes, I’m finished now.” She turns to face me.
“Can I braid your hair? Or is that weird?”
“You want to braid mine?” I ask in surprise. Braiding a man’s hair is something only a wife or mother would do. But maybe it meant something different where she was from. I didn’t dare ask.
She nods. “Yeah, if you don’t mind?”
“Of course not, here.” I pass her the brush and give her my back. Her gentle fingers stroke through my hair and I try not to moan at the feeling.
“Did you come out here as soon as you left home? You made this oasis with your magic, didn’t you?”
“There was a small oasis here already, the waterfall and pond, a few palm trees and a bunch of rocks. But everything was much smaller. I just helped it grow. But I didn’t come here until about a year after I left home.” I knew she deserved to hear my story, and know why I was covered in scars.
“When I first left, I thought I could become a knight. I thought it was a noble job for a loneling. I figured I could keep my power hidden. But you have to understand that my magic is part of me. I can’t just shut it off, I can always feel it there, and denying it exists makes it act up, like it’s begging to be noticed. I tried to use it in tiny doses, when nobody would notice, like whenI was bathing or washing my hands. One day I made the mistake of watering a plant that looked dried out in the castle hall. Another knight saw me and before I knew it, I was stripped of my armor and thrown into a fighting ring in nothing but my boxers. They had their senior guards fight me, four of them at the same time. Two of them carried small knives, that’s how I got the scars on my chest and face. When three of them pinned me to the ground, the third cut my finger off, as it was the one I used to water the plant, they thought it was the source of my power. Then they threw me out on the street, with nothing but my boxers.”
I take a deep breath, remembering that feeling of having nothing and no one. Wondering how I’d ever survive. But the feeling still stings, that is, until I feel the soft arms of an angel wrap around my neck from behind. I squeeze her forearms as she presses her face to my neck, whispering, “You’re not alone anymore, Apollo. You have me, and Indy.”