33Jaide
I was supposedto be sleeping, which was hard to do when you were sleeping on a cold stone floor, next to a fire that was as loud as firecrackers, while three beings who apparently didn't need sleep talked at full voice.
Not that I could have slept anyway. I was one hundred percent sure the air was alive. I had felt it first when I peered out of the cave to the city far below, to the waves of trees and water and the city that was somehow built into them as though it was part of it. Just lying there, I could feel it in the air. Pulling at me, calling at me.
Seeing as I had no option but to admit that I was a Fae now, I knew what it was, and I knew why it was calling to me.
I pulled the blanket Elliot had given me closer, wishing I had my nest, or anything like a nest to sleep in. The blanket was big, and soft, and enveloped around me like a massive hand, but it wasn't what I needed, and it sure didn't block out the sounds of the three full grown men with no concept of 'inside voices'.
"He seemed to think he crossed the Bay of Blood," Parris said, the cave flickering as someone poked the fire. "But he was only gone for what? A day."
"If that," Garret added another poke, sending more sparks and more light through the cave. I twisted under my blankets, pulling a corner down so that I could stare at them. They all just sat there poking at the fire with sticks.
I guess being in a cave reverted them back to Neanderthals. It explained so much.
"What is the Bay of Blood?" I asked, turning from where I was supposed to be sleeping. They all twisted to look at me, although none of them seemed surprised to see me awake. Well, all but Parris who was one move away from going into hovering mom mode before Elliot pulled him back.
I would have to thank him later. After everything that had happened, my heat had left, and I was crashing. I needed a nest and sleep and to be alone. Which clearly wasn't going to happen.
"When we were banished from Xerai we were sent to Syn, it's a desolate land made of sand and glass. Nothing grows there, nothing lives there. It is what lies past the Covern Mountains; a long stretch of nothing that hooks around the Bay of Blood, which separates Syn from where the Dragons are," Garret spoke slowly drawing something that kind of resembled a map using the end of his poking stick.
Thick lines of soot covered the stone, the land I had grown up in laid out in a way I had never seen. The mountains, the borders of Xerai and Pyre. We had seen some of this in school, but anything beyond Sypani was simply not talked about.
"He tried to cross the bay to reach the dragons," Garret continued, drawing a thinner line through the bay he had created. "He was not successful, he washed up on the glass beach less than a day later. Although, he seems to think he was."
"Lore says the waters are haunted with the souls of those the dragons killed in the waters during the war. That it’s the blood of whoever used to live in Syn. The whole bay used to be a thriving sea port. There are still cities that surround them, although they are not what they once were," Elliot added, taking the stick from Garret to put in a few more dots and mountain ranges and things.
From what little I had heard of their fight earlier, Elliot had been around much longer than the others. And had seen a lot more.
"And Aldric said he crossed?" I asked, I was sitting up now, although I was wearing the blanket like it was my own personal tent.
"He said he got to the island in the center of the bay," Parris said, but none of them made a move to add the island to their makeshift map.
"There is no island," Elliot shook his head, sending a warm wind through the cave and coaxing the fire back to life. "At least there wasn't when I was down there last. And it would take more than a hundred years for an island to pop up out of nowhere."
He chuckled, but no one joined him. They just stared at the map, at that hollow space where an island should have been, and wasn't.
"You two just got knocked off your throne and this is what you are stuck on? An island that doesn't exist?" I asked, reaching forward and grabbing the stick. I stuck my tongue out at them before drawing a blob in the center of the bay. "There, you have an island. Now, if we are going to talk into all hours of the night can we at least talk about what we are going to do now? I need to find my brother, and you promised you would help."
I looked between Elliot and Parris, the two who had actually promised such a thing, and were now looking at me sheepishly. Of course they would back out now.
"We will," Garret answered for them, running his hand through his hair as he exhaled. "We have to. Because it's not just Theon we have to worry about anymore, it's Aldric. He is going to go right to him and without us or our covens there will be nowhere to stop them. If we are going to stop a war..."
"I don't know that we need to anymore," Parris exhaled, going back to poking his stick at the fire. "Our people are gone. Our covens were massacred. I don’t know how stopping Aldric from attacking Healynas will do anything other than benefit us. Besides... Elliot has given us something far greater. He can get us to the witches."
"The witches?" I shrieked, jumping to my feet as my blanket fell to the ground, the soft fabric wadded up at my feet, not that I cared. "You would go to the witches? But we need to find my brother. We cannot leave him..."
"And we cannot face Aldric, an army of Synians, and Theon alone." Parris was firm, his powerful body uncoiling to the tower of me. That king that he had forgotten he was for the last little bit came smacking right back into him, ego and all.
And to think, for a moment I had actually been drawn to him. It was my heat, nothing more.
"Yes, of course, your majesty." I bowed to him as low as I could, flinging my hand through the air like some whimpering lady. I didn't even look at him before I walked to the edge of the cave.
There was a short path there, trailing along the side of the mountain. The last thing I wanted was to go out there and fall to my death, but I didn't want to be in there either.
"Jaide, wait!" Someone called behind me, I didn't even turn.
I just stepped out, the violent wind of the mountain whipping at my hair, blocking out anything else the guys had said.