Thirteen
“Home.” Romulus heaved a sigh of relief as we dragged our weary butts along the path and into gorgeous lands filled with real flowers, lush, green, natural trees, soft, springy grass, and dusky stone slabs. A sweet perfume filled the air, but it wasn’t magically generated like the perfumed air in most of the Realm. The scent was from the actual plant life around us.
“I just do not get it,” I murmured, veering off to the side and bending to touch a bush with waxy, deep green leaves. Romulus could probably tell me the exact shade of green, not that it would matter. I couldn’t be bothered to remember it.
I peeled a little of the magical construction away from the ground and found the exact same fertile earth. It was like someone had taken the real scenic elements and painted over them with magic.
Darius knelt down beside me, and Penny and Emery stepped off the path, Penny’s eyes on the ground, probably looking for rocks. She’d found a whole bunch so far, and Emery was now making her choose a select few from her bounty. The decisions were not quickly made.
“These paths need more benches along them,” Callie said, stopping on the path and not bothering to get out of anyone’s way. She looked ahead with longing. She was clearly happy to be done with the journey, or at least to have halted for a little while.
The fae pushed on, speeding up now that they were within sight of home, a natural preserve that reminded me of a greener version of Seattle, but without the clouds and rain. And cold.
The shifters followed, a couple of them in human form to carry packs, and the rest in animal form. We’d run into a few more kidnapping parties, a couple of them more robust than the first. Romulus had tried to talk the first two around, but by the time the third showed up, he just offered them a warning, very polite and lovely, and then gave the directive to kill them all.
That guy did not fuck around. I was on the right team. There was no question.
“How are these multiple worlds working?” I rubbed my head as I looked beneath the layer of magic around us, seeing down to the bones. I’d gotten good at doing that without affecting the magic too much. If I accidentally delved a little too deep, then the image would sag, sure, but that hardly ever happened anymore, and it wasn’t noticeable unless you were looking. Kinda. “These are all earth-type settings. This one is lush and fertile. There was the desert, those huge tracks of dirt that were probably fields at one time, and the hills with the scraggly bushes made into weird shapes. Like…is this an alternate universe? Or a parallel universe and the gateways are where the two universes kiss, or what? It’s bending my brain.”
“You read too much fiction,” Penny said.
“And you think rocks have personalities. You’re the last person I’ll be listening to. Because there is no way this world could fit into nooks and crannies in the Brink.”
“Not even with magic?” Emery asked.
“I mean…” I threw up my hands and stood. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What I’d like to know is why they cover every inch with magic,” Penny said, then gasped in delight and bent behind a bush. She came back with a beaming smile and an ugly gray rock.
“They don’t. A lot of these trees and plants are actually real. But the ground is covered in magic. I think that is necessary to keep the integrity of the whole thing intact. Like…if you build a house without a foundation, it’s weak. But anchor it to a solid foundation, and the whole thing will be stronger.”
“It’s something you can take away from here,” Darius murmured, studying a pine tree.
“I’ll be taking a lot away from here.” I started after the others. “Including any gold nuggets I find lying around.”
“Why would this place have gold nuggets just lying around on the ground?” Penny asked as she followed.
“Who knows? Stranger things have happened.”
We made our way through a flowered wooden archway, to a flowered square packed with people welcoming the returning fae. The shifters stood removed in a cluster, most having changed to human and a couple, like Cole and Sour Face, staying in their animal forms. Which seemed a bit rude.
“Right.” I stopped before the crowd, the others stopping with me. We didn’t have anyone to greet, and I wasn’t in the mood to start a fight with the shifters, which might happen if I ventured too close. They were a very touchy bunch. “Now what? I assume we just wait around for Romulus and Charity to sort out their family drama with the First?”
“That would be the gist of it.” Emery nodded and glanced right. In the distance, behind a wall of trees, I could just make out some construction going on.