Page 53 of Shadow Wings

“Please inform him I would like to see him when he’s back,” Imuttered.

“As you say.” The guardbowed.

I dipped my head. At least that guy was nice enough. Maybe they should promote him for not being a pointy-eared jerk. “Thankyou.”

He looked startled by my gratitude, and a real smile lifted hislips.

They should totally give him a medal or something. With a sigh, I walked away, unaccountably weary. I ignored the side-long looks from the violet-eyed Phaetyn as I passed. The Phaetyn seemed unsure of whether I was an intruder or not. These silver robes were likemagic.

Emboldened by my disguise, I followed the rush of water through the trees to my right, I adjusted my course and, a few minutes later, sank to my knees beside a bubbling brook. There were many Phaetyn around, some collecting water, some just talking, and others hurrying by to get other jobs done, maybe even to go join the fight happening somewhere in the forest. No one said anything to me, and I stared at the crystalwater.

I didn’t want to get involved in all this Phaetyn drama. I felt a debt because of my connection to the trees and Luna, but this wasn’t my battle. Yet several Phaetyn were trying to force my hand, each in their different ways; Kamoi with plans to pitch the fork and do the Maypole dance with me, and his mother . . . Well, I wasn’t sure what her game was yet, aside from trying to bar me from finding out anything else, and the Phaetyn today asking me to look at the tree’smemories.

I wondered if Kamini knew her mother was a turd. No, she was way worse thanthat.

My presence here with the scheming and calculated interest felt too similar to a game I’d been forced to play before. This place just didn’t have a torture room. Or, at least, not that I could see. Somehow, that fact wasn’t making my palms any lessclammy.

I cupped my hands in the water and brought the clear liquid to my mouth. My nose twitched as I recognized the same sweet smell of the water I’d collected outside the forest. I drained the fluid in my hands, and some of my tension eased. “It’s sweet,too.”

I dipped my hands again and drank myfill.

“It tastes sweet to you?” a male Phaetynasked.

I glanced up to see him kneeling next to me. “Yes,” I said, drying my hands on my silver garments. “I’ve never tasted water like this, well, except for the stuff just outside thisforest.”

The Phaetyn smiled and made a lifting gesture with his hand. A sphere of water lifted from the brook and hovered in the air. “There is life in water, as there is in the ground, the air, and in the animals,” the man said. He appeared middle-aged which probably meant he was hundreds of years old. “And Zivost is life itself. The water here is at its purest, and the rivers and streams that flow through this place carry life to those outside the forest. In times gone by, all waterways tasted like this. I’m greatly saddened to hear that is no longertrue.”

Oh, boy. If only he knew the whole ofit.

Someone scoffed behind me. I turned and saw a narrow-faced woman sneering at the man. “Do not speak to this atrocity, Fabir. She’s not one of us; she should not know ourways.”

The man ignored her, speaking again to me. “Tell me, child, what are your Phaetynpowers?”

I shifted, uncomfortably aware of the attention we were garnering. “Well, I can grow potatoes andstuff.”

“Ah, a plantaffinity.”

I shrugged. “I guess. I made a floweronce.”

He paused, the creases around his eyes deepening. “What do youmean?”

“I made a flower, a blue blossom that glowed.” My heart squeezed at the thought of it, ofTyr. But then, Tyr was in the rose house right now . . . wasn’t he? The essence ofhim.

There weregasps.

“I see,” the mansaid.

I glanced at him in question and saw he was looking at the ground where a single Tyr-flower hadbloomed.

“That’s it,” I said. My chest filled as I leaned closer to the flower and stroked it gently with my finger. The luminescent flower bent toward me, even when Istraightened.

The man was blinking back tears. “Thank you, child. That is a beautiful thing tosee.”

“How dare you!” the narrow-faced woman seethed. “You enter our forest and try to usurp our rightfulqueen?”

A younger Phaetyn, one of the ones I’d spoken to earlier, snapped at her. “Ertha, she has ancestral powers. She converses with thetrees.”

A hush rippled through the gatheringcrowd.

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