Page 32 of Broken Veil
“So you want to go to Wapa…”
“Wappenham. It’s about forty minutes from the Bern Wood gate as the humans drive it.”
Okay, so Wade was not human.
What was he?
She looked for Cadell, but the dragon was obviously back in beast form and she didn’t want to bother him. “So you want a lift in our car?”
“Metal don’t bother me, if that’s what you’re wondering. I c’n pay ya.”
“In what?”
“Good old English money, girl.” Wade opened his palm, revealing a handful of gold coins. “Of the old-fashioned variety.”
Carys nodded. “I’m going to make an executive decision that you can come as long as Godrik and Naida say you’re okay.”
“Nowt. Like I said, they know me.”
“Okay.” She tried to catch Naida’s eye, but she was deep in conversation with Godrik. “So what do you do in Wapping?—”
“Wappenham.”
“Right. That place.”
Wade shrugged. “Ah, nothing much, but it’s the source of the Great Ouse, and I’m working on an environmental reclamation project on the river.”
“Oh yeah?” That was strikingly normal for someone she’d met in the Shadowlands. Sort of like meeting a unicorn who bused tables at a vegetarian café on the weekends.
Wait, would a unicorn do that?
“So what’s the focus of the reclamation project? Industrial pollution or something?”
Duncan and Lachlan seemed to be coming to some kind of truce, but Carys was irritated with both of them, so she ignored them.
Won the contest?She would be having a conversation with both of them later.
“Eels.”
She turned to Wade. “Pardon me?”
“You asked what the focus of the reclamation project is,” Wade said. “It’s eels.”
“Huh.” Carys blinked. “Eels.”
“Fascinating creatures, eels. Very important for the ecosystem.”
The mysterious Wadesat in the first row behind Carys and Duncan with Cadell sitting next to him as they drove off the small country roads around Bernwood Forest and up the dark roadway through the English countryside.
The dragon was glaring at the stranger. “Nêrys, I thought we agreed that you bringing magical creatures from one world to the next was a bad idea.”
Wade muttered, “Not a magical creature.”
“Then what are you?” the dragon asked.
“Not your business, wyrm.”
Wade had kept mostly silent when they walked back through the portal from Temris, then back up the road to the Bern Wood, and through the gate—which again tried to grab Carys—and he walked with ease.
