Sash’s eyes redden. “If she just got out of the fall, did she have clothes on when you hugged her?”
“No,” I answer.
“Did you?”
“I had my pants on.”
Sash turns away from me and steps to the table. I stand up from the bed and cross the cavern to her. I rest my hand on her shoulder, but she immediately shrugs away.
“Don’t!” she snaps.
Although it’s not as strong as the prior morrow, I still feel the effects of the wild sap. I bite the insides of my cheeks while trying to suppress the hostility swelling inside me. I take a few deep breaths to calm myself down enough to speak in a steady voice.
“When you don’t understand an emotion from my world,” I say, “it takes you a while to learn how to control it. That’s what it’s like with the wild sap, except ten times stronger. I think the only reason I could get it under control sometimes is because the feelings the wild sap releases are common in my world. I had trouble most of the time. I still feel it now, but it’s a lot weaker than it was.”
“I can’t believe you kissed Tela,” she says with her back to me. “You should have been watching out for her. Even though she’s been a Traveler longer than you have, she’s younger than you. She looks up to you.”
“I know she does. She’s my friend—nothing more. I did watch out for her, but I should have been stronger. I just couldn’t control it all of the time.”
Sash finally turns to me. “No matter what made it happen, it still hurts.”
“What can I do?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I need time.”
I nod my head to her. “I want to clean off and see Aven. After that, will you help search for Tela?”
“Of course,” she replies. “I care about her just as much as you do.”
“Thanks,” I say.
I walk past Sash towards the waterfall cavern.
“Chase,” she says from behind me. “What do I do that makes you think I’m so controlling.”
I stop and look at her. “I didn’t mean it, Sash. It was the wild sap talking.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“I don’t want to do this right now,” I say. “I don’t think it will help anything.”
“Tell me!”
“Fine!” I belt out, unable to keep the anger out of my voice any longer. “You always insist on taking Aven to Home if Darkness falls. Even if I’m already with her, you come and get her. You know how fast I am and that I can protect her. It makes me feel like you don’t trust me with her.”
Pressing her lips tightly together, she narrows her eyes at me. “Is that all?”
“And the way you made Tela try to blend her light when she was young.”
“She was thrilled to do it!”
“I know she was,” I say. “But you made her keep trying until it happened, and she ended up breaking both of her legs. You wouldn’t take no for an answer. You never do.”
“I wanted her to know that she could do it. She needed to be pushed.”
I point my finger at her. “You wanted. You pushed. You’re that way with everyone.”
As I lower my arm, she flattens both of her hands on the top of the table and looks down at the steel surface. “You don’t know hard it is to have the gifts I have—to be so powerful, to see the future even when I don’t want to. What good is it to have those things if I don’t use them to help others?”
“You do help them,” I say in a much less combative tone. “But you get so caught up in what you think is best that you don’t take into consideration what other people might want.”
Still fuming, she pops her face up. “When have I done that?”
“When you got pregnant,” I answer. “I wanted to talk to you about how Aven should be raised, but you didn’t want to hear it. You decided how things should be. The subject was closed until that Darkness at Ovin’s tree. It made me feel like you didn’t care what I was going through.”
“I explained that to you,” she says. “I was feeling the same way. I decided it would make it worse for both of us if I told you because I knew there was nothing we could do about it.”
“You decided.”
She lowers her chin to her chest and looks at the tabletop. “Clean up. I’ll let Kyra know we’re coming to see Aven.”
Chapter 23
“Two Travelers stumbled upon a camp in the southwest,” says the tallest Murkovin the woman has ever known. “After a fight with our men, they were trapped in the Barrens for several morrows. The male Traveler eventually made it back to the Delta, but a young woman fled to the eastern wasteland.”
The woman studies the tall Murkovin’s eyes. Over the time she’d known him, he’d gained her trust in a way that no person other than her Ovì ever had. The two had forged an unbreakable bond since their first meeting long ago. Over the time that had passed, her feelings for him had grown to what she imagined she would have felt for her Mür had she known him.
“Do you know why the female Traveler stayed?” the woman asks.
“No one knows,” he answers. “She was severely injured in a crash while traveling. After the other Traveler stole a transport full of sap from the camp, they disappeared. Even though our men searched the area, they never found them.
“A few morrows later,” he continues, “two of our men spotted the male Traveler on his way back to the Delta. Although they gave chase, they were unable to catch him. On the same morrow, a commander at another camp caught sight of the female near the Stone Crossing. She had a transport with her,
