“Sweet dreams, Godling.” She leaned down and took a deep breath of the scent of the flower, since she was immune to it as a Forestborn, then got up and shifted right through her flimsy leaf-clothing and ran after her friends on all fours.
XII
The late morning sun was the only thing strong enough to wake Candra from her slumber, and when she did, she still couldn’t scream with foliage wrapped around her face. When her panic finally passed, anger set in, anger that she hadn’t known she had inside of her in the first place. It set the living plants around her on fire with the magnified sunlight raging in her veins, and burned her robes a bit, but she was able to shake off the dead plants after they withered away, as if they’d been blasted by the desert sun.
She pushed herself to her feet and looked around with a mixture of panic and anger. “Orlando!” She was still dizzy and disoriented from the flower’s drugging effects, so she stumbled around like she was drunk, but the sun beating down on her woke her up quickly. It had been some time since she felt overwhelmed by the sunlight, and now that Orlando was nowhere to be seen, it was taking a toll on her. Since she lost him only recently, she was able to go most of the way across the compound in the sunlight before she had to duck into the shade and slink her way over to Nick’s house, where she pounded on the door.
Some of the Forestborn that saw and felt her set fire to their plants followed her at a distance, rumors running wild around them about why she was out by herself, calling for Orlando. Maybe they’d gotten into a fight the night before. Maybe they’d gotten drunk and they were just separated. She certainly didn’t seem like the calm and collected Lightborn goddess she had been the night before. Either way, there was a small crowd forming near Nick’s house by the time she was pounding on his door.
He came out still looking bedraggled from bed, but he pushed his hair out of his face as he looked down at her. “Candra? What are you doing here?” He looked around beyond her. “Where’s Orlando?” They never went anywhere without each other. Where could he be?
She was gasping heavily as though she had been running with a hundred pound weight on her back, and her face was covered with sweat, since she was fighting so hard to remain in her human form. “He’s gone. There was this flower…this woman, she gave us one…it made us so sleepy and then I woke up…trapped in ivy and branches and…I can’t find him! I can’t find him anywhere!!”
“Look, calm down, just…here…” He opened his door widely and hit the switch to turn the lights off in his main room as he let her in, then shut the blinds quickly, both to keep out the sunlight and to keep out her growing audience. “Start at the beginning.” He was fully awake at her panic, and at the waves of power that were flowing off her even without any physical contact between them.
Candra felt a little bit better in the darkness, but the energy in her was still making her shake and sweat in addition to glowing like a thousand-watt bulb. “We were going through all the sectors. The Earthborn didn’t really like us very much, the Stoneborn were nicer, and then we were looking at the plants and this woman was sleeping under this grass and flowers.” She put her hand on one of his walls, and he could feel her power ripple through his metal that made up his house. “She grabbed these seeds and she grew these black and gold flowers. They smelled very nice…but then we started to fall asleep. When I woke up, I was trapped and Orlando was gone.”
Nick’s temper flared, and she could feel the resonance through the walls she was leaning on. “Mitch…” He turned on his heel and walked back into his bedroom, grabbing a shirt and pulling metal off the sheet of it he’d slept on the night before as he yelled at Zara. “You told me he could be trusted!” He screamed at her, waking her violently from where she’d been sleeping soundly.
Zara got up quickly and scrambled backwards as though she had been struck. “You saw it for yourself! You know he was! That doesn’t mean people stay that way forever! How can you blame me for this?”
He grabbed his shirt and pulled it over himself as he felt how his attack cut into her. His rage grew quieter, but not quite apologetic. “I’m not. Hurry up and get dressed. They’ve taken Orlando, and I intend to find out where.”
Zara got up and went over to Candra, trying to comfort her, but it was hard to even touch her, she was radiating so much power. “Just stay here. Dion and Katrell will watch over you. We’ll be back.” She got dressed quickly and she followed Nick outside where there was already a commotion. Mostly people were wondering how such a thing could happen within their gates. Obviously the guards hadn’t been protecting the precious legends that they all were depending on. This is escalating. Zara said to Nick silently as she felt the panic of the crowd. Far too quickly.
Nick was caught between prosecuting the fight that was about to come on the Forestborn Alpha and trying to keep the peace behind him with the other packs, all of whom had apparently had some kind of representative or friend close enough to his home to hear Candra’s outburst. The rumor was spreading faster than Orlando’s own lightning. The only way to contain it is to find the
