“I didn’t mean -”
“If you want to get yourself killed, then do us both a favor and launch yourself off the nearest cliff!” Jaysen cut in.
“I have wings,” Kaleo answered in meek, dumb tones. Jaysen’s snarl deepened as he got back to his feet. The look of disgust Jaysen gave him was almost as painful as the claw mark on Kaleo’s leg.
“You won’t find anyone if you’re dead,” Jaysen continued. He knew what Kaleo sought; or, rather, who. He also knew a great deal more about the dream world than Kaleo did. “Wake up.”
The pure Power in Jaysen’s words rocked Kaleo from the dream world. It was so sudden that he found himself choking on a missed breath, sitting up sharply in the dark jungle of the Skiff. His leg burned terribly, throbbing with each beat of his heart. Fionn was no longer behind him nor anywhere else within eyesight either. Kaleo winced, pulling up the hem of his pants to inspect the damage. It was not as bad as he’d feared but the wound bled quite a bit and left a wide spread of blackened veins around the claw marks in his flesh. Demon wounds poisoned the blood in the waking world; were they the same if they were caused in a dream? Kaleo didn’t know.
He sighed and let himself collapse back to the stick-littered ground. He had failed again and very likely ruined the only true friendship he had.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, curling back up into a ball until the sun peeked over the horizon.
Chapter Five
Reven sat up sharply, chest tight and painful, sweat running down his spine and saturating his tunic. The nightmares returned. It was a problem when he was first found, when his mind was still a mess of confusion and new experiences. When he still knew absolutely nothing and hid from the world. He was plagued with nightmares, with terrible creatures that hunted him, with the screams of innocents that begged for help, though he could not understand why or how he was supposed to help. This was the same. The demons hunted him, snarled and hissed as they chased him through blighted lands. There was a tall spire on the horizon that was but a husk of what it should be. Somehow, he knew that it was beautiful once, white and gleaming with brilliant green flags at its tip. He hated the nightmare, hated how familiar it felt to him, as if he’d lived the scenario once.
He sighed, running hands through hair that needed a trim. It was almost long enough to tie back. He knew sleep would not happen after the terror he experienced and, honestly, he was glad he didn’t blow the dingy they’d been stuffed into out of the water. Liam needed to negotiate their mode of transportation better - - or let Reven do it. The man was so cheap it hurt; almost literally. Reven stretched, winced, felt things crack that shouldn’t and rubbed his left leg. It hurt when he was too long at sea. He tried not to dwell on it, rubbing the back of his neck until feeling as if he were being watched. When he looked up, he noticed Serai’s bright cerulean eyes staring right back at him. The bard sagged, dropping his arm to his lap. The girl was practically mute, only speaking in mere whispers and, as far as Reven knew, only to him or Ajana. She’d not said a single word to Liam since they found her.
“Can’t sleep?” Reven asked. They were given a single room to share while Liam and Ajana took a second tiny room for themselves. There were no real furnishings, their beds made up of blankets and rolled canvas. They slept with barrels of whiskey bound for the floating city of Avir. Liam complained that Reven had gotten the better room as the thief-taker’s room was filled with tobacco crates that let out a rank stench according to Liam. The man complained too much; just another annoyance to add to Reven’s growing list with Liam.
Serai did not answer Reven’s question, shifting in her corner. She sat atop her blankets, wearing only a simple tunic. At Reven’s last recollection, she also had trews that were pilfered from somewhere, but they were gone in that moment. The bard sighed and moved over beside the awkwardly silent woman.
They knew very little about her or why she was living in a cave with a drake. He was not aboard the Persephone’s Dawn. While the creature could not fly, he seemed able to follow wherever Serai went. Reven neither questioned how nor really cared. The girl, on the other hand, piqued his interest a great deal. She had Power, of that he was certain. He felt it pulse through her as clearly as he felt it through himself.
She did not appear to be much older than late adolescence or early adulthood as humans went, although, he was not well-versed in human maturity. The olve mentally matured rapidly but physically took much longer than humans. He, for example, looked to be an adult of approximately twenty-five summers according to Ajana, though he was, in fact, at least seventy summers gone, if not more. As he could not remember his birthday, it was a rough estimation based on what Liam knew of the tirsai. Of all the olve, the duende aged a little faster than the tirsai, and the tywyll hardly seemed to age at all. So, guessing Serai’s age was, just that, a guess.
“You had trews earlier,” Reven said, trying to make idle conversation. “Where did they go?”
She pointed to the rolled canvas that served as a pillow.
