Page 106 of The Reaping Rose

It’s for the best, I tell myself. Gods forbid I suffer the onslaught of others’ emotions more than I already do. When Atlas said, You didn’t see me, I could barely keep my knees locked for a moment.

“Wine?” Atlas offers, and I nod, not saying anything when words clog in my throat.

I watch him cross the room to get me a glass, but his attention never leaves me. More specifically, his magic never leaves me. I’m surrounded by Fae, yet he keeps me a secret from them all. Maybe that’s why his gaze is even more intense when it snags on mine tonight. He’s the only one who will remember I was here.

A pretty Fae with short black hair stops beside him and smiles. She brushes his arm, and his grin deepens her blush. He’s allowing her just enough of a relief from his magic to entertain this. His attention splits, and I feel it. A blade slicing through my chest.

He smiles at her, and I don’t wait for the wine. I don’t bother worrying if someone will remember me as I turn and leave the room.

I can’t be here any longer, and I hate it.

Chapter 36

Greer

I’m at Atlas’s door before daybreak because I was barely able to sleep, and it’s impossible to sit still with the journey ahead.

Thankfully, our trek across Solace is easier this early in the day without the sun beating harshly down on us. By the time my leathers get uncomfortably hot, we reach the edge of the Echme forest, and all heat dissipates.

One step between the trees and my skin prickles. A familiar current of energy floods my veins. Pure, untamed magic from the skies, unlike any other part of the realm. There is nothing that compares to Echme.

The territory is electric.

Vibrating.

It pulses in my bones. I’m home for the first time in over a century.

Atlas holds his hands out in front of him, flipping them over and feeling the air.

“It’s the lightning fields. You can feel them as far as the border,” I tell him.

“I’ve never felt magic like that.”

“There is no other magic like that.”

He relaxes his arms at his sides as we continue deeper into the forest.

While there is no safe path through the Echme forests on foot, the pathways offer a break between the trees and protection from the creatures hiding in the underbrush.

It wasn’t always like this. Long ago, villages weren’t contained to the edge of the lightning beaches; they stretched deep into the forest. It wasn’t until the storm of stars that magic in Echme became so strong that it transformed the creatures in the territory into something frightening.

From then on, Fae avoided the trees. Gates were used to travel in and out of Echme. Villages moved north, and what was left in the woods was abandoned.

“You’ve never been to Echme,” I guess, glancing at Atlas.

He walks a step ahead with his sword out, cutting through a tangle of brush in our path. “No, I haven’t. When the court traveled to Lyrichia before the Realm War, we usually spent most of our time in Solace. Malachi was always a pretentious prick who made being at the Ley Court unbearable. Lochlan was a better host, so we’d only take short trips to Malachi’s palace when needed. But I don’t remember seeing you among the Crown Guard at the time.”

“I wasn’t.” I frown, pulling out my sword to help with a particularly rough patch of vines.

Atlas looks at me, his eyebrows pinching.

“Stop trying to read my mind.”

“I wouldn’t dare.” He grins, glancing at the blade in my hand.

I grumble, slicing through another branch. I should push forward silently like we’ve been doing. But the static in the air that was once calming has me on edge. Something is off. The current has changed since I was last here, and I need a distraction.

“Before I left Echme, my family rarely took trips to the Ley Court,” I admit. “We would visit Tempest and Ruse Village to see my aunts, but that was the extent of our travel within the realm. My parents preferred to keep their work for the royal family separate from our home life. You wouldn’t have seen me in the Ley Court or Solace back then.”