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Chapter Three
HARPER
Icouldn’t tell whatirritated me more, the caustic air on this dwarf planet or Varus’s giant case of resignation.
He acted like he didn’t want or need my help, but clearly, he did. It didn’t matter how big he was or how incredible the experience when he flew off with me away from the camp.
Incredible and nerve-wracking. And now here he was, walking off into the woods, bleeding from the shoulder and refusing to try the blood stores on the ship before he even saw them. I was sure there were perfectly reasonable and agreeable winged Javorians on Racopia. Their king wasn’t one of them.
He was argumentative, quick-tempered, and prideful. He couldn’t fly again until his shoulder healed. So why was he strolling off into the woods when he should be focused on getting to the ship?
"Are you still standing there?" His loud voice in the quiet marshes made me jump. "I’ll carry you again if I have to."
I detested the mushy sound my boots made in the mud as I hurried to catch up to him. I couldn’t keep doing these jog-walk intervals while breathing this air. "Why are you still walking when you don’t know where you’re going?"
"I already told you I'm going home." His wings were folded against his broad, muscular back as he marched with purpose past the first line of trees. "Even if I can’t fly to your ship yet, I won’t waste time standing around out here."
The tree canopy shadowed us as we left the field of marshes. I stepped on twigs. "So you are going to the ship." Guess he wasn’t too unreasonable after all. "I think we’d get there faster if we walked in the direction of where you flew from camp."
His flame-red hair rolled across his shoulders as he turned his head, casting an uncooperative look my way.
"Don’t look at me like that. It has to be easier than finding our way through this."
"You may not have noticed while you were screaming at me in the air, but I flew over a river. We have to cross it if we want to go back the way we came."
"Oh." I saw the green scum on the surface of the water in the marshes. "There’s probably all kinds of nasty unidentified microbes and bacteria swimming in that water. Not to mention any aquatic species."
"Walking it is, then?"
I didn’t like how self-satisfied he appeared. "Walking it is."
His hair moved again when he faced forward. I resisted the urge to touch it. I’d never seen hair that vibrant color of red before unless it came out of a bottle. I doubted Varus dyed his hair, and even if he did, there was no way he could’ve touched up the roots so well while being on this boggy mess of a planet. The thought of him sitting around with a towel draped around his beefy shoulders, waiting for activator to kick in, made me chuckle out loud.
He eyed me as though I lost my mind. "Why are you laughing?"
Maybe the lack of fresh air was leaving my sanity compromised. "Nothing. I just had a silly, random thought."
"About?"
"You don’t want to know."
We continued on our walk through the woods. It wasn’t long before yellow mist drifted in, clouding the view. I coughed when it reached my nose. "What is this stuff?"
"There’s a plant here that releases it."
"Must be a whole lot of them because the air is thick with it." I slashed at the air with my hand and ended up sneezing for my troubles.
