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I turned to Istil. “Would you be able to identify the T’Wanu native plants which share the same properties as these?”
He looked at the list. “Yes, I think I could do that.”
“Then let’s go. We need to have everything for Eli to work with. Shen, you’re gonna have to play healer in the meantime. Think you can do that?”
“Oh, yeah, no problem!” he exclaimed. “Just a librarium archivist, delivering another egg… You guys are damn lucky I’ve read so many books.”
I started for the door, and Istil grabbed my hand and stopped me.
“Get on me,” he said, turning around.
“What?”
“I said, get on me! We’re not walking.”
His muscles swelled and emerald scales sheeted down his skin like rain on roof tiles as he shifted into his dragon form. His wings draped across his back as he turned to look at me with one gemstone of an eye.
I climbed onto his back and seated myself in between the ridged plates along his spine. I’d never ridden on another dragon before—not like this—but this wasn’t the time for embarrassment.
Istil didn’t give me a second to get situated before he took off straight into the air like a geyser. I clung on for my life and nearly lost my glasses as we burst through the clouds. Soon, we were high above the house with the land spread below us like a map.
“Fuck me!” I shouted, slamming my chest against the hard scales.
“Ari, we have a job to do,” Istil replied.
I was too terrified to give any kind of intelligible response to his damn cheekiness. The house looked like a little toy, now barely visible as we approached the dense jungle carpeting the surrounding mountains.
“I’m sorry, are you afraid of heights?”
“Yes, itwouldseemIamafraidofheights!!” I shouted. The words all tumbled out together in one giant mess.
“We’ll be down soon,” he called back to me over the whistling wind.
It felt as though we were flying even faster. The tail of my robe whipped out behind me like a sail, threatening to pull me into oblivion.
“I amnotmade for this,” I said to myself. “Shit!”
Istil banked hard to the right, putting nothing between me and the great beyond except the strength of my thighs. Were it not for the urgency I would have thought he was purposely doing this to torture me. We swung around the jungle, spiraling fast towards the trees. I shouted for him to slow down—we were going to crash into the thick canopy—but the moment before impact all of the branches opened up like a mouth and we dropped right through without a single scratch.
I was a starfish on Istil’s back. I had to peel myself off to drop to the ground.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
My legs wobbled stupidly as I got to my feet. “Yes, wonderful.” I pulled the list out of my robe—thank the ancestors it hadn’t been blown away. “Now let’s find these plants.”
Chapter6
Istil
Shen’s list was impressive.
Not only had he written down the common names of each plant, but variations and folk names. I knew all of them well and could recall their scents and the feeling of their energy as easily as if they were my own family.
In the thick of the T’Wanu jungle, I reached out with my elemental abilities and felt the life breathing all around me, from the biggest tree to the tiniest mushroom. And I felt Ari, too. It seemed that he’d permanently written himself into my soul because as hard as I’d tried, I hadn’t been able to remove him from my thoughts.
The day after the ceremony, I’d woken up in my bed back at the guesthouse with a head full of fog, except for one thing—Ari. Those memories were as clear as the morning sun, and it’d only gotten worse since then. Just the sight of an unusually thick banana was enough to send me into a downward spiral of fantasizing. I’d even found myself staring at the spot we’d done it, completely lost to the world until someone inevitably called me out. It was probably a good thing Ari hadn’t been around the main house. I had no idea what I might’ve done otherwise.
“Anything I can do to help?” Ari asked, following me as I slipped through the jungle.
