I escaped his hold, and bent to my knees and placed my hand into the cove’s water. It was warm, like a hot tub, but there were no bubbles or big tub like the hot springs back home. “Where are the rocks?”
“At the bottom, but you won’t find them. This waterfall has been here since before your world was created, and it flows throughout Faery. It is so deep, there are those that thought that there wasn’t a bottom. All bodies of water are connected in some way. Everything in Faery has a purpose, and normally works together.”
I sat on the platform and dipped my toes into the water, and sighed with pleasure. It was eerily beautiful here, and yet even as I sat still, I could see the flowers moving closer to where I sat. “Are the flowers moving?”
He laughed as he sat behind my body, and curled his legs around my frame, fitting perfectly. His feet joined mine in the water’s welcoming heat. “Everything in Faery is alive. Those are not flowers, they are Dagden’s. They keep this place protected, but expect payment from me, for doing so.”
I watched as one got scary close to us, and then gasped as Ryder bit into the palm of his hand to draw blood. The white flower approached, and without needing to be told, quickly latched onto to Ryder’s palm.
I watched in stunned silence as the white flower turned crimson red. It continued to stay latched onto Ryder, but soon began to fade in color, and as I lifted my eyes to the other flowers, I realized why. They were all feeding from the one attached to Ryder. Instead of the hundreds of white flowers that had been there, now hundreds of light pink flowers scaled the coves cliffs.
I gasped and curled tighter against Ryder’s chest. It was a reminder that I was no longer home, and that this place was anything but safe. I’d have never known that those were not flowers, would never have even guessed it. When the flower had taken its fill of Ryder, it crept silently back across the water to slither up against the rock.
Creepy!
I pulled my toes from the water, wondering what else I had missed.
“Synthia, nothing will touch you while you are with me. The water is safe,” he said comfortingly.
“I’m tired,” I said, and I was. I had been getting over taxed easily, and I didn’t like it.
“Come, you sleep with me tonight,” he whispered.
He flew us back to the castle, yes the castle. A real life castle that looked as if had been picked up from Scotland in the 1500s, and deposited in Faery at Ryder’s will. Instead of taking me inside right away; he flew us to the hill that overlooked his home.
The castle was built into three different levels of the cliff that it was embedded into. There were hundreds of stairs, maybe thousands that led from one castle to the next. It was lit up, but not from light bulbs, from torches that were inside the stone walls.
“It looks like something I would read in a romance novel,” I said, because I knew he was waiting for me to comment.
“It’s older than any of those books,” he said with a snort. He took pride in his world, and I wondered what it would look like through his eyes if he was seeing it as a child.
“You should read some of them, Fairy. You might learn a thing or two from them.”
“Like how to throw you over my shoulder and carry you home to pillage and plunder your sweet honey?” he teased.
I snorted and rolled my eyes. “That’s a Viking. I was thinking more like a Scottish Highlander.” I smirked where he couldn’t see it.
“So you want me in a kilt? Is that so you can have easy access, or so that I can?” he mused as his lips smiled against my hair.
“Maybe it’s both?”
“Does my lass want her mon to speak with a thick brogue?” he asked, and it sounded so natural off his tongue that I shivered with desire.
“Nae she does nae.” I smiled, mimicking him which made him throw back his head and laugh.
I grinned and turned in his arms. This was nice; this I could live with. We were happy and together—but it would be short lived.
Zahruk sifted in silently. I felt the slight tingle in the air that came when someone sifted and quickly turned around.
“Ryder, we got problems. The Shifters were just attacked. It was very bad; we think it was the Mages, and a message from Cornelius has arrived. He and Abiageal will be here soon to start preparing for your wedding. I think this is his way of forcing the issue now that you have ascended,” Zahruk said, but I’d noticed he wouldn’t look at me. He kept his eyes fixed on Ryder’s as if I didn’t exist.
“This couldn’t wait?” Ryder asked in an angry tone.
“No, the Mages are getting bolder. This attack wasn’t on the colony of Shifters; it was on the pack that just left this castle.”
I shivered and stepped away from Ryder.
“We are not done, Synthia,” Ryder growled, noting I’d stepped away and dropped my arms to my sides. I’d let myself forget that he was marrying someone else.
“Go be the King, Ryder. I’m tired,” I whispered past the tears constricting and burning in my throat.
Chapter Fifteen