The boy jumped, his blue eyes widening at the sight of me. “You shouldn’t be here,” he whispered, looking around. “You should flee before she comes back!”
I had no doubt by the tone of his voice which “she” he was referring to, and part of me wanted to do just that. But I had questions that needed answering. “You look similar to Iannis, my husband-to-be,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Are you related?”
“I guess so,” Drawe said. “Nana Deryna is my great-grandmother, and Iannis’s aunt.”
I nodded—it made much more sense than that old woman being his mother. “Why don’t you live with your parents?”
“They died when I was a baby,” Drawe said sadly. “Nana says they got mixed up with an angry Tua. I’d never met one before…before recently…” he added, his eyes darting around again. “She frightens me.”
“The Tua frighten me too,” I said solemnly, feeling sorry for the boy. No wonder he was so quiet—he was forced to be around a living nightmare! “But they are not all bad. I just came back from the Tua realm, and the two I came across were quite nice. They helped me get back here.”
Drawe looked at me like I was nuts. “There is no way you went to the Tua realm,” he protested. “No human who has ever gone there has come back on their own, at least not for hundreds of years. Nana said it is deadly for humans.”
I shrugged. “I’m not human. Maybe that helps.”
Drawe still looked skeptical, and I decided to drop the subject. “If you’re unhappy here, you can always come back to Canalo with me,” I said. “There are a few other children around your age who live in the palace, and I think you’d get along with them quite well.”
Drawe scowled. “That’s never going to happen. She is never going to let that happen. Don’t you get it? That old Tua lady is doing everything she can to make sure your wedding won’t happen and that you won’t ever go home. I didn’t expect you to survive this long, but it’s only a question of time. She’s playing a game of cat and mouse, and you’re the mouse.”
I opened my mouth to respond indignantly to that—I was a panther, not some damned mouse!—when I felt a sizzle of magic in the air, coming from the side of the house. Drawe gasped, then scurried off to hide just as Ta’sradala came storming toward us. She was furious, her eyes blazing with cold anger, her lips pressed in a thin line. The air around her shimmered with waves of power.
But I wasn’t afraid. Not this time.
“I could be wrong,” I said casually, turning to face her, “but it seems like you’re unhappy to see me.”
“How did you get back?” she demanded, stopping a few feet away from me. “You should not have been able to. Mortals cannot travel between planes.”
I shrugged. “I have my resources.”
Her eyes narrowed as she looked me up and down. “You look healthy,” she accused. “Like you’ve slept and eaten. You’re even wearing new clothes.”
My lips tugged into a smirk. “Like I said. Resources.” I wasn’t about to give up the names of the Tua who had helped me—for all I knew that could get them into trouble, and that was the last thing I wanted. “Are we done here yet? I’ve already proved I’m more than capable of passing your tests. I hope I haven’t missed my own wedding yet, or there will be hell to pay when Iannis finds me.”
“You still have one more test,” Ta’sradala said, her lips curving into a cruel smirk of her own. “Let’s see if your ‘resources’ can help you with this, mortal.”
She waved her hand, and I braced myself as the world began to spin around me once more. I squeezed my eyes shut to keep the nausea at bay, thankful that I’d already vomited everything in my stomach. Whatever she threw at me, I vowed to myself, I would not give up. I had to get back to Iannis one way or the other, and the hope of seeing him again would have to give me the endurance I needed to survive.
14
When I next opened my eyes, I found myself standing in what looked to be an underground cave. Glowing mushrooms covered the walls, illuminating the interior just enough to make out the silhouettes of bats hanging overhead and the glimmer of a deathly still lake below. A shiver crawled down my spine as I craned my neck, trying to see how far the tunnel up ahead went, but the glow from the mushrooms was too dim to be of much help at that distance. Just how far underground was I? And in what world?
Parched, I made my way over to the lake, and after checking it for harmful substances, sipped the water to wash out the last taste of vomit from my dry mouth. It was ice cold, but tasted divine, and I quickly gulped down several handfuls. My canteen was still full of water, so I didn’t refill it, but with any luck there would be more water sources down here should I run out.
Thirst quenched, I sat down a few feet away from the lake, then treated myself to a little picnic. I was still a bit dizzy, so I ate slowly, replenishing my strength with the food the Tua had given me. I was getting used to the strange tastes and was so hungry that it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d given me week-old gruel.
As I polished off a leg of blue roast bird, something shifted around my waist. Looking down, I shrieked—the belt I’d been wearing earlier had turned into a living snake! I jumped up, conjuring a fireball in my hands, but before I could incinerate the beast, it morphed into a wolf cub.
“Broghan!” I gasped, extinguishing the flame. I hadn’t realized that Nalan and Alara’s pet could change into inanimate objects. Would I ever cease to be surprised by Tua magic? And why was he here?
“Can I have some food?” he asked me in mindspeak, and I stared. His voice was that of a young boy. “I haven’t eaten anything since we left the Tua realm.”
“Sure,” I said warily, sitting back down. I offered him some of the meat and bread, which he wolfed down eagerly—pardon the pun. “You’ve been able to speak this whole time?”
“Yes, but there was no need to,” he said. “Nalan and Alara were doing fine answering your questions.”
I snorted at that. “Do they know you’re here?”
Broghan said nothing, curling up at my feet and rubbing his cold nose against my leg. I scratched the back of his ears, still feeling a bit disconcerted.
“Broghan,” I said again, a little more firmly. “Does anyone know you’re here?”
“I wanted to see the human world for myself.” He sounded a little petulant now. “Without waiting forever for the others to make up their minds. Nalan and Alara would never have let me go if I’d told them, so I hitched a ride with you. And it’s a good thing I did, since you got stuck.”
I gasped. “Was it you who pushed me the last bit of the way?”
“Duh.”
Well, that was one mystery solved. A talking Tua pet possessed more power than me, even with my original strength doubled. And had saved my hide. It was more than a little humbling.
“Thank you,” I said, a bit stiffly. “But the last thing I need is for the Tua to think I stole you away.”