Jess Granger - Realms Beyond 01 by T J

Author:T J [J, T]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-01-16T23:34:12.206000+00:00

“You weren’t a criminal.” As the last of the mud dripped from her foot, he massaged her arches. She felt dizzy with pleasure as she curled her long toes.

Cyani shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. I grew up in a small fortified city that my mother founded. Only good people who obeyed the rules were allowed in. My mother and father defended it with their blood, and taught those who lived there how to fight. It was a little high city of our own. The only place on the ground with any rule of law. At least it was safer than the chaos beyond the barricades. But there’s no food, no way to grow anything, and no animals to hunt. We had to risk going outside the barricades to hunt sarbas or trap birds, or we wouldn’t have anything to eat but woodborers and millipedes.”

“They sound delicious,” Soren quipped, gently pulling on each of her toes before moving on to her other muddy foot.

Cyani glared at him.

He quirked the corner of his mouth in an amused grin.

What was she going to do with him?

“Do you want me to continue?”

He squeezed her ankle. “Please.”

She studied his face for a moment, her eyes lingering on the dimpled scars from the blinders. He was so beautiful, wet from the rain. And he was so strong. She felt like a coward compared to him.

She felt her heart stumble as she continued. “We were out checking traps near the sea cliffs. There are poisonous plants, and the felam beasts are very dangerous, but the cliffs are the best place to trap seabirds. I got separated from my brother when I noticed I had caught a fat groslin in a snare.

They are a delicacy in the high cities, to catch one on the ground . . . It would have been like bringing my parents a little piece of the canopy, of their old life. I didn’t even think it might have been a trap for me. I was so stupid.”

“Cyani, you can’t do that,” Soren cautioned. His hands stilled on her foot.

“Do what?” She looked at him. His black eyes stared back with an expression she couldn’t read.

“You can’t blame yourself,” he stated with quiet authority.

“Trust me, I can,” she huffed. “Groslin don’t ever come near the ground. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was so obvious.”

“You can’t question why you ignored every warning you sensed. Why you decided to try to find the rest of your family instead of hiding, the way you were supposed to. Trust me, you can’t blame yourself. It will drive you mad.”

Cyani swallowed a lump in her throat as she realized he wasn’t talking about her. What had happened to him? And was it so different from her story?

“It’s funny the things you remember,” she mumbled, feeling suddenly connected to him somehow.

Her words caught in her chest, words she had never spoken aloud, even to Vicca when they were alone in the dark. She looked down at her hands, the hands he had washed clean.

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