The Never Tilting World by Rin Chupeco

Author:Rin Chupeco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Arjun, Son of Clan Oryx, Going to Hell

OF COURSE SHE NAMED ALL the dolugongs.

In the space of a dayspan she had transformed the whole pod into pets. They swam before us like one big happy goddessdamned family, and I was annoyed at Haidee for encouraging the facade.

“Don’t nudge the side, Anastacia!” she scolded one especially playful dolugong. “You’ll tip us over again!”

“How can you even tell them apart?” I grumbled.

“How can you tell other people apart?”

“That’s different, and you know it!”

“Not to me. Shepard! Don’t stray too far from your mama!” The pup we’d rescued barked out an assent like it actually understood, shooting me an adoring expression. The mama in question scooped her baby up in its squared jaw. “Thank you, Madeline!”

“What are you gonna do when we finally leave the Sand Sea?” I asked her. “I’m not bringing them along.”

She shrugged, brushing the details off like she always did until they came right back to bite her in the ass, like this undoubtedly would. “We’ll figure something out. Besides, dolugongs are fiercely independent creatures, and highly intelligent. Maybe we can come back to visit, or something?”

“Visit? We’re not doing this for fun.”

She hummed, ever the optimist. Her short hair billowed in the wind, blue and purple and white, and I immediately hated myself for the way I stared. “Who knows? I mean, you’re here because you think we can save what’s left of Aeon, right? Who’s to say it won’t be better for them, too?”

I huffed my exasperation and reached for one of her tomes.

She’d brought a few books along for the journey (I’d asked if they were for kindling, and she’d threatened castration), and she’d given me permission to look through them under further veiled threats about what would happen if I marred them in any way. I’d obliged, mostly because the sand buggy wasn’t getting any bigger, the hours weren’t getting any shorter, and her voice wasn’t getting any softer. I’d taught her how to handle the rig, and she’d gotten competent enough for us to start taking turns driving.

So far, though, the books seemed nothing short of fantastic to me. Ice-capped mountains? Never-ending storms? Neither of them sounded appealing, but looking out at the sandscape right now made it hard for me to believe they used to exist. I flipped through a few more pages, taking in some illustrations of surrealistic-looking creatures—four-legged beasts with impossibly long necks, flappy-eared giants with tubes for noses, round animals made apparently of nothing but spiny thorns—before spotting a folded letter tucked between two pages.

“Is this a love letter? Did someone write you a love letter?”

She slapped the wheel, irritated. “Of course not, why would—No, it’s a letter I believe my father wrote to Mother.”

I frowned, silently reading it through. If this was her father, he sure seemed terrified. Sounded like a betrayal in the works—but which goddess, exactly, had done the betraying? “‘The magic that place wields can destroy the world as easily as it can revive it.’ That’s what makes you think there’s something at Brighthenge we can use?”

“There has to be.

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