Storm Born Page 0,128
orange and the apples are ripe. For you, it will be something different. Reach out to that. What it looks like, smells like, feels like. Hold that image in your mind."
Still scared, I attempted to focus my befuddled mind into a coherent image. For a moment, his vision stuck in my head, the cool breezes and blazing colors of his land. But no, that wasn't what made me feel alive. Tucson did. Dry heat. The desert's perfume. The sun pouring down on the Santa Catalina mountains. The dull-colored stretches of sandy dirt adorned with splotches of green from low shrubs and plants. The colors and hues of blossoms on cacti after the rain.
That was life. The world I'd grown up with and longed for whenever I was away from it. Those images burned into my mind, so real I could almost reach out and touch them.
The ground below me shook. Startled, I jerked my hand out of the dirt, but the trembling didn't stop. The land groaned, and before my eyes, it shifted and twisted. The guards' low cries of fear came to my ears, and nearby, Shaya muttered what sounded like a prayer. The trees of the forest behind me melted, sinking into the ground they'd sprouted from. The green carpet of grass we'd fought on faded, replaced by gravelly dirt. A moment later, shrubby patches of grass shot up from that dirt, along with small, scraggly plants. Cholla. Agave. The land beyond the fortress rose, forming into sharp angles and plateaus, like the foothills of a mountain range. Thin pines grew on those slopes, covering it in patches. The moisture in the air dropped, and the temperature increased ever so slightly. Finally the cacti came, popping up everywhere, and they were covered in flowers. Too many flowers to be real. We never had that kind of an outburst, yet there they were, a riot of colors vividly apparent even in the dusky light of dawn. Saguaros sprang up among the flowering cacti, in a matter of seconds reaching the sizes that normally took hundreds of years.
The land started to quiet, except for the spot beside me. It trembled from the force of something trying to get out. I scrambled away lest it impale me. Moments later, a tree burst from the earth, springing up with unreal speed. Reaching almost twenty-five feet in the air, its spiky gray-black branches spread out. Purple blooms sprang all over it like a cloud or a veil.
Then all went still. I gaped. I had a Tucson summer around me. Only it was better. The kind of summer you always wished for but rarely achieved.
We all sat there frozen, peering around for what would come next. Only Dorian and Volusian seemed nonchalant.
"What is this tree?" Dorian asked softly, looking upward.
I swallowed. "It...it's a smokethorn." My mother had a couple of them in her yard.
"A smokethorn," he repeated, lips turning up in delight. I stared at him, still in shock.
"What...what just happened?" I managed. The sweetness of mesquite came to me on a light breeze, heady and delicious.
"He's given you a kingdom," said a clear, soprano voice. "You stole what I should have gotten."
Jasmine Delaney stood just on the outskirts of our little gathering.
She looked wraithlike in the early morning light. Her strawberry-blond hair hung long and loose, and a form-fitting blue gown covered her slim body. Her wondrous, enormous gray eyes appeared black without full illumination. Finn stood next to her.
I clambered to my feet. Beside me, Dorian did the same, albeit awkwardly. He touched my arm. "Be careful."
Something was wrong here, but I couldn't put my finger on it yet.
"Jasmine..." I said stupidly. "We've come to take you home."
Her lips formed a flat line, not exactly a smile and not exactly a grimace either. "I am home. After putting up with humans all that time, I'm finally where I should be."
"You don't know what you're saying. I know you think you want to be here, but it's wrong. You need to come home."
"No, Eugenie. I'm saying what you should have been saying all along. I recognized my birthright, and I came for it. Whereas you..." She shook her head, anger kindling in her words. The intensity of that hate seemed absurd with her young, high voice - as did the fact that she'd actually used the word "birthright." Too much time with the gentry. "You became the biggest rock star around here. You could have had it all, but you couldn't handle it.