looks over at me, a speculative look on her face. “He’s different around you, you know.”
“Aron?” I’m surprised to hear her say that. Surprised…and strangely happy. Flattered. Because if he’s different around me, it means he was very different from Liar Aron, and I don’t like to think of them as the same man. “Different how?”
Yulenna shrugs. “I don’t know. Less remote. More…human if that makes sense.”
In a way, it does. I bite back my smile and gesture at the retreating backs of the men. “I guess if they’re all heading off, we’re safe here.” Aron would never leave if I was in the slightest bit of danger. He’s incredibly protective of me.
“I can’t imagine anything can live out here. Can’t you feel it?” Yulenna shivers. “It feels like this part of the world is a dead branch on a tree.”
That’s a pretty apt description. It does feel like that…like a dead area that needs to be pruned away and instead just lingers on. No, it feels creepier than that. It’s like a dead arm that’s rotting and infecting the rest of the body. I shudder.
I pat the woale’s nose and put his feed-bag on him since he seems anxious. The woales always seem to calm down on a full stomach. Hell, maybe I should try that theory myself. I’m getting nervous just looking around at this place, at the ominous tower in the distance, the equally ominous gray lake that seems to have no end to it.
“I guess we should have a look around,” I say to Yulenna. “I’ll feel better doing something instead of just sitting here.”
Yulenna hesitates. I notice she shies away from the water itself, and her face is pale.
“What?” I ask. “What is it?”
“I was talking to Vitar,” she murmurs.
Oh boy. Fucking Vitar. The man says nothing for weeks and then the moment we cross the mountains, he’s the herald of doom and gloom. “What now?”
“He says there are legends of guardians.” She bites her lip.
“What kind of guardians?”
“Not good ones.” When I give her an impatient gesture, she hesitates and then moves closer to me. “Guardians in the lake that prevent those that are unworthy from crossing.”
“Like…sea monsters?”
She shrugs. “Vitar says no one has ever returned to tell of it.”
I consider this, staring out at the water. If anything was full of sea monsters, I don’t know if this cesspool would be it. “Monsters have to eat, right?” I gesture at the gray, still waters. “What could a monster that lived here possibly eat?”
“Travelers,” Yulenna says immediately.
She’s not helping. “No, really. We’re the only ones that have come this way for a while, according to the Novoro keep. So what would it survive on?”
“What if it’s magic? What if it doesn’t need to eat anything other than intruders?”
I put my hands on my hips. “Then it won’t eat us, because Aron’s a god. If the gods in that tower are the fates, they know why he’s coming here. Right? So they won’t send their guardians out to eat him.”
I hope.
Yulenna looks like she wants to argue, but her face goes chalk white. She stares at something over my shoulder, frozen.
Ugh. I close my eyes, not wanting to look, but I force myself to turn around. There, floating in the water, heading towards us in a gentle drift, is a raft. It moves towards us with barely a ripple, and the hair on the back of my neck prickles, because there’s no breeze, no tide, no nothing that could be propelling it.
“Is that what I think it is?” I whisper to Yulenna.
“It’s a raft.”
I know it’s a raft. Of course it’s a raft. It also looks like no raft I’ve ever seen before. It’s flat, sure, and it floats atop the water, but it’s round instead of square, and it’s made entirely of some white, ropy material I don’t recognize. It continues to drift in our direction and then stops just before where I stand.
Creepy invitation or coincidence?
Aron jogs over to where we stand, his gaze on the raft. “I see we are expected.”
I point at the raft. “You expected this?”
“Of course.” He arches a brow at me. “They knew I was coming.”
More arrogance. I shake my head, crossing my arms over my chest. “Is this safe?”
“Is anything?” Aron gives me an impatient look.
Someday I’ll learn to stop asking him questions.
We tether the woales together, tying the lead to an outcropping of rock. Once they’re set with their food bags, they calm down and ignore