The Girl Who Fell From The Sky - Rebecca Royce Page 0,32
prepare?”
I blinked. He needed information, and it was in the book. Beakers. And bowls. Things to heat something up. And the plants.
He nodded. “Come, Bianca from the sky. Mattis will retrieve my brother, and he will get things set up. You and I with your book will go get those plants.”
“I don’t know them.”
Torrin scowled. “I do.”
Seconds later, I found myself alone with Torrin in a transport, me carrying the book on plants that was proving extremely useful and he maneuvering the craft at breakneck speeds.
I had to say something. “Your arm?”
“I dislocated it for the first time when I was twelve. Now it does it rather regularly in certain kinds of fights. I’ll be fine, thanks to Nox, who took the hit for me.”
I thought of my brother and his secret guard, paid to take a hit for him. I’d never been exactly sure that they would, even for the bonus in their paychecks. Nox did it for Torrin, and now Torrin frantically tried to fix him. That was what loyalty looked like. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen it before, not like this.
“You know the plants?”
He shook his head. “Astor and I were raised together until we were separated at twelve, shortly after I dislocated my arm, actually. Coincidence, not because of it. We are not so different in our interests. But I had to lead, so I was trained to do so, and he was left to sort himself out.”
Or be ostracized. “He’s amazing.”
Torrin side-eyed me. “Yes, Bianca, he is.” The vessel abruptly stopped. “We’re here.”
I jumped out, following after him.
The landscape was different here, it was actually green. There was water, a small lake, a pond sort of. Did they get more rain here? It had been pounding this morning. Where was it now? “I don’t think I really understand the weather here.”
“Do people understand the weather anywhere?” Torrin replied. As I’d been looking around, he was now waist deep in the pond pulling up greenery. “Bianca, a little help. What does the book that you can magically read tell me to pull up? What do they look like?”
I scanned through the page. “First one has five leaves and a vein through the center of the stem. Pink flowers in summer.”
“Got it.” He tugged one up and discarded it onto the side of the pond. “Next?”
I described five plants listed in the recipe, and he found all of them, wading out of the pond at one point and then right back in for the next item. Finally, I said, “I, um, think that’s it. There are some steps for distilling and infusing, but we can do all of that back at the town, or, err, settlement. City-state.”
He waded out of the water for the second time, his clothes clinging to the topography of his body, which, I admitted to myself, was not unimpressive. This backwater planet sure did produce specimens of male beauty.
Or else I just didn’t get out much. Could’ve been both, honestly.
We climbed back into the transport and careened toward the settlement, and I thought of the careful, gentle swaying ride I’d experienced when Nox brought me back from the crash. He must have been making extra effort not to jostle me. What a sweet soul was Nox. Torrin had no such patience, though, and it was lucky for me I found a handle above the window to hold on to, else I might have been flung around, or out of, the vehicle.
Both men were all about protecting, but their methods couldn’t have been more different.
I shot a glance at Torrin’s profile. Five days ago, I would not have had the courage to quiz a king, even a barbarian like Torrin. But today? I had changed.
“Dreama said our City-State had victory,” I called over the noise of the transport engine. “Does that mean the war is over?”
He kept his attention on the roadless terrain but replied, “For today, yes. We hold the Eden fields and will likely keep them until after the next harvest.”
“So what happens now?”
“We heal our wounded.” His tone implied a duh, and he didn’t look at me.
“And then?”
“We split into work details and go tend what we have won.”
“So if you abandon the settlement—the tunnels and the stables and Mattis’ pub and everything—while you go off and farm, what keeps rival groups from coming in here and taking over all these things you’ve built?” The question sounded sterner because I had to shout it over the engine.