abruptly stopped. “I don’t understand. We will be together until it is our time to join those who have passed before us.” The line of people behind them groaned as, like a row of dominoes, they ran into the back of the person ahead of them.
Wren swallowed her negative emotions for the moment. This wasn’t the time or place to make such big decisions. Besides, the facts were clear. The elders wanted Zee, and she wanted to go home.
Zee called for a midday break. She took the opportunity to ask him more questions. She pulled him aside. “Zee,” she started, “Why hasn’t the woman picked out to be your mate tried to take my place with you?”
He smiled. “Because she’s not my mate. You are.” He hugged her to him.
“Yeah, but that didn’t stop the elders before.”
His body jiggled with laughter. “You used your magic, love.”
Lilah and Daph had told her how the tables spontaneously grew from the roots out of the ground and how amazed everyone was. The two also asked why she didn’t eat. They hadn’t realized that Wren had created it all. She wasn’t sure she had.
She said, “What has that got to do with anything? And what happened there? Why did I pass out?”
Zee pulled her onto his lap as he sat on a boulder along the bankside of the river. “Wren, our people’s magic is tied to the land.” She didn’t miss the pronoun he used. He was including her. “The Gnoleon fae get their abilities from sharing energies with the plants and life around them.”
“How do they do that? Share.”
“Well, that’s hard to explain,” he replied. “When I use magic, I talk in my mind to ask the dirt to do what I need. Then the magic in my heart joins with the ground’s magic to do what I asked.”
“Your heart?” Wren asked. She thought back to that moment with the tree. She’d felt as if her chest was being pulled out of her, then she realized that sensation wasn’t correct. She was pushing out. Was it her magic going into the tree as her part of the sharing?
Zee repositioned her on his lap. He was getting hard under her ass. A thrill rushed through her knowing she had that effect on him.
He cleared his throat. “Magic comes from the heart, love.” His hand rested above her left breast, his pinky finger rubbing over the swell of her boob. She grabbed his wandering digits, looking around to see if anyone noticed. He just chuckled. Men.
“I didn’t feel that sharing of my heart until you came up behind me and placed your hands on mine. Why?”
“I didn’t think at that time that you’d consciously used your magic before according to how you reacted when I mentioned it earlier. My sister told me how the tunnel from the old village collapsed to keep the fire from entering, but I don’t think she knew how it really occurred. I suspect your magic played a part.”
She nodded. She had asked the tree roots to help stop the fire, but she didn’t know if the flames were extinguished or if she and Iridia had just crawled away fast enough. She didn’t feel then like she did standing at the tree to make tables. Her hands just tingled until Zee joined her.
She said, “When your touch combined with mine, that’s when I felt this overwhelming feeling pouring from my chest.”
“My magic was showing yours how to work itself. That’s when all the tree roots in the area exploded out of the ground and formed into tables.”
She turned to him. “That really happened? I mean, that was my goal, but I don’t remember seeing anything.”
“Love,” he said, “you had an incredible amount of magic coming out of you. I think you let everything you had go into creating that moment. There were tables as far as we could see. I need to show you how to control the exchange so you don’t completely drain yourself like you did. You were so exhausted, I don’t think you could open your eyes.”
Ah, that made sense. A smile inched across her face.
She really had magic. Tree magic.
For the rest of that second day, Zee spent time walking and speaking with various elders, while Iridia and Haml continued leading the group along the trail through the jungle. Zee asked her to stay with Iridia at the head of the villagers. She wondered what he was doing, but she was sure it was alpha business. Huge