Spin the Shadows (Dark and Wicked Fae #1) - Cate Corvin Page 0,59
my fingers. “It’s something I’ve noticed,” he said casually. “Every other nymph is perfectly comfortable in her element, but I’ve only seen you talk to a tree once. Never seen you grow one.”
My mouth was dry as cotton. “Maybe I grow and talk to trees all the time and you just don’t notice, because we only get to see each other for a tiny bit each morning.”
Gwyn shook his head, smiling. “The thing is, none of the trees in Avilion feel like you.”
I licked my lips. Seriously, how did all the saliva just evaporate out of my mouth this quickly? “Who goes around feeling trees? Weirdo.”
“You, which makes you the weirdo. Tree-groper.”
I giggled despite myself. “Touché.”
But Gwyn’s eyes were serious. “Why is that, Briallen? Don’t you need trees to survive? Why hold yourself back from them?”
If there was one person I trusted not to tell the world about what a fuck-up of a dryad I was, it was Gwyn. I couldn’t really say how he’d managed to squirm his way into my trust that easily, but if Jack the Jerk knew, then Gwyn deserved to know, too.
“You know how most dryads grow a tree, and they’re bound to it for life?” I asked. “I’m not bound to one tree. I can grow hundreds, and they’re… well, they’re disastrous.”
I told him everything. All the bottled-up hurt, the feeling of being completely alone…
He touched my cheek. “You’re not alone.”
I smiled up at him. “Not right now, I’m not.”
“Look around you.” He held out an arm, gesturing the rolling expanse of absolutely nothing. “Why not just let it out and see what happens? Nobody here will care. This is where the misfits come to find a home. Annwyn is about heart, not style.”
Something about that really spoke to me. Heart, not style.
Avilion was all about polish. The gloss of the Gentry ruled the city, but there was nothing polished about me. I was a walking disaster waiting to happen.
“Okay.” I knelt down. “So this will be known as Briallen’s Hill for all of time, right?”
Gwyn crossed his arms, grinning at me. “Forever and ever. I’ll even make you a sign.”
“If it’s shaped like a banana, I swear by the trees,” I muttered, and flattened my hands in the grass. “Umm… you might want to back up a bit. A little more, a little more… okay, you’re good now.”
The velvet grass warmed under my palms. The earth here was so still, peacefully waiting to make something grow.
But I didn’t want to unleash destruction and thorns. I wanted something that summed me up, everything that was Briallen written in its branches.
I summoned up happy thoughts, pushing the memories of Emain Ablach far away. I had friends in Avilion; I had a job I loved, and being with Gwyn under a starry sky made me feel like I could just be myself.
The seed I planted pushed up out of the soil. I ran my hands over the twisted trunk, urging it to grow higher and reach for those stars.
The hum of energy in my hands faded as the tree found a shape it was happy with. I opened my eyes and looked up.
Spirals of the grass’s violet color swirled around the smooth trunk, and it had stretched its branches out wide. They dripped with mounds of thin, dark blue leaves, shaded silver on their undersides.
I strode down the hill to Gwyn, who opened his arm for me to snuggle under. We both looked up at my tree as the buds on its branches burst into bloom.
Each flower glowed pale pink, pulsing with life. As we watched, several pixies from the woods began buzzing towards it like they were mesmerized.
“That’s the best damn tree I’ve ever seen,” Gwyn said, hugging me.
I wrapped my arms around his waist as the pixies began to explore the tree, making little sounds of happiness. “I hope so. Everything good about me is inside it.”
I’d never made something so pretty before. It was… just a tree. It wasn’t trying to expand and choke out everything around it. How odd.
We left Briallen’s Hill to the pixies, and Gwyn made me put the helmet back on for a sky tour of the rest of Annwyn.
I couldn’t believe how it made me feel to finally grow a real tree without fear of someone breathing down my neck or ripping it out by the roots.
It was like I’d finally gotten to take off a stifling mask and just be me.