Page 149 of The Stolen Throne
This is the sunken dominion. The Goddess Tropikis, in order to protect her people from the Devourers, dropped the entire dominion below sea level, leaving massive cliffs—some say thousands of feet high—that create a barrier around the entire land that keeps both the oceans and the Devourers out.
The capital city of Pantrea sits at the base of the cliffs to the northwestern side of the dominion, the jungle spreading out around it. When storms rage in the seas, waterfalls flow over the tops and drop into caves that spit the water back into the ocean.
It’s night, but under the light of Morta’s full moon, I can make out several white plumes of water, too far in the distance to be heard.
“Meren.” Omma gives me a little shove.
Before I can move, a tiny bird the likes of which I’ve never seen before—green with red at its throat and a long slender beak—flies in front of me, wings beating so fast it seems to float in the air. After a small moment, the tiny bird dips its head. A bow of sorts, I suppose. Then flies off on a buzz of those wings.
“That used to happen to me,” Omma murmurs. Maybe more to herself than to me.
I blink at her. “It did?”
“It’s not you,” Bene’s voice growls in my head. “It’s my goddess.”
Oh. And here I’d been feeling sort of…special…when it wasn’t me all along.
I translate for Omma, whose pinched lips go more pinched, if that’s possible. “I see.”
“We need to go,” Cain reminds us.
We hurry down the steep, broad temple steps made of some silvery-looking stone. Once we hit the street, we slip around the corner into an alleyway that is stuck between boxy, stacked homes.
It’s a dead end, but Cain doesn’t seem bothered as he stops and helps Tabra sit on a wooden crate of some sort. She leans her elbows on her knees, unable to stay sitting on her own.
“We need to get her to a doctor.”
Cain grabs me by my arms and gets right into my face, every semblance of his earlier laid-back humor with the guards disappearing.
“What in the name of Nova were you thinking?” he demands.
“Young man—”
I hold up a hand, cutting off Omma’s protest. Cain has every right to be mad at me. They all do. I would be. I’d convinced myself all the way to the canyon that sometimes the dick move is also the right thing to do. Especially given how my visit to the burning lands turned out. But in the end, right or wrong, it was still a dick move. “Horus was supposed to tell you—”
Cain’s hands tighten painfully. “He did. And you still should have waited. Talked to us first. Damn it, Meren, talked to me first. I would have come with you.”
“I’m sorry.” It’s all I can say.
“Me too,” he mutters, flat-lipped. “And I plan to yell at you some more after we get you all safely to the palace.”
Safely? Is it not safe here? “I’ll follow you—”
A shake of his head cuts me off. “You need to change first so we can blend in.”
Blend in. Like the getup he’s wearing? Okay….
“Here.” He shoves a linen sack at me and two more each at Tabra and Omma. “You’ll find clothes in there. Hopefully they fit.”
I pause with the bag halfway open and try to keep my hands from shaking. Vida is the one who would have made sure I fit in. With a smile and her endless chattering, she’d have trussed me up in clothes she made just for me.
And now she’s gone.
He turns his back, and after sucking in a few breaths to ward off the sadness surging through me, I start to pull out the items in the bag. One look and I almost shove them back in. There’s no time for that, though, so I don’t, stripping out of my own clothes.
Warm air—thick with different scents of soil, wood, vegetation, and flowers that all blend together—feathers over my skin. It’s not cold but balmy. Close. Weighty. And wet. Enough that my new clothes stick to my skin as I try to pull them on. “There’s no winter here, right?”
“Nope,” Cain says.
