Tales & Time (Lost Time Academy #1)(41)

"It's safe, remember. I created everything here with my imagination, with my powers. It was just a field before, but now it's so much more," he explains to me. “Though I can only change things that exist here. Like trees, water and the very earth. Actually, this might not be earth, I’m not sure.” I chuckle at that, leaning down slightly to run my fingers through the soft grass. This place smells seductive, like roses almost.

"You made all of this?" I turn and ask him, and he grins as he holds his hand out. Out of nowhere, a flower slowly grows from a seed in his palm, stretching into a pretty pink rose. That is some sexy magic, the kind that would make any girl’s knees feel weak. Knox smiles down at me as I stare at him, not the rose, noticing the changes in him recently. When I first got here, he was always tired, stressed, and there was never a smile on his lips. Now Knox is more relaxed with my help getting him to sleep, and just sometimes, I catch him looking at me, and he is so happy. As kids, I always used to love making Knox happy, because he had the best smile out of everyone I knew. Now that smile is a sexy smirk, which has the same effect—I always want to see it.

"For you," he says, offering me the flower after brushing it very slowly down the side of my cheek, not the one that hurts though.

"Ah, so you're the closet romantic," I say, swirling the rose around in my hand.

"No, that would be Sin," Knox says, walking past me and towards the house. I follow him over, passing the very tempting looking rock pool that I can feel the heat from, to the door of the house. Knox pushes it open and walks in, and I pause as I step in after him. The cabin is one large room where everything is made from vines and wood, and it is still very impressive. There are three sofas, with bases made of wood, and the fabric looks like giant blue petals.

"You want a drink, Madi?" Knox asks, and I turn to see him sat at the wooden bar, where rows of bottles line the counters behind him. "It's the only things I've brought into this place from the outside. You can't make beer and whiskey appear here. Sin wants to bring a TV in, but he hasn’t worked out how to get electricity working."

"Everything is made from plants and trees. Is that the trick?" I ask, which makes a lot of sense. “Unless you bring in things.”

"Yes, it's something to do with this place. I can go to another dimension where everything is made from metal. That place is boring though. I send Tobias there when he is too high and fucked up," he adds, looking frustrated. “I might have to send him there again soon.”

"Is he still doing that stuff?" I ask, because I thought he was alright recently, and Knox shrugs.

"I think so, Sleepy," he despondently replies, clearly wishing he could tell me something different. Knox slides a beer in front of me after undoing the cap. I swallow the lump of disappointment in my chest, hoping that Knox is wrong about Tobias but knowing there is a good chance he isn't, as I take a long sip. I’m not a massive beer fan, but today has been stressful as hell, so anything will do. My lip stings from the cut, but I drink anyway, pushing past it.

"Tavvy says you guys sneak off all the time, and you just about confirmed that when you said the others were away on the night of the party. Where do you go?" I ask him.

"Secrets, Sleepy," he states, eyeing me carefully with that stubborn expression he shares with all his brothers.

"I'm tired of secrets and lies. I don't want to hear them anymore," I say, placing the bottle down. “You said I’m one of you, and that means you can trust me, right?”

"I know you are one of us. You know it too, but sometimes secrets are there to keep you safe," he warns me, but it doesn’t scare me all that much. I’m already scared of this world; it’s fucking terrifying and we all know it. The problem is, I want more than just surviving. I want to live, to fall in love with the men close to me. The kind of love that makes me not fear death as much as I fear losing any of them. We have all been on the edge of this for so long, just inches away before they left. I just started to fall for each of them then, and now it’s worse than before. It feels like my soul is burning when I’m around them. And all I do is keep the fire going because it’s better than nothing. It’s better than a life without the Tale brothers in it.

"I'm starting to think there is nowhere safe when it comes to this world I've just been thrown in," I decide to say, rather than anything I’m thinking. My thoughts aren’t safe around them, I’d end up blurting too much out.

"We do work for our parents, missions of importance...” he pauses for me to take that in. “The dark tales are changing leadership, and their armies are not attacking any longer. There is something going on, and we are keeping close watch."

"That's dangerous," I say, feeling my heart beating quicker at the thought of them being around dark tales, let alone spying on them.

"Very, but we can escape in a moment's notice to here. We aren't really in danger," he replies, after taking a long sip of his beer. "That's why they ask us to go."

"The other night, they didn't have you there, so how would they have escaped?" I enquire.

"As usual, nothing escapes you, Madi. Right, well, that night wasn't a mission, that was our parents calling us to a meeting to ‘tell’ us of our engagement with Ella," he explains to me, and for a second, I feel too shocked to actually move. They knew all this time.