Reign the Earth (The Elementae #1)(96)

Laughing, I smiled at Galen. It felt forbidden and strange—we hadn’t been alone since Trizala, and though I thought of our kiss constantly, the pain from the argument that followed seemed more real, a heavy weight in my chest. Being able to speak with him and laugh with him now when it had happened so rarely since Trizala felt suddenly intimate. “Thirteen?” I asked. “That’s a little specific.”

He crossed his arms. “Well, I want her to know how to wield a weapon before boys start coming around.”

Kairos smiled. “What boys? They’ll have to go through all of us and half the Dragyn clan to get to her.”

Galen smiled and nodded at Kairos. “I like that line of thought.”

“Great Skies,” I said, shaking my head. “You all know so little. This girl will have you all in knots before she’s a year.”

“When you say ‘Great Skies,’ ” Galen asked, lacing his arms behind his back and stepping closer to me, “is that a god?”

I felt the threads shiver closer to my fingers at the nearness of him. “We don’t have gods,” I told him. “We have spirits. But we consider the sky to be a sort of deity, I suppose. There are people who can tell the future in the clouds, and we live and die by what we see above us. Our lives are very dependent on the weather and climate.”

He nodded. “Do you pray to the skies?”

“We talk to the skies. Thank the skies for bounties—when we go to the desert, the ceremony to bless the baby is asking the skies for good fortune.”

“Does the sky ever respond?”

I laughed at this. “Of course! We speak to the sky, and the sky always speaks back in his own way. Rain, sun, clouds, lightning—these are the sky’s way of talking.”

Galen glanced up. “What is the sky saying now?”

There were few clouds, a gentle heat, and a bright, round sun. “The sky wants us to get to the desert,” I told him. “He’s making it easy for us.”

He smiled. “It’s strange to think that you don’t have a god to judge your actions. To pass down edicts.”

My shoulders lifted. “The sky is something far beyond my understanding. If something must judge, or dictate—to me, that seems little more than a powerful man, doesn’t it?” My eyes strayed dangerously close to the carriage with Calix in it.

“Maybe,” he said, and his eyes followed mine.

I drew in a deep breath. My head was throbbing; my whole body ached from retching so often.

“You’re in pain?” he asked, turning toward me a little.

“Just my head,” I told him. “As thrilling as it must seem, voiding my stomach every other time I eat isn’t very pleasant.”

“And here I was so jealous,” he said, brushing my hair off my face. His hand settled on my shoulder, reaching under my braid to rub my neck.

“Oh,” I murmured, leaning into his touch, ignoring the danger of his skin on mine because of the relief it brought me. “Keep doing that. That helps.”

“When we were in Trizala,” he said, taking advantage of the closeness to speak quietly to me, “and you said your power is triggered by something—what is it?”

He was so close, and the others had drifted back. Whether it was his hand on my neck or the words or what they called up inside me, warmth rushed through my skin. “That’s not fair,” I told him. “Bargaining a neck rub for information.”

His big hand was warm, spanning over my neck and softening my muscles. “I’m quite ruthless.”

My eyes met his for a tantalizing second before I pulled away, and losing his hand on my neck seemed to shoot nausea to my stomach. “I can’t, Galen. Not here, not ever.”

He sighed, but stepped closer and resumed gently rubbing my skin. “Why?”

“You said we can’t talk about it.”

“No one can hear,” he whispered. Without moving much, I saw Zeph and Kairos laughing, almost five paces back, and no one else near us. “Every day I think about the haunting things you say. That you’ve been imagining things between us. That something—something we did or said or felt in that cave triggers what you can do. What is it, Shalia?”

Anger bubbled up inside me, and I pulled away again, turning to face him. “No, Galen. You can’t do this. We can’t do this. And you already know—or you suspect, at least,” I hissed, trying to keep my voice down. “You want to hear me say that I care about you? Will that make it easier when I have your brother’s child? When he ceases to honor the fact that I don’t want him to touch me? Will that help?”

Galen looked stunned. Then he looked away, shaking his head like he was trying to clear it. I looked over my shoulder and caught Kairos’s watchful gaze, but kept walking. “Wait,” Galen said. “There are many, many things in what you just said. Your power is triggered by l—” He stopped, and didn’t say that word. “Caring? About people?”

I nodded.

“When I returned home from the south and met you in the courtyard, the stones fell apart into sand. Was that you?”

My face burned with heat. I nodded.

“It happened almost the moment I kissed your hand,” he said.

I had hoped he would never put that together. “Galen,” I said, shaking my head in warning. It wasn’t wise to think about that, much less discuss it.