Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 205594 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1028(@200wpm)___ 822(@250wpm)___ 685(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 205594 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1028(@200wpm)___ 822(@250wpm)___ 685(@300wpm)
And their words had made no sense. “Two years?” I’d questioned Nemeth. “How can they blame us for two years? We left the tower less than a month ago.”
Nemeth had no answers, either. “Perhaps they’ve been hit by misfortune since the beginning of the war and we are an easy target to blame. We did leave the tower, after all.”
He’s not wrong…but must we be blamed for everything?
We’d sailed on from there, a tiny ship in the middle of an endless sea. We saw no other craft on the water, and when we ventured close to land, we saw no people, either.
And now we are nearing Darkfell and I am just as unsettled as the day we left the tower. I lean forward in my seat, fanning myself with the pages. “Do you ever wonder if the gods are playing tricks on us?”
“Tricks?” Nemeth asks, rotating one powerful arm as he regards me. “How so?”
I gesture at our surroundings. “That when we left the tower, we stepped into some upside-down world and that’s why nothing makes sense? Why everyone is gone?”
Nemeth eyes me. “How does it not make sense that they are gone? They lost the war. Or is it that part that is so inconceivable?”
I shake my head, because I don’t want to pick a fight with Nemeth. “You know that’s not it. It just feels so…odd. Like when we left the tower, we left our world behind, too. This doesn’t feel like our home. Not anymore.”
He takes my hand in his. “Your home will be with me, Candra, and mine with you. Don’t worry over things we cannot change.”
Easy for him to say. We’re sailing to his homeland because mine has been decimated. Still, I can’t help but wonder what the archbishop meant when he blamed us for two years of misfortune. The goddess is angry at us, of course, but surely we cannot be blamed for the time we were faithfully locked in the tower? That’s the part that gnaws at me and keeps me up at night.
That, and the endless swaying of our damned ship.
Nemeth lifts my hand to his lips, giving it a peck. “I’m going to scout some more. Do you need anything? How is the babe today?”
I put a hand on my rounded belly. Somewhere in the last month, it’s swollen to double its size. It makes sense that I would have a large belly given that Nemeth is rather gargantuan in stature, but it’s not comfortable, and I worry what I’m going to look like when I get closer to my due date. The baby is calm now at least and not kicking my bladder. “Sleeping, I think. And I’m good. Though if you see shore, look for berries?”
I’ve had the most ridiculous cravings for fruit recently. Never mind that there’s no food anywhere on Lios’s shores, and here I am asking for berries. But my mate gives me a wink, kisses my knuckles again, and then surges into the air with another powerful thrust of his legs. The boat rocks back and forth and I clutch at the side, steadying myself.
Nemeth’s flying has grown better during our travels. He’s constantly in the air, scouting or just looking for fish he can dive and catch. I imagine that now that he’s free of the tower, he has no desire to be tied down to our crappy little boat. I can’t blame him. If I could leave the boat behind myself, I would in a heartbeat. The damned thing leaks and every twitch makes it rock, and it’s just a wretched form of travel, especially for someone that can fly.
Sometimes I worry Nemeth will just fly away and abandon me. On my crankier days, when the baby’s kicking me and the smell of raw fish makes me want to punch something, I think I’d leave me behind, too. But he always comes back, and he’s always patient and gentle with me.
I sit up on the trunk that’s been my seat for the last six weeks, the trunk full of books and our meager supplies. I cast out my fishing line after baiting it with the head of a minnow and ease the line into the water. Might as well fish for my lunch. I eye the mountains that have been growing increasingly dominant on the horizon with every day that passes.
I’ve always known that Lios is a land of rolling hills and plains and that Darkfell’s people live under the mountains, but I’ve never really visualized the differences in the land until now. The Fellian continent looks as if it is hewn directly from rock, the cliffs steep and forbidding as the rock itself climbs so high that the clouds cover the tops. I can’t imagine how anyone can live here. There’s no place for a farm or for livestock on the outside, and it makes me wonder what the interior looks like.