Bound by the Mist (Mists of Eria) (26 page)

Relian took one of her hands in his and turned her to face him fully. “Yes, two. For every year that a human child grows, it takes elvin children ten to match that same growth, physically and mentally. Our years don’t hold true to yours or yours to ours. You are human, so we have to judge you by those standards. I’ll admit, though, this presents a conundrum of sorts for us. We’ve long been removed from your kindred and have forgotten how to view you. I don’t see you as a child and doubt many here see you as one. But everyone does keep the youth of your years in mind, a youth that seems both young and old to us.”

He added a teasing smile. “No two-year elf could handle what you and Maggie are facing with such fortitude. Your years are young but still beyond what any elf could hope to achieve without a few centuries standing behind him or her. But you’re new to this world and don’t have the knowledge a child would’ve gained by living here.”

She frowned. “I feel distinctly juvenile, and here I thought I’d left those years behind me.”

“While you aren’t juvenile, I realize our actions toward you and your friend may reflect otherwise at times, but—”

“Sorry to interrupt but let me guess. Once we are more accustomed to this world, that will change. Right?”

“It seems you know me too well.” He drifted his lips over her neck, creating a pleasurable tickle that spread throughout her body. “Now tell me more about your life. Your family, were they supportive in your endeavors?”

***

Cal watched as Maggie unloaded various items from her backpack. “I can’t actually believe you have that with you.”

“Aren’t you glad I do? Otherwise, we would have no way to recharge our stuff. Without my trusty solar battery chargers and rechargeable batteries, our mp3 players and cell phones wouldn’t work. I always knew they’d come in handy sometime.” Maggie sent her a smug smile.

“Our phones don’t work here. At least, I don’t think so. I never saw the point in trying.”

“Nope, I tried. They don’t. But that is just the reception part. We don’t need a signal to enjoy some of the other stuff like the games and music we’ve already downloaded.”

“I never thought I’d see the day when your predilection for carrying around junk and trying to be “green” would come in so useful. I’ve been worrying about conserving my precious battery and trying to figure out the fine line between actual usage and natural battery discharge over time.”

Maggie’s grin suffused her face. “Don’t need to worry about that, at least not until the batteries won’t hold a charge any longer.”

“Maybe we’ll be back before that happens.” Doubt laced her tone.

Her friend stopped fiddling with the gadgets, skepticism painted on her features. “Well, unless we can get information out of them, we’re not going anywhere. It’s not like
they
bring it up.”

“No, avoidance is their best tactic. I think they hope if they don’t mention it, we won’t bring it up, either.”

“They sure ignore us when we do. But their free ride is about to end. We now have enough confidence and knowledge of the language to start ironing out details. Whether you ultimately stay with Relian or not, we need to know how that veil works. There has to be some way of travel in between.”

Cal wished it were that simple. “You know how tight-lipped they are. No matter how we try, we’ve barely started to uncover whatever it is they hide.”

“So make some demands, like we want to go home if they don’t tell us some pertinent facts. We now speak the language and are still none the wiser.” Maggie threw her hands up in the air. “Patience! They tell us to have patience. That’s their answer to everything.”

“But we’ve tried asking.” Amused exasperation tinged her voice. “So where are we going to find the ruby shoes to take us home? I don’t think they’ll be handing us any, so threats about leaving won’t work.”

Maggie acted like a balloon deprived of air and flopped down next to her. “That’s all well and true. But...I’m starting to miss home. It’s no longer the great adventure I thought it would be.”

Cal placed an arm around Maggie’s shoulder. “I know. Even with all that’s going on with Relian, I find the thought of home creeping up on me more often. I can’t believe we won’t see it again. It doesn’t seem plausible. It can’t be.”

“I miss my family.”

“I know. Me, too. It’s been five months.” They sat, both consumed by their thoughts, until Cal released a chuckle.

“What?” Maggie threw Cal a look, apparently disturbed she would make such a sound.

“I wonder if our parents tried to send out the cavalry?”

Maggie smiled. “While our disappearance isn’t funny because of the pain it causes, I bet it led to some pretty wacky behavior.”

“You have to admit it’s an amusing idea—your parents working with mine.” Cal’s lips quirked up at the corners at the thought of her conservative parents joining with Maggie’s outrageous ones for anything of importance.

Maggie shuddered. “A scarily amusing one. They hate being in the same zip code, let alone in the same room.”

“Exactly.”

Maggie’s face shadowed. “I wonder what they’ll do as time goes on without any word or trace of us. Have they already given up?”

Cal gripped her friend’s arm. “Time? Did anybody mention how time here correlated to our own? Did we even ask?”

Maggie gazed at her, realization seeping over her face, along with the hope and doubt she knew warred on her own.

Chapter 25

Cal brushed a damp tendril from her forehead while she eyed the door and then the elves to the left of her. She and Maggie would be barging into the king’s private study, but they couldn’t be concerned with that right now. They needed some answers.

They’d bombarded a servant with questions about the location of the king or Relian. The poor elf—wringing his hands in the face of so much human emotion—had led them to the door where two sentries stood. As the guards and the servant discussed the new, pressing human problem, she and Maggie nodded at each other before lunging at the handle of the door.

They tumbled into the room, evading the sentries who sprang after them. Both froze when they saw half a dozen gazes or so glued on them. Oops. Definitely in a meeting. Guess neither of them had heard or understood that part.

Cal’s face flooded with warmth, and she couldn’t glance at any of the elves watching her. She was faintly aware that the king dismissed the lurking sentries, who apparently hadn’t wanted to grab either her or Maggie while in the royal presence of father and son.

Relian stood up and strode to her. “Lady Calantha, is something wrong?”

Cal gazed dumbly up at him. What’d she come in there for again? She must’ve looked dazed because he led her over to a trio of chairs that rested in one corner of the room. Maggie followed, accompanied not by Kenhel as she supposed, but by Lord Avrin—that nice elf from the garden.

Aware she should respond to Relian and the other elves as they voiced similar inquiries, she looked at Relian hopelessly. “I...I’m fine. It’s just that Maggie and I.... Well, we wanted to ask about the time.”

Relian’s concerned expression gave way to one of skepticism. “You’re fine, yet you ran in here to ask about the time?” he asked slowly, as if he were speaking to a recalcitrant child.

Which was what she was to him. She was nothing but a child in his eyes. How could she have deluded herself into thinking a relationship between them was possible? Cal twisted her hands in her lap, threatening to mangle the appendages until he knelt before her and grasped them.

“My lady, what’s wrong?” Concern colored his voice.

She closed her eyes, trying to steady her mind. So what if she’d crashed a meeting of royal advisors? “I’m sorry for the interruption.”

“Same here,” Maggie added.

Once Cal settled her nerves, she took note of the other elves in the room. Kenhel and Sardon were there, along with an elf that Cal didn’t remember meeting, though she may’ve met him in the great hall on that morning so long ago.

“My lady, you haven’t informed me of your reason for your extreme behavior.”

Relian’s soft voice drew a shiver from her. The underlying steel in it told her he wouldn’t brook her continued avoidance. Though she tried not to show the jolt his words caused, she was taken aback. She’d forgotten this Relian—the Relian of her earlier days. His iciness drove home the fact she didn’t know him, not really. It only served to renew that sense of foreignness, so inhuman in its quality, that radiated off these people in direct contrast to her own humanity. She thought she’d been making peace with this indelible fact, but had she only been sweeping it under the cover of her subconscious?

Cal fought the urge to look at Maggie, knowing she wouldn’t get much help on that front. The elves regularly rendered her gregarious friend as speechless as she herself when intimidated. The only one Maggie tussled with verbally was the king, and he’d been known to make Maggie fidget in her slippers until hotheadedness overcame common sense.

Relian knelt before her, but his presence loomed, not soothed. She squirmed, her mind spinning. An answer was expected. That meant talking. Talking. Cal grasped onto that as the natural sequence of things. Unless she spoke,
they wouldn’t know why she and Maggie were here. “Time.” Her Elvish started to fail her. “That’s what we came about.”

Seeing Relian’s brow furrow, she elaborated, and the words flowed easier now. “We’re concerned about how time passes in this realm as compared to back home. We both have families that will worry, that are probably worrying right now.” She looked at the faces surrounding her with beseeching eyes. “We weren’t exactly planning for this trip, so to everyone it will seem as though we’ve vanished. No one here has informed us of the likelihood, beyond vague noncommittal responses, of our seeing home again. We need to know the choices open to us.”

Relian sighed, and his rigid posture deserted him. “We’ve indeed been lax in considering the worry to both you and your families. It wasn’t our intention to have you suffer in silence. Please don’t think you have to keep doubts such as these private until you can no longer contain them. We don’t always have the forethought to bring up pertinent subjects before they become a concern. On this matter, we can assure you there’s no cause for worry. It’s not that time flows differently between the two realms but rather that traveling through the veil can distort time, alter it if you will. While we don’t know the exact mechanics, when you go back—for you will, that was never in question – it’ll take you to the time in which you need to be.”

Then why not tell them that before? She shook her head. “But no one ever mentioned we could go back, at least not for sure. It has always been “give us time before you make a choice” and other things like that, never a concise answer. I’m sorry if I seem disbelieving, but why the complete honesty now?”

“We believed that only the barest of facts would serve you well at the beginning.”

Cal frowned. He left the “and us” unsaid, for it was blatantly obvious it’d been for the elves’ benefit, too.

A thin smile covered his lips. “But I can see the time has come for you to be made aware of a few facts. Travel through the veil can be achieved
if we so desire, though it appears when it chooses to, in its own time. Once it appears, the veil has never denied us entrance. I see no reason why you two wouldn’t be allowed to go back, at least if you’re accompanied by a contingent of elves.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. It sounded as if Relian and his people had more control over the veil than they led her and Maggie to believe. “Contingent?”

His hands tightened upon hers. “While we think you can return to your homeland, the veil does desire your presence here and will seek to ensure your return. Without an escort, you might not be given entrance through the veil.” Cal started to interrupt to inquire about Maggie, but he held up a hand. “We don’t know about Lady Maggie, but until we find otherwise, we suppose the stipulations would be the same for her.”

Again, he left something unsaid—not only would the veil deny them entrance, the elves themselves would until they agreed to the stipulated provisions. Even if she could go home, they expected her to come back. So much for free choice. Whether she was with Relian or not, it seemed they contrived to ensure her future was here. Were he and his kisses the consolation prizes? Nausea flowed into her stomach when she thought about Relian’s affections being nothing but a nicely placed sham. But if not for him, why would they seek to keep her here? What could a mortal offer that they didn’t already have?

Cal pulled her hands free of his. “So you’re saying I never had a choice? I never did, did I? Even the voluntary bond wasn’t so voluntary, but I suppose that’s how it usually works. Sure, you can refuse it, if you never want to be content again. And you used the veil as a scapegoat, saying it had total control over us going home.” She could’ve sworn a cloud of resigned sadness covered Relian’s face, but she didn’t know who or what to trust anymore.

“No one can force you to accept a bond that isn’t wanted.”

“But there are consequences, even if the bond is unwanted, isn’t there?”

Her cold voice caused him to startle, his eyes widening. “Yes,” he agreed quietly.

Cal’s heart clenched at that look, but she couldn’t find the kindness to reach out and assure him the bond was wanted. Was it? What did she desire? Something in the back of her mind wanted to explore that possibility, but she trampled it down. She had to master her thoughts. To reconcile the fact she had no choice in almost anything that surrounded her was hard. Right now the only thing she had a say in was the bond and only because it couldn’t be completely forced
.
No, only the beginnings of it could. How was that not forced, though? Even if she could get past the dubious start of the binding, the consequences of denying it reeked of emotional blackmail.

Talion’s voice broke into her thoughts. “This is a private matter. Let us retire and give them time to talk.”

Cal closed her eyes, having forgotten their audience. She only hoped this argument wouldn’t be all over Eria and beyond by this evening.