Remedy Maker (24 page)

Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, but the energy felt off—there was something out of place.

“Keep moving.” He gave Patience a gentle nudge at the small of her back. The need to vacate the area ate at him in big bites.

“Say what?” She turned to gape at him, her brows drawn together. “No way, dude. This is the last spot she was seen. We need to scout around.”

Her tone—half-demanding, half pleading—set his nerves on edge. Deep inside, gut instinct put Rhycious on high alert. Squirrels scampered along branches, hidden deer trotted past. The forest creatures didn’t acknowledge the clime change, but he sure as shit did.

Rhycious grasped Patience by the elbow and steered her toward safety, away from the thick stand of trees.

 “We’ll come back later,” he reasoned. “We should get to the palace.”

Like a stubborn Minotaur, she dug her little booted feet into the spongy ground and pulled her arm free of his grip. The mulish set to her bottom lip was cute, but he didn’t have time for feminine outbursts. Something was about to happen, and it churned his gut that he didn’t know what it would be.

“Then you go it alone. I’m staying here.”

Rhy sighed, forced a deep breath, and rolled the irritation out of his shoulders. He examined her crossed arms that pushed her breasts higher, the narrowed eyes, and lifted chin. She hit him with a defiant look and a leg shift that cocked her hip out.

And her face was coloring.

Uh-oh.

Because Patience preferred his hair unbound, he’d left it to hang au natural. He wasn’t used to the long bangs brushing his cheeks, and
that
irritated him too. Instead of ripping his hair out by their disruptive roots, he tunneled his fingers in at the scalp line, sweeping the strands back, and held it with his gripping fists.

Deep cleansing breath in. Hold for five seconds. Slow exhale out.

Arguing wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Her job experience would outwit him at every turn. Weren’t mediators supposed to be good at bargaining?

Well then, let’s bargain.

“Patience, look. I’m sorry. I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.” Apprehension grew and he glanced over the quiet woods. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

“
Shh
!”

“Huh?” His gaze cut back to her. Did she just shush him? Here he is, bleeding his heart out and she—

“Someone’s coming.” Patience faced the aspen grove.

With a small snick, he released the catch on his Bowie’s sheath and scanned the wooded area again. His ears strained to catch the sound of any movement beyond his line of vision. Hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Crouched low, he angled his body in front of her and elevated his senses to high alert.

Pale green luminosity, barely discernible in the emerald toned forest, blinked a flash next to a tree’s pale bark. Huge ferns feathered the ground like a Victorian ruffled collar at the aspen’s black scarred base. Accustomed now to the atmospheric pop, Rhy steadied himself and remained quiet.                                                                  

A slender hand reached out from behind a spindly frond and pulled the stem down. A young girl’s curious brown eyes peered out. Dark brown hair cascaded in a fall over her shoulder as she leaned around the tree to stare out at them.

“Hi, Patience.” The Nymph blinked hesitantly at them, hiding behind the tree when Rhy straightened his stance. She spoke at a decibel above a whisper, like her aspen tree that produced the delicate sound of fluttering leaves.

“Waverly?” Patience elbowed Rhy out of the way and stepped over curling ferns toward the other woman. “‘
Izzat
you?”

The young lady nodded, her cheeks blushing pink in a pale face. Waverly’s lips pressed tight in a tentative smile and she flicked her eyes between him and Patience. The shapeless beige dress she wore stopped at her knees, unflattering as hell. She held the fern in front of her as if it were a fan, her eyes downcast.

Am I that scary to look at?

“Rhy, meet Waverly.” Patience reached behind her for his hand, urged him forward with a tug. “She’s a friend of Serenity’s.”

His towering height threw both Wood Nymphs into his shadow. When the mousy girl tilted her head back and lifted her eyes, they grew round and wide. Her little rosy mouth drooped open and she stutter-stepped backward.

Patience quickly reassured her. “It’s cool. Rhycious won’t lay out the hurt on you. He’s a tight friend of mine.”

Friend?
Tell me she did
not
just call me a friend.
Another ripple of annoyance stacked like a block on top of all the others that were quickly piling up. He took a deep breath and held it in.

“He handed down the SOS when I was wicked ill.” Patience beckoned the reluctant girl toward her, smiling with encouragement.

Timid as a white-tailed deer, Waverly stepped from behind the tree and moved around the giant fern to stand quivering before them. She kept glancing at him, as if he’d reach over at any moment and gobble her up for lunch. Fearful or not, the scared rabbit routine scraped his raw, aggravated nerves.

“Would it be all right if we continued this social visit another time?” Rhy ripped out the words impatiently. He clenched his jaw and turned to address the girl. “We have an appointment and need to keep moving.”

Patience shot him a look that meant to blister his behind. Clearing her throat, she turned her lips upward again and faced Waverly. “I’ve been scouting for Serenity and have a
twangle
something’s up. You seen her lately?”

The girl seemed to pull further into herself, if that was possible, and shook her head while worrying her bottom lip with small white teeth. Then she shrugged and shot furtive glances his way.

Enough with the mouse act. Behind schedule in ferreting out the infiltrators within the royal house, not giving the disappearance of Patience’s sister a whole lot of investigation time, and Rhycious became one cranky Centaur.

“Look,” he said, his sufferance having run out. “Either you’ve seen her or not. Which is it?”

Waverly gasped and jumped behind the protection of the tree once again. The fern fronds shook where they lay against her trembling body.

Rhy rolled his eyes at the dramatics of females. He was done here. Time burned while they tried to coax intel out of this jumpy twit.

 Patience spun on her heel, glaring up at him, hands on her hips.

“What?” Rhy raised his hands in a shrug. The Nymph needed motivation to speak. He was accelerating the likelihood that it’d happen before sunset.

“Before you go and
fubar
this any further, just know I don’t need your help here.” Her mouth pulled down in a frown, tension set her shoulders tight.

By his wristwatch, he hoped they’d be safely ensconced behind the palace walls within a few hours.

“Sorry. Just please . . . make it short.” At his pointed look, she nodded in return. He let out a sigh and walked a short distance away.

Rhycious handed it to Patience for living up to her name. Skills in negotiation and counseling coughed up Serenity’s information faster once he was out of the way. Her open-ended questions to Waverly extracted answers that were point specific.

More smiles, two hugs, and twenty minutes later they were back in step. This time, he made sure to take point position.

When they were well out of earshot, she said, “Quaking aspens require a more delicate touch. You can’t just go all bad-ass on them or they’ll shut down.” Her voice held a bite of sarcasm.

“Do you want me to apologize again? I said I was sorry.” He held a low hanging branch out of her way. “What did Waverly say about your sister?”

“When Serenity left her house, she was followed by some hunters. Just as I suspected.” Patience gave a loud sniff, her eyes filling but not spilling over.

He offered his hand and Patience took it, giving his a squeeze. Rhy would have held on longer, but she dropped hers away. To keep up with his longer strides, she had to swung her arms.

For now, he’d change the subject and touch back on this later.

“You were great back there, counselor.”

 A highly skeptical look slid his way. “And you’re tripping out?”

“Agreeing to shift your mediation skills from the indigenous mythological Wood Nymphs of your sector to help the inner-turbulent clans of Boronda? Yeah, I’m impressed as hell.”

She lifted an eyebrow and appeared flummoxed. Rhycious didn’t understand why, he wasn’t just a hoof soldier in Her Majesty’s army. He’d actually read a book or two in his time.

“Well, uh . . . rebellious tribe culture is a highly regarded field of legitimate study, with a direct equivalence documented between recognized Woodland traditions and other syndications.”

He stopped in his tracks to turn and stare at her. Educated reasoning—did Patience just admit she understood there were inherent distinctions?

“Wow, I am truly aroused. I just got spanked and put in my place.” He let out a hearty laugh and realized something. He did a lot of that around her.

Wonder and admiration grew in spades for his harlequin pixie. He gave her a long contemplative look that colored her cheeks.

“I can guarantee one thing,” she said. “There isn’t an alliance in Boronda that has anything time-honored about it when it comes to utter mind-numbing viciousness. There are those who make the act of war in every way, on every day.”

The laid-back, honest words hammered a chord deep inside him, giving them hard legitimacy.

“You think it’ll ever end?” he asked, curious as hell to know what she thought.

In response, Patience held his gaze, clear and secure.

By the time she looked away, he had his answer.

Nineteen

Were they lost?

Patience could have sworn they’d already passed that same damn rock—single tree root, double trunk, growing in the middle of a split boulder. It’d make a
bitchen
home if nobody lived there. She and Rhy could live on one side and have their offices on the other.

Nope. Don’t think about a future with him. After all, he’s never mentioned one with me.

They were somewhere deep within the northern sector of Boronda, beyond the Wood Nymph boundary. Rhycious led the way alongside a gurgling creek. Musical jingles of water flowing over and between rocks helped dull her mind to Waverly’s distressing words.

According to Waverly, she and Rhycious had stood in the exact spot Serenity was last seen—with an additional gut-dropping piece of info tacked on. Too frightened to call out a warning, the little Nymph watched Patience’s sister walk away—trailed by two hunters. Moreover, according to Waverly’s description, these weren’t the same class of bumbling idiots as before. These new hunters wore upgraded tactical gear over their military-style fatigues.

Thank Bacchus the humans who
kidnaptured
her were dead, killed by Rhy’s own hand. While the necessity of taking a life made her
emo sad
, in the hunters’ case, it was good riddance.

Frustration flashed through Patience at the quaking Nymph’s NEWS—Never Ending Wimp Society. She could have easily backhanded Waverly for her worthlessness. Nationalities differed between Wood Nymphs, and with it came inherit differences. Quaking aspen Nymphs lived up to their name. If only Waverly had mustered the courage to warn Serenity.

Patience heaved a deep sigh, thinking of their updated data flash.

Water caught the passing sun and sparkled the bright reflection in her eyes. She glanced past the glare into a current moving slower than cold honey, and smiled at the Water Nymph who waved.

Patience couldn’t recall his name, but she remembered the conflict mediation she had performed. Wood versus Water, property dispute. Her amicable mediation successfully restored relations along the Boronda stream bank in question.

The Nymph’s image slowly diffused between shards of prism light. He turned on his back to swim upstream, long hair poured out to frame his face like the undulating blades of grass beneath the clear surface. She raised her hand in farewell as his watery figure retreated.

“We’re almost there.” Rhy stepped around a green, moss-covered rock. “You feel okay?”

No. I’m still a little pissed off at you.
“I’m bad, thanks.”
I bet we’re lost.

“Another twenty minutes or so.”

“Cool.”

He checked her out over his shoulder, a frown creasing his brow. Facing forward again, he said, “Did you know you’re the only Wood Nymph, besides Ambassador Koviac, who’s been invited inside Savella’s palace since she signed the treaty?”

“Chewy.”

“Huh?”

“That’s great.”

The bulk of Rhy’s large body came to a sudden stop. She threw her hands up, but not before she’d bumped her nose into his back.

When he spun around to face her, he didn’t look happy. His jaw was set firmly, and his intense brown eyes glowered beneath lowered brows. “Why the monosyllabic answers?”

Before taking a step back, Patience raised her eyes to meet his steely glare. He didn’t intimidate her. And she wasn’t in the mood to play nice.

“For a man of healing, you sure have a shitty bedside manner.”

The air temperature steadily climbed, but his bad attitude cranked it up another degree. With a jerk and a pull, she peeled her over-shirt off and tied it in a loose knot around her hips.

“What’s twisting your panties? Are you still angry with me about that paranoid Nymph back there?” His arm gestured to the path behind her.

Patience crossed her arms and gritted her teeth. Her pounding heart sounded like thunder in her ears. “Hmm.
Balla
brains, dude. I can see why you’re all that and a bag of chips too.”

He stared at her and didn’t break eye contact for a long moment, his mouth working. When he finally glanced away, it was to look at the sky. His hands rested on his hips. “May the gods Bacchus and Pan give me strength.”

“Oh
, puleeze
.” She swept him aside with her arm and stepped over his big feet on the narrow trail. “Save the dramatics for your patients.” She sucked in air that smelled of clean male sweat, mixed with the tangy freshness of clover.