Page 31 of Avelina

He shrugged.

“Okay, tell me this. Have you ever heard of coffee? ’Cause I think you could use some.” I thought I might cry when he shook his head. As far as I was concerned, this was worse news than the worldwide cult-induced brainwashing.

Aaron pulled out a cloth and unfolded it to reveal strips of dried meat. Dragon jerky, I assumed. What kind of a badass do you have to be to keep dragon jerky in your knapsack?

Rogue sat up with interest, paying attention to Aaron for the first time since we’d set out that morning. Aaron offered me a piece, but I waved it away, so he tossed it to Rogue as I poured water into the wooden bowl for the dog.

“Aaron, I just realized I don’t know your last name. Do you have family names here?”

He closed his eyes for a second, then reached out to put his arm around my shoulders in a side hug. “I’m sorry,” he said, pulling me close. “I should have thought of that. It’s Atticus.”

I contemplated his apology, pondering why he considered it necessary. Our morning encounter was likely the first time he’d ever had that kind of contact with someone. It made sense that he normally would’ve offered his full name before diving into something so intimate. Had I known what to expect, and had Aaron’s health not been in danger, I certainly wouldn’t have let him look inside me so deeply after knowing him for only a day.

In truth, I’d never shown myself to someone like that, not even to people I slept with. The closest I’d ever come was with Drew, and she’d left me behind without a backwards glance—until it was too late. I’d promised myself that I’d never be in that position again.

Then something tickled my brain. Atticus. “Oh, that’s the same last name as the author of The Crystal Key,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“A book,” I said, unzipping the front pocket of my pack. I pulled it out and handed it to him.

He set down his meal and stared at the book hard. He removed his arm from around my shoulders, then frantically flipped through the pages, finally getting to the inside of the back cover. He stared at it and lifted his hand to his mouth, his pale eyes glistening.

“Aaron, what is it?”

Aaron stared mutely at the book, his face flushing. Tentatively, I lifted my hand to rest on his shoulder. I didn’t delve, just touched him. He looked up as if he’d forgotten I was there.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“My mother wrote this,” he said. He held the inside cover up for me to see and pointed at the picture of a handsome woman with steel-gray hair. I knew the picture well. “This is her,” he said.

“Whoa! That’s your mom? That is so random.”

No, I thought. His mother set us up on this crazy blind date. She might have intended for Aaron to have this book.

“What’s it about?” Aaron asked.

“It’s about a girl who travels to another world to find a dragon,” I said. I was about to say more, but the words stuck in my throat.

I face-palmed. How did I not see this before?

Aaron looked at me with wide eyes. “It’s about us! There must be a message in here,” he said. “The names of all the characters are unfamiliar, but the girl’s name is similar to yours, and the name Anick, of course.”

“Who is Anick?” I asked.

He almost gave me the look but stopped himself. “Oh, of course you wouldn’t know. He was Eve’s bondmate and Seleca’s father.”

“Bondmate? What is that?”

“Well, my mother is from Earth and she used to say the word ‘husband,’ so you might know that word?” He looked at me to confirm and I nodded. “That term always made my father laugh because ‘husbandry’ is what they call the breeding of oxen at the Groves farm, northwest of here. Then my mother would tell him that that’s why she said it.” Aaron gave me a fleeting smile, which quickly turned sad.

“Anyway,” he continued, “the Ministry teaches that Anick was a great leader who saved the entire world from destruction through noble sacrifice. The Noble Six are the six fragments that he thought were the most useful to a civilized society. He outlawed the use of any others. Our family archives show that the Ministry’s history is all a lie and that he was actually a monster who enslaved and murdered thousands of people. He was like Seleca, except worse. They say he was a thousand years old, but he was killed about a century ago.”

“He’s the one who turned this entire world into a cult,” I said.

Aaron paused. “If a cult is when a single person controls everyone on the planet with fear and violence, then yes.”

“They don’t usually get that big, but . . . wait, Seleca is a hundred years old?”

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