Page 22 of The Oracle's Journey

“I tried to pull it apart with my fingers earlier, but it won’t give,” I answered. “What possessed you to plait it like that in the first place?”

“Again with the stereotypes.” He gave me a wicked, lazy grin. “My fingers are talented, just not that way.”

I bit my lip and curled my toes in my boots, trying not to consider the insinuation. Focus! “So, you think Emmelina?”

He nodded.

“Well, that would be her style of prank.” I nodded with a heavy sigh.

“There’s enchantment in that weaving,” he said. “Divine enchantment.”

I blinked.

I couldn’t have heard him right. “So, you’re saying she’s a goddess?”

“Yes and no. She’s too mortal to be a god god, but perhaps some form of demi-god. But she did this …” He shook his half of the plait. “… last night before she went to find the wolves. I assume she’s operating on instinct, and this was done heedlessly. The shape shifting, though … that could be something like self-actualization. She thinks it and becomes it because she believes she should. It may only take one intrusive thought to change her, I suppose.” He frowned at the thought.

“You’ll need to slow down,” I shook my head, “I’m still wrapping my head around the idea that our little friend is divinity.” But it was nice to know that it was literal divine intervention and not my own failings that allowed Emmelina to cause so much trouble.

“I think what’s happening right now,” he said, leaning in a little closer than necessary, meeting my gaze, “is that she is coming into her power. Maybe she had her talents as an oracle before because they came from a mortal parent.”

“That came from her mother,” I confirmed, trying to ignore how the pressure of his gaze made my heart flutter. “There was nothing godly about the King, though.”

“Have you met many gods?” Lhoris asked with a chuckle, leaning in even closer, causing my fluttering heart to shift into a full gallop. The stupid thing. I knew he could hear it.

I arched an eyebrow and snorted. “Have you?”

“Ugh,” he groaned and drew back. “This has wizard bullshit written all over it.” He handed the waterskin back to me and got to his feet. “Or maybe some trickster god did a number on the queen. Regardless, we’re in over our heads.”

He offered his hand with a wink. I took it, unable to hide a pleased smirk at the contact, and let him pull me onto my sore feet.

“One problem at a time,” I reminded him. “We have to find her first.”

“You’re right,” he said and gave my hand a squeeze. “Thank you, Oz.”

“Nobody calls me that,” I scolded him, though I liked the way he said it. His accent turned Oz to Os, and it was damned adorable.

“I do,” he said, leaning in as if to say something confidential, crooked grin on his lips. “You love it when I call you Oz.”

He wasn’t wrong.

It was dusk when we stopped again, the trail had crossed over itself a few times in the area and neither of us were exceptional trackers on so little sleep. “I need to set up a safe place for the night,” Lhoris said and looked up to the trees.

“Fair point,” I frowned, wondering how we were going to safely sleep in a tree.

“The woodland elves have the cleverest hammocks,” he said with a glint of excitement in his eyes. He pointed at the mass of fabric he’d been lugging through the forest. I had mistaken it for a tent though I hadn’t seen one in use at the bandit camp. “I don’t intend to sleep on the ground with dire wolves wandering around.”

I watched him climb a massive, ancient-looking tree and check the soundness of two large branches about forty feet up. Once he was sure the branches were sturdy, he tied a rope between them, leaping nimbly from one to the other. Then he hooked a mass of cloth to the rope. He took the bow and did something I couldn’t see with it, but the hammock looked more canoe shaped than just a hanging flap of fabric. Then it was dark, and I couldn’t really see what was going on for the last half of the job.

“Hey,” came a voice from beside me. I startled and cocked my arm to strike before I registered it was Lhoris. He’d either climbed down or jumped so quietly that the din of the nighttime forest disguised the sound of his approach. “I need you to climb on my back so I can carry you up now.”

I withheld a harsh remark about how tired I was of being carried everywhere, but how else was I really going to get up there? Half-elf or no, I didn’t have the ability to scale a tree like that, in the dark, with an injured arm.

He summoned his fairy light so I could see when we got out on the branch. I was agile enough to not wobble while walking out the five or so feet to the hammock, but his little light sputtered and flickered out before I could slide into it.

“Damn,” he cursed. “Would you like me to get in first so that I can guide you safely?”

“Yes, please,” I replied.

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