Page 109 of The Demon Tide

But it’s too strong, this thing she feels for him. So strong that as straightforward and fearless as she is, she can’t move forward in this, because if she’s wrong about him having feelings for her in that way, his rejection would have the power to seriously wound.Fyon needs to make his feelings known.

“Mora,” Fyon says, suddenly seeming hesitant. “Have you considered relocating to the sublands?”

Mora’s throat tightens, her pulse quickening. “Why are you asking, Fyon?”

He sips his tea, studying her, and she has the sense of him holding his thoughts back. “Because we’re building something there,” he finally says. “And you should be part of it.” His eyes skim her emerald garb, sending a tingle through her. “You clearly seek to uphold Smaragdalfar ways.”

Mora raises a brow at this. “I wear Noi clothing as well,” she counters.

“You’ve chosen to power your air ship exclusively with Smaragdalfar runes you crafted yourself,” Fyon points out, gesturing toward the green rune stylus sheathed at her hip. “And you attend Oo’na’s services in the sublands every week’s end.”

“I love my people, it’s true,” Mora agrees. “And I love the teachings of Oo’na.” She slides two necklaces out from under her tunic’s collar. The first has a small Oo’na goddess pendant hanging from it, the Smaragdalfar deity fashioned from jade and emerald, a small white dove perched on her shoulder. The second bears an ivory dragon amulet—the Noi goddess, Vo, crafted from pearlescent shell, two small white bird pendants hanging to either side of the dragon, the sacred bird image common to both faiths. “But I also attend Vo’lon services with my mothers,” Mora says. “I love the teachings of the Compassionate Vo as well as those of the Compassionate Oo’na. Do I have to choose?”

“Mora...”

They stay silent for a moment, and Mora stares over the river, feeling unsettled, before meeting Fyon’s gaze once more. “Fyon... I’m not sure I fit in in the sublands. I feel like something’s been lost to me, growing up as an adopted child of two women who are Noi, so removed from my birth culture. And it hurts when other Smaragdalfar call me an impostor, or laugh over my clumsy use of our language. When I’m told I’m more Noi than Smaragdalfar.”

She thrusts out her arm. “But if I’m Noi, then why is my skin patterned in emeralds?” Her brow knots with consternation. “More and more, in the streets when I pass, I hear murmurs of ‘Snake Elf’ that make me want to don Smaragdalfar green, forsake all Noi ways, and shun everyone but the Smaragdalfar, even if I don’t fit in.” Mora glances over her shoulder toward the children, then sets her impassioned gaze back on Fyon. “But then...children land on my doorstep who are neither Smaragdalfar nor Noi. Who are unwanted here and told they don’t belong. And all I want to do is forge a new path and show them that they do, in fact, belong. That wealldo.”

She pauses, knowing that what she’s about to say might crush anything that’s budding between them.Ifthere is anything budding between them. But it has to be said.

He has to know who she truly is.

“Fyon,” she says, “I’m a Subland Elf who loves the sky. I don’t want to live underground, beautiful as it will be. I’ve lived most of my life at the top of a mountain city and on rune ships soaring through the heavens. I’m a creature of the clouds and always will be.”

A slight tension tightens Fyon’s brow, but only slight, his expression unreadable.

Is it disappointment she’s seeing? Sympathy?

As frustratingly unreadable as he is frustratingly gorgeous and wonderful.

Yearning takes hold of Mora. Trying not to fall head over heels for courageous and quietly kind Fyon Hawkkyn is like trying to stop the advance of the Xishlon moon.

Impossible.Even for the Mages.

Nothing can stop Vo’s purple light.

Mora fingers the pendants of her Noi and Smaragdalfar religious necklaces and smiles ruefully to herself, pulled in both directions. She’s such a mishmash of beliefs, but it works. It works for her.

“Come to the sublands with me later, Mora,” Fyon offers. “We’ll have Smaragdalfar tea and I’ll show you what we’re building there.”

“I will,” Mora agrees, fingering her Vo pendant’s curling tail. “Then come back here. We’ll take my skiff into the sky, and I’ll show you the stars like you’ve never seen them.”

It’s late that eve when Mora docks her skiff against her rune ship after an evening drinking tea with Fyon in the sublands before bringing him up above the clouds. After hours together, with what felt, the whole time, like a crackling attraction between them, he bade her a dauntingly chaste good-night, leaving her more confused than ever.

Mora hangs over her larger ship’s railing and looks past the huge cliff drop toward the glittering tiers of the city below out over the inky expanse of the Vo, topped by a constellation of sapphire runic vessels, myriad bright white stars hanging above it all.

She frowns as an ache takes up residence in her heart. Because as strong as her feelings are for Fyon, he might feel nothing but friendship for her. Now that she’s told him the truth about herself. He was quiet as they flew to the heavens, after insisting that she bring some of the Xishlon tea.

The tea of the love festival.

She felt sure, for a moment, suspended in the sky, that Fyon would kiss her. But he simply sipped the tea as the ship hovered above a lone cloud, the lights of the city twinkling far below, the storm band above the Voloi Mountains putting on a pulsing lightning show, his gaze intent on her the whole time. Unreadable.

And Mora wondered—How can he just calmly sip tea like that, completely unmoved by the skies? How can I have fallen for a man unmoved by the skies?

She turns and listlessly picks up the book on Smaragdalfar culture that Fyon gave to her a few nights back. She flips its embossed green leather cover open, the desire to learn more about her people rising, the Smaragdalfar such a formal people, with hundreds upon hundreds of complicated traditions, some quite subtle. And despite her heartache, Mora is suddenly intent on learning them all, especially after visiting the sublands this evening with Fyon to take in the luminous caverns, phosphorescent plant life, and fledgling farms being established there. And meeting with the Western Realm Smaragdalfar refugees whose deep-seated cultural ties and rich sense of community prompted a bittersweet yearning in Mora that she’s felt throughout a life cut off from those ties.

She might be a creature of the skies, but there’s a large part of Mora that privately longs to be a creature of the sublands, as well.

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