Page 38 of Ties of Death

“What is it?” Clearly he knows, to have such a strong reaction to my attempt at touching it.

“It’s a death lily.”

The name is ominous, but it strikes a familiar note in my mind, a distant memory from time spent with my mother, watching her pound leaves into poultices.

“These are medicinal.”

“They are medicinal in small doses,” he agrees grimly. “And lethal in higher ones.”

“Mother used to grind them up to make a sleeping draught.” I reach forward again, but Daenn’s grip tightens on my arm.

“Don’t, Emana. We don’t have the antidote.” His calm voice is belied by the tight worry in my chest, the echo of his feelings.

I give him a side-eye. “Touching the petals won’t kill me. It’s dangerous when ingested, not when touched.” My tone turns teasing. “I promise not to lick it.”

His jaw ripples as I turn away, and that worry is still thick in my chest, but he doesn’t protest again as I reach forward and pluck a flower.

A potent smell immediately fills the air, something between lavender and rose. Milky pink latex beads from where the stem ends. The stalk is half the thickness of my pinky, and the leaves are waxy to the touch. I brush a hand over the petals; they look glossy, but they feel softer than velvet.

“It’s beautiful,” I murmur, trying to swallow away the swell of emotions. The smell, the name, it all brings me sharply back to spending time with my mother before I left the clan, before she…

“It’s nothing but death.” Daenn’s voice is laced with derision. It’s not much, barely even there, but I catch it.

I frown at him. “That’s not true.”

He steps back, and only then do I register how close he was standing in the first place. “Of course it is. A safe dosage is miniscule. All that plant really brings is a quick end.”

It takes me a moment to pinpoint the tension I’m sensing in the air, behind his words, but once I do, I tense.

Like me.

It’s unspoken, but the idea is clear in the way he turns away, hiding his expression, even though he can’t hide the pinch of pain he’s feeling or the tight set to his shoulders.

I dart ahead of him and press the flower into his hands. He takes it on instinct before recoiling, but I tighten my grip around his hands. I stare into his eyes, searching their green depths. When I speak, it’s with an edge of steel.

“These flowers are so much more than death. The tonics healers can make from them ease pain and allow restless ill to sleep in peace. Yes, a higher dosage can kill, but even that has its uses. Death is an important part of life—avitalpart. The aspens on our mountains wouldn’t ever grow without wildfires first razing the ground. Mushrooms come from decay. Every living creature survives off the death of some other plant or animal. You can’t reduce something to only the death that comes from it.” My voice drops. “Fire is deadly, but without it we woulddieon our mountain. We need it. We want it. It would be absurd for fire to despise its own nature.”

I’m not speaking about lilies or fire anymore, and I’m not sure Daenn knows that. I’m not sure if I want him to.

But… from the way his eyes flicker, the way a twisted tangle of emotions I can’t sort through whispers from him, maybe hedoesrealize.

My fingers tighten over his, and I drop my gaze to the lily held between us. “Appreciate the beauty of the flower instead of hating what it can do.”

His breath exhales over me, and I realize how very close he’s standing. I can feel his gaze boring into me. It’s too much. Too intense, too familiar.

I step back and turn, breaking the spell of our proximity, even if I can’t break the bond that shares every emotion between us. I try not to think about how that means he can sense my own tangle of emotions, how I ache for him, how afraid I am to care for him, how much I want him to bemyDaenn. I can only hope they’re mystifying to him, since he doesn’t know the motivations behind them any more than I know his.

Never mind that he knows me well enough to figure out those details if he wants.

“I’m starving,” I announce too brightly. “Is there any fruit?”

I collect a few more lilies and wrap them in a spare waxed cloth before we set out for the afternoon. I don’t know why, but I badly want to keep them, maybe even try to make them into a sleeping draught like Mother used to make. Tangible proof of my words to Daenn earlier.

The afternoon starts as calmly as the morning was, but we’ve only been flying a few hours when I hear a strange buzzing noise.

I glance over my shoulder, but I’ve miscalculated the direction. Daenn swears and his own fear spikes as Storm suddenly swerves, dropping down and to the right to avoid the insect monster barreling up from the jungle beneath us. Daenn’s arm turns into a vise around my middle, pinning me to his chest. I lean back into him, grateful for the anchor, doing my best not to devolve into panic as my mind flashes back to falling from Raindrop, as my emotions try to claw into my stomach and shred it.

I dare to peek over Storm’s side. The insect monster has dropped several paces below us. A group of even more of the monsters rises from the canopy of the jungle, flying straight for us. There have to be at least half a dozen of them.

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