Page 35 of Ecliptic

“Yes, we were,” Ven replied innocently, and I shot him a glare, realizing he’d had a growth spurt since I’d been gone. The soft roundness of his cheeks had faded, giving way to the sharper planes of his maturing face. And where he and Sabra used to be about the same height, he now towered inches over her.

After our encounter with Graem, when I feared the giant would snap his neck, I was filled with joy that Ven was aging. Yet I desperately hoped he would never outgrow the wonder he held for the world, that spark of mischief and curiosity that made him so uniquely him.

I refocused my anger back on Madds. “You hanging out behind these bars is ridiculous. Why haven’t you left?”

“Looking for free rent,” he said with a grin, scratching Sabra behind the ears.

My eyes nearly bugged out of my head. “I hate to break it to you, but nobody wants you here.”

“Remember when nobody wanted you here either?” Ven asked, popping his head around my arm. “No one would talk to you or look at you. Then I showed you around and?—”

I stepped in front of him, cutting him off.

“Ven, do the guards know you’re here?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Um, no. I know a secret way in. And the guards check on him at the same times every day,” he answered, feeding Sabra a treat from his pocket. “They really should be more unpredictable.”

I attempted to look furious, but deep down, I was genuinely impressed. Why didn’t I think to ask Ven to do a little spying for me? Of course he had a secret passageway to the forbidden prisoner. “Then I suggest you go out the way you came in. It’s good to see you, but don’t let me catch you here again.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Ven said before skillfully sneaking back into the wall of trees, quietly opening the branches for Sabra to pass through.

Maddock chuckled as the boy and wolf vanished into the foliage, leaving no trace that they were ever here at all. I huffed and shook my head, my eyes snapping back to the prisoner.

“So you’ve been in my situation before, huh?” Maddock said, rising to his feet from where he pet the wolf that wouldn’t even let me touch her. “Ven was also telling me you happened to trap a pretty powerful Dark Spirit in a cave. Sounds really interesting. Could this be the same cave I was in? But wait. You wouldn’t do that. You would never do something so awful.”

Was there anything Ven didn’t tell him?

“So what? I trapped the Dark Spirit in the same crevice as you. You’re not in there anymore.”

“But you didn’t know that,” he replied, his eyes sparkling. A lustrous black curl fell down his brow. His hair was longer and artfully disheveled, more relaxed than when I’d seen him in the hospital.

“I . . .”

He stepped closer to the bars, “You were going to imprison a destroyer of worlds in there with me. Weren’t you?”

I held my ground, grateful for the bars between us, even though they were a false sense of security. “I didn’t exactly have a ton of options. It was the only place I could think of. But it’s not holding him very well.”

“Ah. Great. Next time you want to make me feel horrible for what I did to you, I’ll remind you that you almost made us even.”

Suddenly, the earth shook violently beneath our feet, and I tumbled forward. I fell into the prisoner’s arms, my body bracing for him to convulse. But he didn’t so much as flinch. Instead, his hands gripped me tighter and steadied me. Repulsed, I pushed off him with all my might and grasped onto the wooden bars.

When the trembling finally subsided, Maddock said, “Yeah, those happen a lot here. Is that normal?”

“As I said, the crevice isn’t holding Erovos very well. He is trying to break free. Hence, the earthquakes we’ve been experiencing. He is trying to tear the mountain apart to escape the crevice,” I replied, backing up and straightening my vest.

“Who is this Erovos guy anyway?” he asked, his eyes scanning my body as if checking for injuries.

“I came here to ask the questions.”

“What’s with the ears?”

“Stop,” I ground out.

“Where’s Rowen?”

“You know I could just leave, right?”

“Fine. What do you want to know?” he asked, retreating from the bars.

---