Page 79 of The Tree of Spirits
Raytan rubbed his head. “Xael, my boy, what happened to you? You’ve always been such a good boy. You’d never steal from me. You’d never play with explosives. You’d never hurt your cousins.”
“I had to, Uncle. I love her.” Xael wrapped his arm around Miatrix.
Raytan gave the young Elf an icy glare. “That girl put those ideas in your head!”
“No, it wasn’t Miatrix,” Rane told him. “It was a dream. Xael was trapped and scared and didn’t know what to do. The solution came to him in a dream.”
Xael nodded. “She’s right. It was all a dream.”
“This is all a dream,” I muttered to myself.
And then I woke up.
When I opened my eyes, Conner was sitting next to me on the sofa, reading a novel with an emerald dragon on the cover.
I sat up. “How long have I been asleep?”
“A few hours.” Conner closed his book. “How are you feeling?”
“What was in that bottle you gave me?” I wiped the sleep from my eyes. “I had the weirdest dreams.”
“Yeah, that particular elixir sometimes has that effect.” He felt my forehead.
I shooed him away. “Uh, you donotwant to be close to me right now. My skin is all clammy and yucky. And I bet I have bed hair.” I patted the top of my head. And, sure enough, my hair was a mess.
“Believe me, Red, I’ve seen much worse. I’ve battled monsters, remember?”
I looked around the room. The two of us were alone.
“The others are still out there, working. There are a lot of helpless, lost Watchers to bring back to the flock.” He chuckled to himself.
“And yet you gave up that important Quest to stay here with me.”
“I had to make sure you’re ok.” He gave me a crooked smile. “And, besides, we have more important things to do.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, like finding the Templars. If we do that—if we unmask them in public—then the whole world will see that the Rebels are not behind all of this.” His brows shimmied upward. “Any idea where to start?”
I nibbled on my lip. “Actually, I might have a few ideas.”
“Wow.” He set down his book. “I didn’t actually expect that.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to think.”
“You’ve been asleep,” he pointed out.
I rose from the sofa. “I had some weird dreams, and they, well, helped me process things. Regarding the Templars.” I started pacing around the room. “They planned the kidnapping down to even the smallest detail. Starting with the invisibility flu that they tried out on those kids, the test run before they used it to get the Watchers off their backs post-kidnapping.”
Conner watched me pace.
“And then there’s Rane’s dead tree,” I said. “I think the Templars were behind that too.”
“You think the Templars murdered a tree?” Conner’s lip twitched.
“Yes, I know how silly it sounds for an evil group of kidnappers to target a tree, but just hear me out. Rane’s neighbors killed the tree with electricity. We have the pictures to prove it. But Rane told me that when the Watchers questioned the neighbors, they claimed they didn’t remember doing it.”
“They could have been lying,” said Conner.
