Page 86 of Beneath the Flames
“I told you it was dead.I assumed it was obvious.”
“You know what they say about assuming.”
“What?”
A strange sort of giggle bubbled in my throat.Rhydian might have been familiar with some things about my world,but not everything.
“Nothing,” I said with a chuckle.“Never mind.”
I huffed, blowing a piece of hair out of my eyes, and thought over my options as I stared at the dark, hard ground beneath me.Cold air crept beneath my coat, and I fought off a shiver.
“So I’m supposed to make a flower grow in dead soil with no nutrients, with no sunlight, and in a place where it’s freezing and hasn’t seen any rain or snow in who knows how many years?”
“Four hundred years,” Rhydian murmured.
My eyes felt like they were going to bug out of my head.“Excuse me?”I choked out.
Rhydian looked me dead in the eye.“Eroth hasn’t seen rain in four hundred years.And like I said, snow only falls on the mountains, but the conditions are too harsh on them for anyone to live there anyway.Nothing can survive long.”
“You mean to tell me that infour centuries,there hasn’t been a single rain cloud in the sky, dropping much-needed water onto your land?”
“Hence the worddead,” he deadpanned.
“How do you and Nico even have any water at all?”
“Simple Magic takes care of basic needs like that.It’s not enough to fix a drought.”
A little worm of doubt squiggled its way into my mind.Rhydian was right.Everything was against me, and the conditions were beyond problematic.This task appeared impossible, just like he had said.
But I couldn’t give up now.Not after climbing the tallest volcano in Eroth, looking death in the eye in the form of a giant lava monster, and almost freezing to death.Not when an entire kingdom hung in the balance.Not when my ability togo back home to my family hinged on my success.Even if it seemed impossible, I had to try.
Resolve solidified, I bent down and ran my hands over the frozen, hard ground again.
“So how does it work?”Rhydian’s voice interrupted my mental list I was creating on what to do next.
“How does what work?”I glanced up at him to find him watching my hands on the dirt.
Even in the dark, it looked like a hint of pink colored Rhydian’s cheeks.He hesitated for a few long seconds before finally asking, “How do you grow something?”
My first reaction was to laugh, but I bit down on my tongue and held it back, not wanting to make fun of him for not knowing how to do something as basic as planting a flower.
But I still couldn’t stop my mouth from falling open as I gaped at him.“You’re kidding, right?”
He crossed his arms over his chest.“Does it look like I’m kidding?”
No, not with the twin furrows that had appeared between his brows, and the way his eyes flickered in annoyance.Or anger.I couldn’t tell.
“Oh.”I didn’t know what to say.“But there was once a garden here.You’ve never tried to plant anything?Even after the curse when you didn’t have food here?”
Rhydian shook his head, crouching down to poke his own fingers at the ground.“As a prince, I never needed to know how, and I was never taught.I had more important things to do than to play with the dirt.”
“Maybe you should have considered thatplaying with the dirtmight save your life one day.”
The smallest curl appeared at the corner of his lips, but he fought it.“Perhaps.”
A heaviness settled between us, and it became hard to breathe.Our knees were inches apart, and I could feel the heat of his breath warming the air between our faces.Something twisted in my stomach, but it was almost…pleasant.What was that about?
I shook my head, trying to get rid of whatever strangeness had settled over me.
