Quentyn nodded as he looked over at me. When he first saw me, his gaze had snagged on the left side of my face, but that was all. He hadn’t continued to stare. He hadn’t quickly looked away in embarrassment, either. He saw them and seemed to move on from them, and I appreciated that. “The mist, man. The mist. During the day, it thins out a bit, but at night? You can barely see a few feet in front of you.”
I remembered what Kieran had said about the long mountain range. “And that’s…Atlantian magic?”
“Yes. It’s designed to ward off travelers, making them think there are Craven in the mountains, but there are none,” Kieran said, eyeing my plate. “You going to eat the rest of that bacon?”
“No.” I nudged my plate toward him. “How does Atlantian magic work?”
“That’s a complicated question with an even more convoluted answer.” Kieran picked up a slice of bacon from my plate. “And I know you’re gearing up for a hundred more questions.”
I totally was.
“But the easiest answer is that the magic is tied to the gods,” he said.
Well, that only caused me to have more questions and made me think of the Blood Forest tree, the omen, that had appeared out of thin air in New Haven.
“And besides, the mist isn’t just a mist,” Kieran added between mouthfuls of bacon. “Is it, Quentyn?”
“No.” The young man’s eyes widened. “It’s more like an…alarm system.”
“It responds to travelers, even Atlantians, and the way it responds is different for everyone. Larger groups seem to trigger it.” Quentyn’s fingers tapped nonstop on the table. “That’s why we split up into groups no larger than three.”
All of that sounded…concerning. “And traveling through the mountains is the only way?”
“It is, but don’t worry too much.” Quentyn smiled. “We didn’t have too much of a problem when we came through it before.”
Too much of a problem?
“Which reminds me, I can make some extra bacon for when we leave.” He popped up from the chair. “If you like?”
Kieran paused with the second slice halfway to his mouth. “When it comes to bacon, the answer is always yes.”
The young Atlantian laughed as he glanced over his shoulder. The door opened, and my heart launched itself into my throat as my gaze crawled over the faces of the men and women who entered. My shoulders lowered as I recognized none of the faces. There was a half-dozen.
“You guys hungry?” Quentyn called out and was greeted with several enthusiastic replies. Turning around, he shrugged as he said, “I like to cook.”
And then, with a nod at both of us, he raced off to the kitchen area.
I watched the group of newcomers split into two, seating themselves at the round tables near the door. All of them nodded in acknowledgment, but none approached. A woman with dark hair glanced over her shoulder. She had golden eyes. An Atlantian. As did the man who stared from where he sat across from her.
Ignoring the nervous fluttering in my stomach, I offered a smile.
The woman turned back around, and the man faced another beside him.
Sighing, I turned to Kieran. “When do you think we will leave?”
“If Elijah was able to get the first group out a day after we left, they’ll probably be at least two days. Since the group would be larger, they won’t be traveling as fast as we did.” He wiped the sheen of grease from his fingers on a napkin. “But we’re less than a half-day’s ride from the mountains, so we should reach them by tomorrow afternoon, which will allow us to cross halfway before nightfall. And then we’ll be in Atlantia.”
My heart skipped a beat. I hadn’t realized that we were now so close to what was basically an unofficial boundary line. “Just like that?”
He smiled slightly as one of the younger men with light brown hair bent his head to the woman, whispering. “Just like that.”
Leaning back in my chair, I peeked over at the people. Their postures seemed awfully stiff. I bit down on the inside of my lip and opened my senses, letting them stretch out. The moment their bitter and sour-tasting emotions came back to me, I immediately wished I hadn’t let my gift free. Distrust and dislike were often hard to separate, but in some cases, they were joined. Like now.
They had to know who I was. It was the only reason they’d feel this way.
“You’ve been quieter than expected,” Kieran commented.
I shut down my senses, offering a shrug. “I’ve been thinking.” Which wasn’t exactly a lie. I’d done a whole lot of thinking during breakfast.