Corayne lay between them, tucked under her cloak. She’d woken just long enough to tumble out of the saddle and find a soft patch of grass.
With both his companions asleep, Dom finally allowed himself something to eat, if only to pass the time. It did not take long for a rabbit to pick its way into their circle, nose twitching and eyes bright. Dom made no noise as he snapped its neck and skinned it clean with a few quick cuts of his knife. With no fire, he made do and consumed it raw, eating the liver last.
Slowly, Corayne raised her head, her eyes wide and fascinated.
“Won’t that make you sick?” she whispered.
He wiped his fingers off on the rabbit’s fur. “We do not get sick,” he answered.
Corayne sat up slowly, her cloak pooling around her. “You don’t sleep either,” she said, resting her chin on a hand. Dom felt like a plant being studied, or a page of riddles deciphered. It was not unpleasant, somehow. Her curiosity was innocent.
“We sleep, but not often,” he replied. “We don’t need it as much as mortals do.”
“And you don’t age.”
“After a fashion.”
He thought of Toracal, with his streaks of gray hair, earned over thousands of years. His aunt, with the lines on her brow, at the corners of her eyes, around her mouth, on her hands. The Vedera are called immortal by those who can not fathom a life of so many millennia, stretched beyond the mortal ability to measure. Death avoids us, but it is not a stranger.
There was steel in the world, blades that could cut and kill them. Immortality seemed far less certain after seeing so many of his own die before the temple, their blood indistinguishable from that of any low mortal walking the Ward. And my scars are proof enough of our vulnerability, small as it may be.
“It’s a good thing there aren’t very many of you,” Corayne said in a low voice.
Dom startled, not in confusion, but surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
She brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Or else your kind would have conquered the world.” Her answer was blunt.
“That is a very mortal impulse to have,” Dom said, and meant it. Conquest over the men of the Ward seemed foolish to him, even at his young age. Mortals rose and fell like summer wheat. Kingdoms were born and died. Those he’d known in his first century were dust now, barely shadows in his long memory. Why bother reaching out a hand for what could disappear before you grasp it?
Even so, there were histories of the Vedera too, records of immortals who fought alongside or against the men of the Ward. For glory, for sport, for nothing at all. Dom could not imagine it for himself or his people now. They defended their homes on rare occasion, but nothing more. Cowards they are now, hiding in their enclaves. Ready to let this world crumble around them.
Corayne stared with her keen gaze. She had a way of prodding without words.
“My people are focused on finding a way home,” he offered. “But the way was lost to us, the Spindle closed, and even its location destroyed long ago.”
“Destroyed?” she asked, cocking her head.
“The ground my people first arrived on is now at the bottom of the Long Sea, swallowed by the waves,” he answered softly, trying to see a place he had never been. “Every day we hope for another doorway, another Spindle. A way back to Glorian.”
The last cobwebs of sleep seemed to lift from Corayne, and she leaned closer, sharp with interest. Her tangled braid fell over one shoulder, gleaming almost blue in the starlight.
“Your realm must be magnificent,” she said.
“I suppose.” Dom shrugged again. “I am Wardborn, still young among my people, still learning the realm we live in now. And what I know of my own realm comes from others.”
He felt the familiar lick of regret that came every time he thought of the realm he did not know, the home he might never see. It was tinged with sour, green envy of all those who did know Glorian and could remember its stars.
“They are whole while I am not.”
“We have that in common, I guess,” Corayne said softly. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around herself, though the air was still warm, even for mortals.
Dom narrowed his eyes. He felt worlds apart from her, separated by a pane of glass. “How so?”
She dropped her gaze to the grass. “I only know my father, his blood, what we come from, what we were born as, from what others tell me.” Her fingers picked at a leaf nervously. “And they’ve told me very little.”
She’s interrogating me, Dom realized, looking Corayne over.