Free Healing Eden by Rhenna Morgan Page A

you can’t leave zeolite,” Galena said. “He’ll kill you the minute he sees you.”
    Something inside him warmed. Even in the darkened cell, her light and goodness shone on his soul. A benediction he didn’t deserve. “Galena, I’m dead either way. Life in here will be a slow, torturous death. My only other options are death at your brother’s order for treason, or to die trying to save the soul of my mother’s other son. Which would you choose?”
    Her shoulders dropped and her hands tightened in her lap.
    Reese stood and motioned to the hallway beyond. “Take me out long enough to offer my memories and my link. As a Shantos male, you’re as capable of killing me via link as Maxis is. If at any time you sense treachery on my part, you can strike.”
    “Anything else?” Eryx said.
    “I’d ask one last night in my mother’s homestead to say good-bye.”
    Eryx studied him another moment, stood and motioned Galena toward the door. He parked the chair against the wall and followed her out. “We’ll see.”
    * * * *
    “Stop squirming, Serena.” Maxis tightened his arms around Serena’s torso, her body soft and giving against his as they flew through the Eden skies. The wind bit his cheeks, and the setting sun took what was left of the day’s warmth with it.
    Serena nestled closer. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. I can’t trust you with my eyes open, let alone blindfolded.”
    He’d been surprised too, a small win in his grander plan. With a little luck, he’d cinch the war before the sun rose. “I gave you my word, you’re perfectly safe. Now relax and let me make my amends.”
    A line of clouds spanned the horizon, soft gray outlined in shimmering pinks against blue velvet. Nature’s demarcation between two opposite regions, Cush’s bright heat to Asshur’s stormy existence.
    Maxis steered left toward Brasia’s multi-hued mountains.
    Veins of violet, red and yellow covered the foothills, blending where they overlapped for a rainbow effect. Evanora’s Peak stood the tallest. A behemoth of color, its temperature set in perma-freeze. No matter how much snow nature dumped on the mountain, those same varied colors pushed through the white, pulsing and hypnotic.
    Gold sparked in the distance, brilliant flecks off castle spires that marked their destination. Each flash stabbed his retinas, but the tightness in his chest unfurled. They were almost home.
    He landed in a frigid crosswind so fierce the unforgiving gust penetrated his thick overcoat.
    Serena shivered and lifted a hand to the blindfold. “Praise the Great One, where are we?”
    “Not so fast.” He captured both her wrists, pinned them behind her back with one hand, and splayed the other across her abdomen. Her rose silk tunic slicked against the firm flesh beneath.
    He dragged his lips along the shell of her ear. Caramel and vanilla scents teased his nose—there a moment, then pushed away on the wind, a promise of hearth and home unlike anything in his stiff and cold childhood. “If you rush, you’ll ruin the surprise.”
    She stilled, but her brow furrowed above the blindfold.
    He loosened the fabric and stepped to the side.
    She blinked and squinted against the twilight before her face softened, mouth parted in a soft O. “Where are we?”
    Warmth and a sated lethargy radiated through him, a lion stretched beneath the sun after gorging on its fatted prey. “My family home, situated where Asshur, Cush, and Brasia meet. Evanora commissioned it not long after my father was born.”
    White limestone walls sat on an elevated acreage and stretched to the sky, topped by forest green tiles and gold-tipped spires. Wrought-iron accents lined each oversized window and exotic hedges wound in intricate patterns around the perimeter. The staggering structure spanned two hundred feet to either side and reached three stories high.
    The wind tossed Serena’s moonlight-colored hair around her neck and shoulders, and greedy rapture