“I could never hate any part of you,” he whispered, and pressed his lips to mine. I melted under his kiss, urgent and gentle at the same time. When we pulled away I was breathless, raw, and utterly in love.
The sound of someone clearing their throat popped my love bubble, and had me looking over at the happy druid. He smiled wide. “Thought maybe you got lost,” he said politely.
I smiled sheepishly and Logan’s hand slipped into mine as we followed Isaac to the sound of running water. Somewhere off in the distance, I could hear the jingle of that goat’s bell. What Logan had told me about Dom replayed in my mind, and I couldn’t focus on anything else until we came upon a large waterfall cascading down the mountain into the pristine, cerulean water of a small pond. It was the same waterfall from my dream … there was something relaxing and magical about it. I guess a property most waterfalls had.
Isaac spun and faced Logan and I. “The Earth has chosen you to carry her magic, and that is a great honor,” Isaac told me as I eyed the tattoo on my shoulder warily.
Wow. He was jumping right in, I thought.
“And how exactly did that happen? The Earth tattooing me?” I’d always wanted a tattoo, but I was scared of the pain. Which was ironic now that I had two. One I’d signed up for, and one I didn’t.
Isaac was wearing a Japanese-style shirt with a short, Asian-looking collar, and harem pants. His feet were bare, toes sunken into the dirt. His two orange-crystal-topped staffs lay in a bed of green grass beside him. He was the quintessential hippie in that moment.
“The Earth is alive!” He spread his arms wide and spun around looking at the trees.
Logan and I shared a side look. Great. My new “master” was crazy.
Isaac lowered his massive arms and stepped closer to me, holding his palms out. “When you unleashed that magic, she felt it! I can feel it now.” His hands were a few feet away from me, hovering in the air, caressing at something I couldn’t see.
“A druid without a master is nothing. That magic needs to be claimed. To be molded and cherished and harnessed. She knew you would make a good earth druid.” He was beaming at me like a father looking at a child who’d just reached some important milestone. Like I’d finally learned to ride my bike without training wheels.
I smiled nervously and shifted my weight.
Earth druid. Something about those words resonated with me, although I didn’t really know what they meant. The way Isaac spoke about the Earth you would think she was a real woman he had conversations with!
I wondered how old he was. In this light, his gray hairs were in such stark contrast to his dark charcoal skin that I guessed he might be over forty. For all I knew he was three hundred years old. Either way, he seemed wise but a little mentally unstable. Or maybe I just didn’t understand what the hell he was talking about yet.
I leered apprehensively. “Well … that was nice of the Earth to … initiate me like that.”
Isaac raised one eyebrow at me, staring into my eyes. I started to feel uncomfortable and looked down at the ground.
“What?” I asked, and I could sense Logan’s unease as well. He didn’t like another man making me feel uncomfortable. With Cooper’s death and my training looming over him, Logan was all kinds of on edge.
Isaac gave an exasperated sigh. “How can you be an earth druid when you do not speak to her?” He looked down at my boot-clad feet and shook his head in disappointment.
“Huh?” Logan said beside me, finally losing all composure.
‘This guy is off his rocker,’ Logan told me mentally.
Isaac pointed to my offending shoes. “When is the last time you walked outside, in the grass or dirt, without those?”
He said those like they were evil. They were shoes! But I thought seriously about his question. “I donno, since I was five,” I answered honestly. I was a clean kid, not a fan of messes and dirt.
The druid shook his head. “Gardening?”
My heart pinched and I saw Logan take half a step closer to me.
“Not since my mom died,” I told him.
His mood brightened a little. “But you did garden?”
Yes, Captain Genius, I did. “Yes. My mom and I grew nearly half of what we ate.”
Isaac clapped his hands together in excitement. “That’s how she knew you. How the Earth knew you were worthy of her initiation.”
Okay, time to get real with him. “You’re kind of freaking me out. You sound a bit…”
“Crazy,” Logan offered beside me, and I winced.
‘Way to be subtle,’ I told my mate.
Isaac frowned, and then nodded as if thinking through what we were saying. “You’re right. You can’t feel it, so you don’t know. Take off your shoes, Sloane,” he instructed.
“What?” I was not getting nasty dirt between my toes. God knows what else was on this forest floor. Animal poop, spiders, sharp stuff. Goat droppings…
“This is part of your training. Now please take off your shoes.” He impatiently put a hand on his hip and glared at me.
I groaned and leaned on Logan, ripping my boot off. Then came my sock, which I shoved into the boot and placed my foot down so that I could take the next boot off. The moment my skin hit the moss-covered earth, a low buzzing of electrical energy zipped into my toes, up my leg, and through my body, making me feel light and full of energy.
“Oh,” I stated.
Isaac smiled. “Now that you are initiated, you will feel it more, but when you were gardening you were feeling it too. On a smaller scale. The Earth is our source of life, and you are an antenna. Anything she can do, you can do.”
He lost me at that last part, but it didn’t matter. As I placed my second bare foot into the earth, tears sprang in my eyes, and a contented sigh escaped me.
“You’ve gone too long without it,” he said sternly. “You must walk barefoot for at least an hour a day. That’s an order.”
I nodded, eyes closed, tears rolling down my cheeks. It hit me then, what this light and bubbly, energetic feeling reminded me of: my mother—being with her, gardening with her, it had been like this.
‘Do you really feel something?’ Logan asked me mentally.
‘Yes. I feel like I’m home,’ I told him and opened my eyes.
Logan was peering at me as if I was a puzzle he couldn’t figure out, but Isaac was just wearing a smug grin.
“You need a weapon,” Isaac declared, turning this fuzzy love-fest with Mother Earth on its heels.
“She can’t even hold a dragon’s blade.” Logan interjected. “It burns her.”
The good druid nodded. “Of course it does. The magic inside of her… it wars with itself. Dragon, druid, earth—it’s not sure what to be, where to pull power from.”
I didn’t like that sound of that.
“So how can I kill the druids without a special knife?” I asked, because I didn’t think ripping Steven’s head off was a possibility. He was too strong. Ardan too.
Isaac walked over to his staffs and brought one to me. He reached out and attempted to hand it off to me, but I backed up. “No. No. Last time I touched something like that, it didn’t go well.” I remembered the way the metal had left an imprint on my palm.