Escaping Death

Chapter 62

Solana

Two things are immediately clear to me when I wake up: my stomach is bunching up in knots, and I am no longer in the Grove.

The last thing I remember was being in my room with Ace and Hunter. I woke up parched and found a pitcher of water and breakfast on the coffee table. I poured myself a glass, used the bathroom, and was brushing my teeth when nausea hit me with violent force.

Hunter is convinced I'm pregnant, but I really don't know either way. Nausea has a hundred causes. No sense in getting everyone all worked up over a symptom that could fit any one of a hundred ailments.

I remember Ace getting me another glass of water, which I drank greedily considering I just vomited up the first. And then... I woke up here.

The air in the room is warm and dry, and light pours generously across the tiled floor through glassless windows. Across from the king bed in which I'm laying is a shower. No door, no separate bathroom. Just a single floor to ceiling glass pane between the room and the water jets.

Just outside of the bedroom door is a curved staircase that empties into a similarly tiled and windowpane-less living room.

"Good morning, love. I hoped that was you padding around up there," Hunter pulls me into his lap at the dining table just beyond the living room where Eli and Tate are also sitting.

"Where are we?" I ask.

"We flew south, so to speak," Eli teeters his head side to side and then breaks into a mischievous grin.

"How far south?" The landscape is lush, hilly and textured, brimming with organic life. There are parrots congregating in the tops of coconut trees and an actual fucking macaque climbing a banana tree.

"Bem-vindo ao Brasil," Eli chirps.

"What are we doing in Brazil? Does my family know?"

The three of them pass a look between them, as if they're mentally drawing straws on who has to be the one to explain to me what is going on.

"Your family knows we took you with us, but they don't know where. No one except the six of us know we're here." Hunter explains delicately as he ever so subtly runs his hand over my belly.

"What's the last thing you remember?" Tate asks.

"I was in my room at the Grove with Ace and Hunter. We were just talking," my brows draw down trying to concentrate on any memory beyond that, "but then my memory gets blurry. I remember tasting metal, I remember feeling cold..."

Hunter hugs me tighter to him, and they all nod silently. "Sunshine," Eli looks at me with sympathetic eyes, "you were poisoned."

"By a rare and rather aggressive poison, actually," Tate adds.

"Ember healed you herself," Hunter plants a kiss on my bare shoulder. "She tried kicking your parents out of your hospital room but they were so furious they wouldn't let you out of their sight."

"You say that like you were there," I mutter at him teasingly, but the way his body tenses beneath mine makes me wonder. Slowly I twist in his lap so I can face him better. "Please tell me you didn't do something stupid like show up in the infirmary."

"I was there long enough to show Ace where to go, and then I made myself scarce. Don't look at me like that. Tate isn't the only one who can skirt around unseen."

He kisses the corners of my mouth, softening the way my lips have pursed in frustration. If anyone had recognized him things could have tailspun out of control.