The Wishing Tree - Book Two [Completed]

Treed - Part 29

     We're finally slowing, after hours of running. We didn't talk throughout the run, each of us lost in our own private nightmares of being caught by whatever force hunted down Violet. My gut tells me it's Grayson, but she never said that and given all the new information, I don't even know if Grayson is the only one we need to worry about anymore.

     Mason slows to a walk and the rest of us follow his lead. He waves me up to walk beside him with a glance and a flick of his wrist. Walking shoulder to shoulder, I look over at him. He always knows so much more than me; I don't know what I need to say right now.

"Check the sequence," he says.

I reach down the front of my dress and extract the paper, unfolding it carefully. There, in a beautiful scrawl are the words, Meet with those who keep the most secrets.

Mason quirks up his eyebrows at me. "Violet and the tree on the same path, Queenie?"

My gray eyes glance up into his green ones. They are soft and vivid again, like a field after a good rain and for a moment there is something there that I refuse to acknowledge. Taking a deep breath, I refold the paper.

"How'd you know about Violet?" I ask.

He sighs and looks away towards the towering hills in the distance, relieving me of his intense scrutiny.

"I was pretty sure I wouldn't be setting foot into that settlement in one piece. Of all the things I've done, what I did to them was one of the worst." His green eyes, when they meet mine again are stormy seas. "I wanted to stop close enough that someone as powerful and clever as Violet would sense us, but not close enough that others would know we were coming."

He frowns and then kicks the ground as we walk. "That might have been a slight miscalculation on my part. Perhaps she wasn't the only powerful one around." He tosses his chin over his shoulder in the direction of the others. "We should huddle up so they can hear what Violet told you. If it's what I suspect, we're going to need their help and we're going to need to find somewhere very, very safe."

Once we're all gathered, Mason says we should get off the path and so we climb the nearest tall tree to the highest junction where we can all sit reasonably close while I re-tell my tale. As I talk, Mason has his back to me, watching the path, the clearing and the surrounding areas closely for any sign of impending danger.

Clara looks grim. "So, the Fourth Realm is in on it?"

Mason looks back over his shoulder and gives her a disgusted look. "Of course they are in on it. Nothing this big, this massive could happen in multiple realms without them knowing that it was going to happen or that it has happened. The fact that they're too..." he's caught up in his own anger, "stupid to fix their own mistakes is just – I can't even."

He waves his hand in frustration. "They've hung Ryan out to dry up there and they know the one thing he needs to set it all straight. It's unacceptable." Then, suddenly he looks at me and winks. "Also, I knew you were a god-damned Journeyer. It was the only explanation that made sense."

"That's the part that makes sense to you?" Riven raises his eyebrows. "She somehow managed to escape a mass extinction and that's the part that makes sense?" Riven gives me a skeptical look. "I know you're capable of some unusual things, but I don't know – a Journeyer?"

Rocco looks around at everyone and then off into the distance, clearly puzzling something out. "It seems to me that the Fourth Realm knew or thought they knew that the Journeyers were close to becoming too powerful. They'd be a danger to them and everyone else. Was that the rationale?"

Mason calls over his shoulder, "Seem like," but, he keeps his back to us.

"They handpicked Grayson's soul to do their dirty work? Is that it? They needed to have the right person in place to kill them all and then the right person to clean up the mess," Rocco says, continuing to think out loud.