I quickly stepped back before anyone saw. Danny gazed down at me, the conflict raging on his face. His eyes flicked to my lips. His hand crushed the leather handles of his travel bag and then loosened, as if he was about to just drop it on the ground and grab me instead.

Then he gave me a quick little nod, turned and walked towards the SUV. I stood there with the icy wind whipping around me, feeling more alone than I’d ever felt.

10. Danny

10

DANNY

“I could get used to this,” said JD, as he was handed a drink by a flight attendant. “Sure beats a military transport.”

“Could use a little more leg room,” muttered Cal from the seat next door. The poor guy was scrunched up like a pretzel.

Colton disagreed, too. A kid in the seat behind him was kicking his seat. They’d been doing it since we took off and they didn’t show any signs of stopping. “Gina had a point,” he muttered.

I was silent, lost in thought. When I’d seen Erin at the base, all the feelings I’d been suppressing had come rushing back. I knew I couldn’t be with her. But there was something I could do. I could try her world a little.

I dug in my bag for the book and then looked at it uncertainly. The last thing I’d read had been the service manual for a ‘93 BMW. This thing was intimidating. Not only was it thick enough to beat someone to death with, it had a big map in the front full of places with no vowels. Am I really going to do this?

I took a deep breath and plunged in. It was hard going at first: I wasn’t sure how to pronounce anything and there was a lot of stuff about legends and prophecies that made my brain hurt. But then it got into a battle and that was something I understood. I started following this woman called Vessia, who was an elf with pointy ears who wore a sort of leather corset that sounded pretty hot. And she was a scullery maid, but she had eyes that were eerily similar to the king’s, so I wondered if maybe he was her real dad. And then she got caught up in a war and was racing across a battlefield to unleash some magical creature and killing everyone who got in her way and—

“Ladies and gentlemen, in around ten minutes we’ll be starting our descent into Berlin….”

Already? I realized I’d read about a fifth of the massive book. Suddenly, I could see why Erin was into this stuff. I wanted to talk to her about it, about whether the archer and the squire were going to get together and whether my theory about the heroine being in line for the throne was right.