Page 6 of Dark Awakening: Hidden Currents

"It wasn't falling in love with me?" Negal sounded genuinely upset.

"Of course it was, my love." She leaned to kiss his cheek. "Our bond deepened during the trip."

He didn't look convinced. "We barely saw each other. I spent more time with Aru, Dagor, and Jasmine than I did with you."

"That's true." Jasmine cast Margo an apologetic look. "And on top of that, Negal was the one who carried me after I'd twisted my ankle."

A growl started low in Ell-rom's throat, but he forced it down, stopping it from leaving his mouth. He had no right to feel jealous, but he would have appreciated it if Jasmine had told him that Negal had carried her on his back.

She cast him a wondering look. "Is everything alright?"

"Yes. It's just that hearing about you getting injured upsets me." It wasn't a lie, but it was a very small portion of the truth.

"Oh, Ell-rom." She leaned over and kissed his cheek like Gabi had Aru's. "That's so sweet of you."

"My favorite story from the trip is the army base," Dagor said. "That poor soldier is probably in some mental health clinic now."

Aru chuckled. "I feel bad about it, but I just couldn't help myself."

Ell-rom waited for someone to elaborate on the story, but when everyone just nodded and chuckled or snorted, he turned to Jasmine. "Do you know what they are talking about?"

She nodded. "We had to pass through a military base on the way to the mountain where your pod was. The gods took turns shrouding us so we were invisible to the soldiers and could passunnoticed, but then one of the soldiers bumped into Aru, so Aru pretended to be an angry spirit. He told the poor guy that it was forbidden to bring weapons to a holy site and that it was bad luck."

Ell-rom frowned. "How is that done? The shrouding, I mean?"

Negal set his mug down and leaned forward. "Shrouding is manipulating perceptions. We can create illusions, mask our presence, or make ourselves look like someone or something else."

"I figured as much, but how is it done, and can I do it?"

Negal started nodding when the patio sliding door opened, and Aru walked in. "What did I miss?"

"Ell-rom was asking about shrouding," Negal said. "What did Kian say about the trackers?"

Aru took his place next to Gabi and reached for the coffee carafe. "He said we shouldn't worry about it, and I agree. Ell-rom and Morelle were smuggled into the settlers' ship pretending to be Kra-ell. If they were implanted with trackers, it would have been the same ones as the Kra-ell's, and their bodies would have rejected them. What's more likely is that they arrived at the last moment and did not get trackers at all." He turned to Ell-rom. "Just to be safe, Bridget will put you through a scanner. It wasn't possible when you arrived because you were so frail that they were afraid to move you. You were scanned with a handheld device, but now that you are better, you can be scanned by the big machine."

That sounded ominous. "What does it entail?"

Jasmine squeezed his hand under the table. "Nothing dangerous or overly unpleasant. You lie on a narrow platform, close your eyes, and try not to move a muscle until the machine finishes scanning your body. It doesn't take long."

That was a relief, but then he remembered the other thing that had bothered him about Aru's explanation. "How did my sister and I pretend to be Kra-ell? We don't look like them."

"You must have shrouded yourselves to look like the Kra-ell."

"I don't know how to do that. Is that innate or something that can be learned and forgotten?"

"I'm not sure," Aru said. "Perhaps the technician in charge of your pod was cooperating with your mother and shrouding you both, but that's less likely. Although I still wonder how your mother pulled it off. She must have had more than one god helping her to smuggle you into the pod."

Regrettably, that knowledge had died with his mother, so it would remain a mystery.

"Can all gods shroud?" Jasmine asked.

Aru nodded. "Like any other talent, some are better at it than others, and from what I understand, the same is true for immortals." He looked at Ell-rom. "You were raised as a Kra-ell, and their abilities are a little different than ours and not as strong. I don't know how much you were taught."

"Can you teach me?" Ell-rom asked.

Aru rubbed a hand over his jaw. "Think of it as projecting your thoughts outward. You focus on the image or sensation you want others to perceive and then push it out. It's not just visual, though. Other senses can be affected as well, but it's not easy tomaintain a shroud for long, especially when shrouding several senses. The immortals have a guy who is a master at this, and none of us come even close to his ability. Maybe he should be the one to instruct you."

It made no sense for a master to teach a novice.