Having enough money to do whatever he wanted was something that Alistair would never quite come to grips with. Even if he’d made this trip to Marrowstone before, he hadn’t really thought that he would be able to commission a carriage as late as it was, especially under such suspicious circumstances.

Yet, as the assassin who had taken residence in his head had told him, no matter what he felt personally, money ruled their world.

“Are you going to tell us what happened or not?” Zola asked.

“And how did he know about Ghost?” asked Juno. “Did you do the voice in front of him, or something?”

“Actually, I did,” Alistair said as he went with the first lie that came to him. “Felix, um, challenged me to some duel against one of his trainees, and as you know, the stupid voice comes out from time to time when I’m stressed.”

Juno laughed. “The voice isn’t stupid. It’s cool.”

Ghost: I agree.

“Anyway, that’s how he knew the name,” Alistair said, not wanting to argue with Juno or Ghost. “As to what happened… Felix is dead. That is all that matters.”

“How did you do it?” Zola asked.

“He was drunk. And after sending some of his men after me, and the two battledeck mages, it was pretty easy to deal with them.”

“That must have been hard.”

“I was more concerned about the two of you,” Alistair told them, which was the truth. “I didn’t know what was going on in the courtyard.”

“It was epic,” Juno said before launching into a next relation of some of the things they had done. “I wanted to bind with Snake Eyes, but I didn’t have a chance.”

“That’s because I told you not to,” Zola said. “It’s too risky to do something like that.”

“Did you bind?” Juno asked Alistair.

“I did.”

“I figured. And what a way to fight off a bunch of assholes. Anyway,” Juno said as he leaned back in the plush chair as the carriage trotted along, “I’m still feeling crazy. I don’t know about the two of you.”

“I don’t think I will be able to rest, if that’s what you’re saying,” Zola told him.

“Same. then again, I can be a pretty sleepy guy.” Juno did an impression of Professor Humboldt’s yawn. “But I promise I will sleepwalk. Heh.”

“That would be ideal,” Zola told him. “And Alistair.”

“Yes?”

“You know what needs to happen when we arrive in the morning, right? You said you have it all planned out, but you really told us what you have planned. Kind of crazy, really, for us to simply trust that you know how to smuggle the three of us across the border and back, but you said your master—”

Alistair tapped his finger against his temple. “It’s all here. I promise. By this time tomorrow, we will be in the Dracolich Empire. Let’s just get to Marrowstone first.”

“Agreed. And have breakfast,” Juno said. “We seriously made a mistake not bringing anything to eat with us.”

“I’m not going to ask you if all you think about is food because I already know the answer to that question,” Zola told him. “We will have some food in the morning. Let’s… Yes, let’s try to be quiet for a little while. All of us, and reflect on what just happened.”

And that’s when the message came. Just as Alistair was settling in, Kanda spoke to him.

Kanda: Tell Ghost he is a fucker.

Alistair: Are you safe?

Kanda: What do you care?

Alistair: I care enough to ask and to make sure we left in you a way that you weren’t injured.

Kanda: You stole my card. Which of you planned this?

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Alistair: Ghost did. It was all his plan. We simply followed orders, but it was for a reason.

Kanda: That reason being?

Alistair: We need the card to deal with Professor Dreadwell. If we use the dungeon core to create a new dungeon space and trap him within, he won’t be reborn. If we kill him, which you know Ghost is going to do, Dreadwell will be reborn and at some point, one of us, or some future version of one of us, is going to have to deal with this.

Kanda: You should have run this by me!

Alistair: You were blinded by anger for your uncle. Ghost thought that you would be a problem for us if we brought you across the border. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. We have it from here.

“Guys,” Alistair said before updating Juno and Zola on what Kanda told him.

“What’s she saying now?” Juno asked.

“Nothing. She never replied to my last message.”

“Whatever,” Zola said. “She can get—”

“Whoa, Zolee, language,” Juno told the girl.

“Whatever.”

It was another hour before Kanda replied, a long enough wait that Alistair started to grow sleepy, his eyes heavy, the sounds of the carriage rhythmic in a way that soothed him.

Kanda: I will not forget that you have crossed me. Things will be fine for now. I got what I want with the Baronblades. But I won’t forget, Alistair.

He never responded. There was still a part of him that liked the older girl to some degree. It wasn’t entirely her fault who she had become, yet Kanda had a dark path ahead of her, one that Alistair hoped to avoid.

****

As the night progressed, Ghost remained in Alistair’s mind, thinking of what was to come.

“Remember the breeze?” Senka had asked him in reference to the way to traverse the magically protected border between the Dawncrest Kingdom and the Dracolich Empire.

It had been the only time he would ever hear her speak, not long before Ghost ultimately killed the love of his life in a wooded area of Solaria. Ghost knew exactly what she meant in saying it though, what Senka was implying.

There was an old witches trick in navigating the region, the mountains that separated the two kingdoms. It involved following the wind, which often seemed counterintuitive. This was the way that Ghost had visited the Dracolich Empire, and it was the way that Senka had come to the Dawncrest Kingdom, and, from what Ghost had learned, same as Caidan.

It was almost comical how easy it was to circumnavigate the area, avoiding detection from patrolling battledeck mages, and avoiding the magical barrier. It was also a closely guarded secret. Not many knew of it, otherwise there would have been a massive smuggling ring by now. This told Ghost something else.

“They have a way to take down the magical barrier protecting our kingdom,” he said as he conjured a blade of grass, which he played with in his hand. This meant that it was even more crucial that he stop Kang and Professor Dreadwell. It was also something he didn’t want to tell Alistair. “No sense in putting any more pressure on him.”

Ghost could tell that the weight of all of this was starting to crush the young mage. He wanted to comfort Alistair, to let him know that they were almost at the end. Ghost tried too, but it never came across in a way that he intended. And it likely never would.

These were the dynamics between an adult and a child, one that could see what was coming, and one that couldn’t fathom how bad it could be. Not that Alistair lacked in imagination, only he had lived long enough to see the true depravity of people.

And there was guilt and the fact that Ghost had been the one who had forced so much of this on him.

“But it will all be over soon,” Ghost said, even though he knew Alistair couldn’t hear him. He had an idea in mind now, away to easily deal with Kang without resorting to the power of his summons. As easy as that would be, it just wasn’t who Ghost was. “But a spell or two…”

For some reason, this felt less cheap, and it would allow them to watch Kang suffer. It would also allow Ghost to do what he had decided upon, a way for him to give Alistair his life back.

“Dreadwell will be first.” This would require scouting, which would require Caidan’s help. That was another aspect of this that he couldn’t fully see, but they had the trophy she wanted, and he trusted the witch.

Then there was the piece that would make it all more complicated, Alistair’s friends.

Their odds of getting in the way were higher than their odds of coming in handy, and Ghost didn’t want either to die. This had to be smooth. In and out, the kind of assassination that would go in the record books if record books were written for the blood trade.

As he sat there in Alistair’s mind, he also thought about Felix, how pathetic one of the most powerful men in the kingdom looked at the very end. It was always like this once someone was stripped of their wealth or their power, reducing them to a shrieking child with hands outstretched, aware that they were about to lose it all.

Ghost didn’t feel sorry for them.

He didn’t feel sorry for Felix, Goran, or Hilda. He did feel sorry for Senka, but he knew that this was the past they’d shared together that was muddying the waters of vengeance. It was deserved, and if it wasn’t, it happened anyway.

“She would have done the same to you.” A smile formed on his face. “Remember the Breeze.”

Remember the breeze also was something Senka had said before disappearing one night at the retreat in the mountains outside of Marrowstone. She was taunting him, seeing if Ghost had actually listened to her instruction.

A stick of incense did the trick.

Ghost had lit it, and used the light from a pale moon to follow the pungent smoke. He found Senka lying naked on a blanket somewhere on the border, likely not far from the magical barrier, the woman’s deadly gaze playful for once.

The smile on his face faded.

“It’s really too bad things had to end.” Ghost relaxed to some degree, and pressed his hands back, allowing him to look up at the vast darkness of Alistair’s mind.

In a perfect world somewhere, he was close to joining Senka again, the two eternally on the border of heaven and hell, playing both sides.