Rosaliy
Rosaliy and Drake had to wait until Jadelynn swooped up through the water before Rosaliy could grip the metal ball and seal them back inside the protective bubble dome. Quita was livid over her treatment. She battled away from Drake with screeches and scratches before curling up to sulk as far away as she could in the small dome. Rosaliy understood her monkey rage. Parts of Rosaliy had started to dry, and now she was soaked through yet again. She had water up her nose, and everything smelled like salty, fishy ocean.
“Why am I always covered in something when I see you?” she complained.
“I’m going to go out on a plank and guess you are often covered in things,” Drake teased.
“I looked fantastic pre-party,” she insisted. “Not a hair out of place.”
He took a while to respond. She opened her eyes, but she was lying flat on her back, and he was only in the corner of her field of vision. She would have chanced turning, but the feeling in her legs was returning. She had not noticed through the pain in her arms and chest that she had no feeling in her legs, but now they were coming back to life like someone had lit them on fire.
“Sorry I was late,” Drake said eventually. Even though Drake was not his desperately eager love potion self, there was something off under the surface.
She started to ask what had happened to him, but someone chose at that moment to dip her feet into fire hot spikes. “How long will this take?” she exclaimed instead, flailing for Drake’s hand without realizing it.
He had to slide closer to let her squeeze his hand, putting a red-stained gash across his pants in her eye line.
“What happened to you?” she exclaimed.
“I got off better than you did on the injury healing front,” he said, closing his eyes and leaning back against the dome. “This will take a while. You should sleep it off.”
She could not have slept if she wanted to, considering something was biting her toes. “I’d rather use up all the questions I have built up.”
His eyes snapped open. “Those are not cumulative,” he tried to argue. “And since you’ve been talking to Cliff and Matias and who knows who else, I’m sure you’re full of information anyway.”
And the Crocodillo gang. And the Senira. Everyone in Bayselle did seem to know Drake.
“So about Esmona…” she began.
He was so tense, her first attempt at a question made him laugh.
A distant low tone rumbled in the water outside the bubble.
“What was that?” Rosaliy squeaked, trying to look. She could see nothing, and trying to sit up made every part of her hurt worse than before.
“Can you turn off the light?” asked Drake.
Rosaliy quieted Jadelynn’s firefly stone with a fairly painful twirl of her finger. The green stone went dark and fell on her stomach, leaving Drake and Rosaliy alone in the murky dark. Rosaliy stared up, thinking maybe she was able to see faint color in the shifting water around their protective bubble, but she decided her eyes were inventing things.
“I think we’re getting pushed out to sea,” Drake concluded.
The low rumble sounded again, much closer. This time, Rosaliy could have sworn she saw shifting shadows.
“Nothing can see us inside the bubble,” Rosaliy assured herself.
“Few things this far down use their eyes,” Drake pointed out, still scanning the darkness.
The silence was as oppressive as the dark. There had to be something Drake would talk about. She would settle for a rousing conversation about the weather to keep her mind off the buzzing pain in her body, coupled with the fact that she was floating helplessly through the depths of the ocean while everyone she cared about was depending on her.
“You sound pretty familiar with the ocean,” she tried, ignoring an ache spreading through her knees. “I thought you spent most of your time traveling the desert.”
Drake kept hold on her hand—she hadn’t realized she was still holding it—and shifted once more so his back was resting against the dome. “Is that one of your questions?”
“I was just being conversational for the sake of noise and not interrogating you, but whatever makes you talk.”
Also, she had missed him and she had been worried about him, but those were things she had no hope of successfully expressing under these conditions.
“Conversational,” he mused. “You know, I—”
But then, he stopped abruptly, and whatever he might have said was gone. Even though she was physically connected to him, he still seemed distant.
“The ocean,” he said instead. “I grew up on the ocean.”
“Oh?” she prodded, since that seemed the extent of what he was intending to say.
“Right after Meena took me in, she took up residence on a pirate ship. For some reason, she thought a pirate ship was a safer playground for a young boy than a coastal city where she was regularly having her life threatened.”
“The Ingobernables?”
“Not them.” Darn. Drake was just not going to tell her anything about Esmona. “I don’t remember their name, but their flag had a flaming turtle on it. Well, it was probably something else suffering from poor artistry, but that did not stop me from calling them the Flaming Turtles.”
“Has a nice ring. I’m sure you have some good stories.” Had her arm always had that many bones? Were they all supposed to feel like burning acid at once?
“I’m the worst at stories,” he disagreed.
“Tell one anyway,” she begged. Listening was so much better than feeling biting pain over every part of her body as the healing potion knitted her back together. “What was little Drake like?”
“Shy,” he answered. “Always hiding. In fact, one time the turtle pirates were stashing some of their ill-gotten goods at their stockpile in an island cove west of here. He gestured with his free hand, apparently still having a sense of west underwater. “I managed to slip off the ship and hide in the rocks until they sailed away.”
Little Drake was probably adorable. “Must have been terrifying.”
“All I remember was being relieved,” said Drake. “I was king of the sea lions for half a day. At a certain point, I realized I was thirsty, but I managed to use a crossbow from a weapons stash to shoot down coconuts for water.”
“Resourceful.”
“Meena had other words when she sailed back for me that night,” Drake chuckled. Rosaliy was close enough to feel the vibration of his almost laughter. “I had to clean decks for two weeks.”
“You weren’t afraid? To be so alone?”
“I’ve never been afraid of anything normal,” Drake answered in a quiet, distracted way. “Sometimes I think I’m broken.”
“No,” Rosaliy disagreed. “Just unique.” She gritted her teeth against a wave of nausea. Her insides felt like they were rearranging.
“You see what a disaster I am at trying to be conversational?”
He wasn’t and she didn’t.
“Would you rather talk about Esmona or what you’ve been up to since the Flifary grabbed me?”
“I never should have let them do that,” Drake grumbled.
“I don’t remember them giving you much choice,” she squeaked out. She could easily have mustered a better defense of him if she was not being stabbed repeatedly in the knees.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“You should stop talking,” he pointed out.
“Then you’d better start,” she ordered. “And stop being so hard on yourself.”
“Hmph,” he snorted. “She translated the message, Daniella did. In the book you were hiding.”
“It was hiding itself,” Rosaliy disagreed, vaguely realizing she had talked about it. She must have broken the connection. “What did it say?”
“The Flifary Seer hid an important stone in the temple,” he said. “It’s magically disguised.”
“How?” Rosaliy asked. “As what?”
“If there were more clues in the message, it’s gone now,” Drake told her. Rosaliy felt a shudder ripple its way through him.
Arlana was still alive and being kept prisoner, so Rosaliy could ask her on the island. She did not concern herself with the logistics. Breaking into a Flifary prison seemed as implausible as getting to the island in the first place.
“The stone was important to the Flifary,” she said. “I’ll definitely think about what that means when I’m not on fire.”
“You’re to the fire stage? That’s a good sign.”
Her answer was half a strangled yelp.
“More talking, then?”
“Yes. Back up. How did you get to Taragon?”
So odd that where he saw reasons to be guilty for his actions, Rosaliy saw clever quick thinking. He had rescued Cade’s book and Lillya’s from the Flifary and found Daniella in time. He had every right to take off after that ridiculous love potion wore off, but he had put himself in danger to help her. He really was determined to see the worst in himself.
“Wait, you actually kidnapped Daniella?” Rosaliy marveled at that part of the story.
“I don’t always default to the best solution to a problem,” he admitted, “just the easiest one.”
“No, I’m just wondering how you managed to trick her and wishing I could have seen it,” said Rosaliy, trying not to laugh. “I bet you’re the only person to have gotten the best of her, other than Queen Kat.”
“That’s…not a distinction I appreciate,” he said.
“It’s a distinction I appreciate.” She could not help but cough half a laugh in response, but she regretted the accompanying tightening of her throbbing ribs.
“I was hoping to crash the mine on top of the Flifary and get you out,” Drake continued, “but you see how well that worked.”
“Pretty well, actually,” said Rosaliy, “except for the part where I left you behind. I assumed Daniella would know where she sent me in Bayselle and be able to get there herself.” She never would have left them in so much danger. She shivered, both at what the Flifary might have done to Drake and Daniella if they had been captured and because zapping chills were tingling up and down her chest.
“I hope she escaped,” said Drake, sounding something like wistful. She wished she could see him, but the dark was smothering.
“Escaped what?” Rosaliy asked. “You stopped your story in the middle. Plus, you’re leaving out all the best parts.”
“No,” he disagreed. “The best part was seeing you alive. The rest of the story is pretty much downhill from there.”
A spasm shot up her spine, and she nearly ripped Drake’s hand off.
“All right, story,” he promised. “After the mine, Daniella didn’t even hesitate to come with me. Even with no memories and after I had kidnapped her and nearly buried her in an unstable mine, she was determined to head to Bayselle as quickly as possible.”
He had grown much fonder of Daniella in his short acquaintance than Rosaliy ever had. “She’s fearless,” Rosaliy admitted. That was the nicest word she could come up with.
“Hmm,” he murmured, far away all of a sudden.
“How did you get to Bayselle so fast,” Rosaliy prodded.
“Ah,” he said, stalling. “Well, we were nearly eaten by a pack of estrellmars and tracked down by the Flifary.”
“Oh no,” she gasped. “Do they have her?”
“Actually, they got me,” he said. “They threw me into the place where they were holding the High Sorceress and a Malum woman, Shrilynda.”
“You’re kidding,” she breathed. “I mean, I know you’re not kidding, but Shrilynda?”
“You know her?”
“Know of.”
“She seems delightful, if by delightful I mean completely insane.”
“So if Issabeth is free, then Shrilynda…”
“Right,” he agreed. “I can only imagine what’s going on up there right now.”
“I should never have let Jadelynn go,” Rosaliy moaned.
“She seemed pretty determined,” Drake pointed out. “Does magic make people stubborn, or are stubborn people more likely to have magic?”
“I should go up,” Rosaliy tried to suggest again.
“Can you even stand?” he asked.
She could definitely not stand.
“I hate being helpless,” she grumbled.
“You’re pretty terrible at it,” Drake agreed.
“You could be a better distraction,” she accused.
“I definitely could,” he sighed.
“Are you ok?” she asked, finally having enough control over her neck to be able to tip her head in his direction. Of course, he was impossible to see in the dark, but she thought she saw a silhouette shift in surprise.
“You’re asking me if I’m doing alright?”
“It would make me feel better to worry about you,” she cajoled.
“You’re devious,” he mused. “I don’t deserve your pity, though.”
“It’s not pity,” she said. “Technically only one of us has cast a mind-altering spell on the other and plunked him in the cross hairs of a ruthless magical enemy. It’s also my fault you’re buried underwater.”
“I guess that’s one way to look at it.”
“You know,” she tried haltingly, afraid to push him, “you could tell me what’s wrong.”
She knew he wasn’t going to tell her anything, but at least he didn’t try to break his way out of the magical dome to get away.
“I’m not even sure what to tell,” he said instead. “Mostly, I just wish I was a better person.”
“We all wish that,” she promised. “Except for the really bad people.”
He had no response. She lifted the firefly stone and lit their dome with a faint green light once more. He looked down at her curiously.
“I shouldn’t ask you to do this,” she said, realizing as she talked how selfish she had been to drag him into this. “It’s insane. If you want to leave now…”
A pained look crinkled his forehead.
“You do realize you’re more than willing to send yourself on a suicide mission to take down rogue Flifary, and you’re not willing to talk about what’s bothering you?” she pointed out. “One of those things is easier than the other.”
Half a smile crossed his face. “Which one?”
She could only imagine what a mess she was on the outside, but he was that on the inside, and she did not know how to fix any of it. Rosaliy was great at fixing problems. She could bandage scraped knees, soothe a panicked cow, fix ponytails, and mend fences, but patching up a bruised heart was maybe beyond her talents.
“Thanks,” he said quietly while she floundered for something to say.
“For what?”
“For caring,” he said. “So what’s this big plan for getting to the Flifary?”
He was trying to distract her without having to talk about himself. She would have to let him for now.
“This box,” she answered, patting the box on her lap. She felt the weight of it lift as he took it from her.
“Feeling up to sitting?” he asked.
Possibly. He put an arm behind her back while she gripped his other, and eventually she was propped next to him. He was certainly warmer and more comfortable than the solid base of the dome.
For the first time, she was able to really examine the box. She gestured the weak green light closer. A wooden octopus—menacing in the eerie green glow—sat on top of the wooden box in Drake’s hands. Two tentacles gripped each side, clamping the wooden top to the base.
Quita was still sulking, but even she stole glances over to this mysterious object.
“I’m familiar with these,” Drake said, spinning it. “You need the combination. At least four of the tentacles are hiding metal prongs pinning the box closed. You need to press the right tentacles in the right order for them to release.”
The King of Bayselle and his complicated systems for hiding everything. “Can we guess?” she asked.
“Every time you guess wrong, the locking mechanisms freeze into place, making another attempt impossible until its timer unwinds and releases the pins.”
“That is oddly specific information,” Rosaliy mused. “How—?”
“You are surely out of questions by now,” he interrupted. “I’m assuming you don’t have a combination.”
“No,” Rosaliy grumbled. “We’d have to go back to Jadelynn’s manor to search for the right code in the king’s books.”
“And walk right into the Flifary, most likely.”
“Plus, Matias,” she added. If there was any benefit to being underwater, it was being free of Matias.
A smile stole across Drake’s face. “He hasn’t grown on you?”
Like mold, maybe.
“Can we just break it?” Rosaliy suggested.
“The outer wood, yes, but you’d destroy the mechanism for opening the metal lining inside. Unless you’re carrying some way to cut through ridiculously thick metal, that’s not a good way into the box.”
“So this was all for nothing?”
“Didn’t say that,” Drake answered, eying Rosaliy sideways. “Mind if I borrow some hairpins?”
“Take them all,” she replied. Her arms were working well enough by then to retrieve a handful for him. She kept picking them out of her snarled, soggy hair while he went to work on the box. He was intently focused, even pushing back his damp sleeves. She caught a glimpse of the scorpion tattoo on his forearm. Its body was made up of a jagged E, and its tail was a lightning bolt, poised to sting. She tried not to stare or think too hard about how he was literally trying to hide his inescapable past all the time lest she ask more invasive questions.
Before long, Drake had carefully worked the box lid open just enough to shove hairpins inside the tiny opening. Next, he bent a few open and wiggled one under the lid.
“What are you looking for?” Rosaliy asked quietly, afraid to disrupt the delicate process.
“The tentacles with locks on them, for a start,” Drake replied, gingerly shimmying the pin under the lid of the box. “Found the first one.” He left a pin to mark his discovery and moved on. By the time Rosaliy had cleared her head of pins, he located the four tentacles locking the box in place.
“But we still have to guess which order,” she pointed out. “That’s three chances to guess wrong, and that’s just for the first lock.”
“I’m far too big a pessimist for those odds,” he said, setting the box on the ground and lying on his stomach, bending so his ear was right next to the box. Rosaliy held her breath while he held the pin and softly pressed on the tentacle next to it. After a few tense seconds, he pulled back. “Not that one,” he announced, spinning the box.
“How can you tell?” Rosaliy whispered.
“The locking mechanism is pushing in to lock me out instead of pulling out to release,” he answered, already working on the next one. She heard a click. “One,” he sighed.
“That’s amazing,” she marveled.
“It’s criminal,” he disagreed.
Rosaliy was of the opinion the ethics of his handy skill depended on the extenuating circumstances, but she tabled her objections before she was shushed. Even if he got the box open, what were they going to do with a giant octopus?