Rosaliy

"Rosaliy," said the panicked voice, "I need your help."

That was a phrase Rosaliy heard more often than she would have expected around this place. Normally she had a sense of pride being in such high demand, but her bedroom was dark and chilly, and Kat's face was all Rosaliy could see before her, lit by an eerie blue, magical light. It was a scene straight out of a nightmare.

"What time is it?" slurred a groggy Rosaliy.

"Not yet dawn. I'm sorry to wake you."

Kat was anxious with purple-rimmed eyes. She was not sorry, and that jarred Rosaliy awake more than anything. Kat never demanded anything.

"What's wrong?" Rosaliy asked, throwing on a robe and jamming her feet into slippers.

"Issabeth and the children were supposed to return yesterday evening, and I can't find them anywhere."

"They have to be in the Glade," countered Rosaliy stupidly.

The anxious blue face shook. Of course Kat had checked the Glade.

"That's impossible," stammered Rosaliy. She was two for two on ridiculous statements. Impossible was the standard around here. She tried again. "Sorceress Issabeth must have found one more test for them—something that took longer than expected and makes the girls hard to locate."

"I was sure, too," whispered Kat, "but I still can't find them."

Kat could easily find Issabeth, the pearl, or her own children anywhere in the Naxturaen Glade. Rosaliy switched her slippers to the correct feet and collected her slowly-waking thoughts. Kat was an Empath, and she functioned best when she was in control of her emotions. Rosaliy would do her part to stay hopeful and calm.

"Something is definitely not right," she acknowledged, because saying Kat was imagining things would be a lie. "But this is Issabeth. Nobody is better equipped to keep those girls safe."

"You're right, Rose." Kat gave her a tremulous smile.

"Now where can I help you look?" asked Rosaliy, wrapping her robe around herself. Somehow the extra layer of warmth did nothing to battle the chills running up her spine.

"I thought I might be having trouble searching with Tansy and Duck so close. I was going to head out from the palace."

"Would you like me to come or do something here?" It was another silly question. There was nothing Rosaliy could do here. "I'll get dressed," she volunteered before Kat bothered responding.

If Rosaliy was an expert on something, it was being ready for anything. She was no stranger to middle-of-the-night adventures. She was just about awake by the time she and Kat were outside in the dark.

"Where's Alexander?" Rosaliy asked, hurrying after the urgent queen.

"It's the middle of the night," answered Kat.

The time it would take to wake him was problematic.

"Sorceress Athena?"

"Already looking for traces of magic in the Glade."

"Can the Naxturae do anything?" Rosaliy hated to suggest their intervention, but this was just the sort of desperate situation the powerful sky ancestors might do some good meddling in.

As expected, Kat was unhappy with the suggestion. "We're between cycles of the moon." She glared skyward as she hurried along. "They can't do anything tonight." Even Kat had considered the Naxturae, an especially bad sign.

"Talyrin?"

"Out," Kat sighed. "Patrolling off—" She stopped so suddenly, Rosaliy was forced to stumble to her own halt.

They peered into the darkness. Rosaliy saw solid black, but Kat had sharper senses than she did.

"Just back," Kat amended her statement.

With concentration, Rosaliy was able to pick out the shadow of a horse moving toward them. In a blink, where once there stood the shadow of a horse, barely visible against the dark night, now there was a man striding their way. With the exception of Kat and her children, the few living Naxturae were trapped as horses during the day but free to shift into men at night.

This particular horse was the aforementioned Talyrin, Kat's father. "What's wrong, filia?" he asked with his soft, calm voice, steadying arms on her shoulders. "Why are you wandering the night?"

Rosaliy was always struck with how similar the two were without being able to put a finger on why. Beyond the dark hair and the same nose, they shared the same quiet sort of determination.

"Lillya is missing," Kat rushed to explain. "All the girls are missing."

A shadow of displeasure crossed her father's face. "I can search," he offered immediately.

"I was just going to try that," she said, "from the bluffs."

He was about to accompany them when another black shadow sped their way. Talyrin slid a bow from his back into position, but Kat stopped him with a hand on his arm. "It's Pepper," she murmured.

The big cat loped to them and whined, curling around Kat anxiously. Kat put a calming hand on the frantic jaguar's head. "Where are the girls?" she asked.

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He whimpered and bumped her leg with his head.

"His tail," noted Talyrin.

Rosaliy had just enough presence of mind to recall the firefly stone in her pocket. She withdrew the little rock, and it glowed white at her command, hovering in the air. A ribbon around Pepper's tail was knotted more than once, and loosening it took all the skill gained through Rosaliy's experience working with children who had the tendency to create hopeless knots in all manner of things. Once the knot was picked apart, the ribbon slid into Rosaliy's hand. It was a hair ribbon, still tied around the remnants of a bedraggled leaf. Rosaliy handed both objects to Kat.

"I won't be able to follow Pepper's trail in the dark," admitted Talyrin, "but at the first light of dawn I can set off with Dmitri."

Dawn was not far off, but that was too late for Kat.

"I know someone who is an expert at finding people," murmured Kat, rubbing the ribbon between her fingers.

With a firm kiss on Kat's cheek and a promise all would be well soon, Talyrin went to rouse Dmitri as promised.

Ribbon gripped in one hand and leaf in the other, Kat headed back to the palace to find her last hope. Rosaliy trailed behind, feeling useless and not enthused by Kat's next plan. Soon, they were in front of Daniella's bedroom door. Kat rapped on the door and waited approximately the length of two heartbeats before her hands rose with the intention of opening the stubborn door herself. Before she had a chance, the carved wooden door swung open. Daniella took in the scene before her with a sweep of her cold eyes. She never seemed surprised by the most outlandish circumstances.

Kat launched into her pleading request right in the middle. "You can find anyone. Where is she?"

Despite Daniella's nebulous position as prisoner, not a single person in the palace would have dared speak to her that way, with the exception of Sorceress Issabeth. Issabeth would not have received the response Kat did.

Daniella cupped both of her hands around Kat's hand, the one clenching the ribbon. "There are a number of She's that might be missing at such an hour, Katyrinna. Slow down and embrace specificity."

Daniella's ice calm coaxed words out of Kat. "Lillya should have come back last night, and instead Pepper returned with this." Kat relinquished the ribbon to Daniella, but she gripped the leaf, holding it up as evidence. "Thorn Forest. It's from Thorn Forest. I need to go to her. I need to know where to go. You can find anyone. Tell me where to go."

The words all ran together in a lump, but the threads of meaning were easy enough to pick out. Thorn Forest was news to Rosaliy. Did that mean Bellicus? Or a secret Malum remnant, come out of hiding?

"Ah," said Daniella, still immune to the distress of the woman before her. "Your hope may be a bit unfounded and your tense a bit off. Once, I could find anyone. I don't have the tools."

"Whatever you need," Kat promised hastily.

"No, Rin," Daniella chided. "This is not a negotiation or manipulation. Anything I might have used is days away in Kianne, locked up in secret rooms for over a decade."

Kat's face fell. It was hard to imagine her being more distraught than before, but she was right on the edge of tumbling into more distraught.

"But I will help how I can," promised Daniella, heading off the fall. She stretched the ribbon between her fingers. "How did Pepper carry this?"

"It was tied around his tail," Rosaliy answered for her. "Along with the leaf."

"Interesting," said Daniella, speaking more to the ribbon and less to Rosaliy. "Purposeful. However, Lillya might have had the foresight to send a strand or two of hair with the ribbon," complained Daniella. That woman would critique the efficiency of someone rescuing her own life. "Perhaps we can narrow down her location anyway." She held out her hand for the leaf, which she brought close to a candle to examine. "The swamp," she murmured.

"The swamp?" Kat exclaimed, peering at the leaf. Daniella pointed out the smear of dried brown ooze. "The swamp? How did she get there?"

"You'll have to ask her when you find her," said Daniella.

"If she's stuck in the swamp—" Kat began to panic anew.

"Pepper never would have abandoned her." Daniella cut her off. "And my granddaughter would not have sent him away for help when she needed his assistance." She sniffed at the stupidity of the idea. "So why did she feel it necessary to send him now?"

Rosaliy was annoyed to be in Daniella's room seeking help from her, but she was slightly more annoyed to be superfluous to the conversation. "She might have been protecting Pepper from something," she attempted to suggest.

"He never would have left her in danger," Kat insisted, finally taking a breath.

"More likely they left him," considered Daniella.

Rosaliy was now freshly annoyed at how much sense that made.

The phrase did nothing good for Kat. "Surely you can do something," she begged.

"I once had a handy pool set up to monitor magical disturbances," Daniella sighed, "but, as established, Kianne is distant and in the wrong direction. I'd start with a blanket search of the swamp."

"There are so many horrible things in that swamp," Kat fretted.

"Then hope they did find a way to leave," Daniella said, refusing to be frazzled.

"You don't believe in hope," Kat pointed out.

The corners of Daniella's mouth twitched. "But you do. Check with Athena while I work with Rosaliy to enchant a traveling object. And wake Alexander. For everyone's sanity."

Kat gladly accepted the orders and left Rosaliy to Daniella's mercy.

"You'll want to fetch your keys," ordered Daniella coolly. "You need special ingredients for this spell."

What Rosaliy wanted was to be working on any other task with any other person, but she did head toward her room to fetch the keys to unlock the cupboards of restricted ingredients in the magical laboratory where the girls learned how to make enchanted powders and potions.

She nearly ran into Kaylix in the hallway. The handsome Naxturaen soldier had to pin her with his arms before she knocked them both over in her haste. "Tal sent me to offer assistance." News traveled fast in Crystal Palace, even in the middle of the night. Especially in the middle of the night. "Although I can't imagine what help I might—"

"Bring us a pouch of fresh pine needles, samora leaves, and a cup of coconut milk," Daniella interrupted.

His eyebrows rose, but Kaylix was not going to argue with Daniella. She really had no standing to order anyone around, especially Kat's uncle, but she did anyway.

"Is that all?" he asked.

"For now."

"Meet us in the Sorceress' training laboratory," Rosaliy added. "Please."

He bobbed his head at her and took off. With no other obstacles and Daniella's cold disapproval urging her to be quick, Rosaliy retrieved her keys.

Kaylix nearly beat them to the laboratory, which was fortunate, because Daniella had no tolerance for wasting time. She was more bothered by tonight's events than she would admit. As terrifying as she was, she loved her grandchildren. She even loved little Taurin, and he was magically useless to her. There must have been some good buried in her somewhere.

At least, that was what Rosaliy tried to remind herself while Daniella barked instructions at her.

"Might I remind you time is of the essence?" snipped Daniella when a disagreement over shades of dark aquamarine required Rosaliy to start the mixing process all over again.

"This would go faster if you did it," Rosaliy suggested, more than a little annoyed at the judgmental hovering.

Daniella's eyes glittered. "I'd do best to keep my toes on this side of that line," she murmured with a tone Rosaliy could not pin down. Was it bitterness? Fear? Condescension?

"Then you're going to have to deal with my inadequacies," Rosaliy muttered, angrily tossing pine needles into a stone bowl.

"Hmm..." mused Daniella. "Perhaps that will be my epitaph—dealt with the inadequacies of others."

Rosaliy ignored her because she was painting a very thin layer of faint aquamarine goop onto a rock with a hasty tree chiseled on it.

"Done," Rosaliy announced, dropping the rock into a small pot of rapidly boiling water to flash harden the coating.

The only praise she received was a ceasing of Daniella's nagging, but that was enough. Rosaliy doused the fire with a handful of enchanted sand and picked the rock out of the water with tongs.

"Now we need somewhere to send it," reminded Daniella while Rosaliy admired her handiwork.

Rosaliy pocketed the stone, and they were off to find Kat.