Drake

Drake was good at taking unfortunate situations and dealing with them. Stellar, actually. He could move on from the ugliest of wrongs and the most shocking of deaths while accepting there was an uglier wrong and a more shocking loss just around the corner. That was just how life was. Normally.

His brain had finally quieted. There really was nothing else he could do now, which made the fact that Rosaliy’s death was all his fault even worse. He should have done something else. What else, he was not sure. He was not stellar at looking backwards. For someone already feeling the heaviness of past wrongs, this weight was crushing. His horrible choice of words made him flinch internally. He decided to stop thinking altogether.

Daniella led them back down the dark mountain to the combined store and tavern. She dragged him in the door and left him there.

“Opal!” exclaimed a leathery older woman who looked like she had plenty to clean up after but was instead counting a pile of coins with glee. “You’ll never believe the night I had!”

Opal/Daniella would have believed it. She just said, “Oh?”

“A Sorceress stopped by, and you’ll never guess who!”

“The one you’ve been waiting for?” Daniella replied.

Jess ignored the subtle touch of sarcasm. “Yes, can you believe it? Rosaliy herself! I was beginning to think she didn’t exist. Is he alright?”

Drake was currently hovering at the door, probably looking about as together as he felt.

“No,” answered Daniella coldly. “He’s having an ill-timed moral crisis. What was in the box?”

Jess proudly gestured at the little pile of coins in front of her.

“For Rosaliy,” Daniella clarified. “What was in the box for Rosaliy?”

“That was her business, I’m sure,” Jess answered back pleasantly.

“It’s important,” Daniella countered through clenched teeth before she took a breath and changed tactics. She smiled a thin smile that was as uncomfortable for her as for the recipient. “She may be in some trouble.”

Jess considered this. “She did look like she was in some trouble,” she said slowly, setting down the coins. “Well, hopefully she’s better off in Bayselle.”

“Why would you say that?” Drake blurted out.

Daniella glared at him, and rightly so. Jess faltered, not responding well to vibes of doom Drake was exuding.

“I feel like it’s her business, and I probably shouldn’t have mentioned…”

Daniella pointed Drake to a chair. She clamped her fingers to her mouth. He was not to speak right now. So, he sat.

Daniella’s voice was calm and coaxing. “If your long-awaited mystery Sorceress is really in Bayselle, there’s not much harm in us knowing how she got there.”

“I’m not sure she is, anyway,” Jess clarified. “She said if I touched something in the box, I’d wind up in the middle of Bayselle.”

“That doesn’t happen every day, does it?” Daniella mused, the picture of detached self-control.

“You know,” Jess said, waggling a knowing finger, “she left the box and the note behind, so you might as well just see for yourself.”

Jess went to retrieve the box from the storage room. Drake watched her go and come back with an absence of curiosity. He had stopped thinking again. It was safer. Jess put a polished wooden box on the table in front of Drake and handed Daniella a note. Daniella perused the square of paper and set it in front of Drake. He had to read the words a dozen times before “The stone will transport you to Bayselle” had any meaning to him. Rosaliy might not be buried under a crushing pile of rock. Still, she wasn’t here—or safe—and he didn’t feel any better.

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“I’m going on a trip, Jess,” Daniella announced. “Tell Brin I’m taking my last pay in the form of supplies. I’ll have gone by the time he arrives. I doubt I’ll be back, so don’t expect me.”

“Everything alright, Opal?” Jess asked with genuine concern.

“Of course,” Daniella assured her.

“Well, I can’t say I ever understood you, Opal, but I’ll be sad to see you go,” insisted Jess, enveloping Daniella in a hug. Jess was definitely living up to the Taragonian reputation for friendliness. Daniella was not at all a woman who conveyed an openness to receiving hugs.

Daniella weathered the friendly gesture, and she fired off a list of supplies for Drake to procure from the store. The busyness was a pleasant reprieve from having feelings. He loaded his bag with food and water absently while Jess flitted about cleaning the tavern. This, Drake could do—an impromptu middle-of-the-night flight to Bayselle. This he could control.

“We’re going to sleep for a few hours,” Daniella informed him. “I’m surprised the horses got us down the mountain without killing us, so I’m not chancing that in the dark again.”

Being ordered to sleep was a relief. Daniella took him to the inn where she was staying, pointed out the stable for the horses, and woke the sleepy innkeeper to open another room for Drake. Then she promptly followed him into the little room and unfurled a map, tracing a path with her finger straight from the Ascleon mountains to the “Y” in “Bayselle.”

“That distance should take no more than a day on horseback,” Daniella concluded.

Drake snorted. “You’re not serious?”

“I’m always serious.”

He traced her path, feeling the scorching sands under his fingers. “Your path—even if we could travel it straight—would take an entire day and night, plus more water than we can carry, if you’re amenable to being eaten in the open desert.”

“I see your point,” she admitted, tapping her lips with her finger in contemplation. “Since traveling by foot is not an area of my expertise, I will regretfully defer to yours for travel plans. You don’t seem like someone opposed to taking risks, so take the fastest route you’re comfortable with.”

Only Daniella could pivot from being kidnapped in one moment to giving orders the next. Also inexplicable, she was as clean and unrumpled as someone just starting the day. He was sure he was covered in at least three layers of dirt and bits of rock. Plus, she wanted him to plot a course through a deadly desert as if he hadn’t just brought down half a mountain on their heads.

“Why are you doing this?” asked Drake, some combination of suspicious and dumbfounded.

“It’s a relief to hear I had a greater purpose than this,” she said, jabbing a disdainful finger at the dusty window that looked out on the glowing lights of the mining town. “I think you can appreciate that.”

He took a second look at a map that spoke to him of desert sandstorms and bandit-infested crossroads between towns.

“It will take us too long to travel,” he decided. “For one thing, we have to skirt the desert instead of blaze across it. Maybe we should send a message to Crystal Palace—see if they can help.”

Daniella crossed her arms and fixed her calculating eyes on him. She did not like this plan. “If Crystal Palace was of any use to me, I would have gone back there. We can’t involve anyone important, no one they’d expect.”

“When did we become a ‘we’?” he asked.

She chose not to answer. “Shouldn’t you be more relieved? Your Rosaliy is alive. You just need to get to her.”

“First of all…” He trailed off. He wasn’t going to bother arguing with her about how much he could claim to possess Rosaliy. “How are you so sure she’s alive?”

“Because I don’t care whether she’s alive or not,” Daniella replied coldly, “so the signs are more obvious. The most convincing to me is that I trusted her. Nobody competent would have set fire to those breakers without a plan.”

She was right. He knew she was right. She was also staring at him with one of her soul-boring stares.

“Is that a compliment or an accusation?” he asked.

She sniffed. “If you had been more worried about haste before you got here, we would all be in Bayselle, wouldn’t we? Do you have anything useful? Something from Rosaliy? Magical objects?”

He doubted he could offer anything useful, but he did have the books. He dragged out Lillya’s.

Daniella took it and flipped through pages covered in smooth, even script. “It’s a book about a squirrel.” She was unimpressed.

“There’s something suspicious about that book,” he insisted. “You left it for Rosaliy to find, and she’s been carrying it with her everywhere. I’m sure it’s what the Flifary were looking for when they took her.”

“Very well,” she accepted, although she did not reexamine the little book. “And the other?”

He brought out the blank volume. “You were last in Kianne, so Rosaliy’s brother is there looking for…anything.” He flipped open the book and saw words written on a page that was formerly blank.

No sign of hidden children. Hale came back with no idea where he was. Honestly, no idea. He has no memory of the past few days. He doesn’t even remember leaving Crystal Palace, and suddenly he found himself walking up to Kianne Castle. I don’t know what else to tell you. He asked if you need anything, and he said he would let me know right away if anything comes back to him. Love, C. Also, punch that guy if he tries anything.

Drake was done trying to make sense of anything. “Sounds like somebody’s running around causing memory problems.”

Daniella read the words herself, then snapped the book closed. “Evidence seems to suggest me,” she pointed out coldly. “Are you concerned?”

“I wouldn’t be opposed to losing a big chunk of my memories.”

“Watch your wishes.” She sniffed. “I wonder if I was as cavalier about my past as you are. It would explain some things.” She gathered up both books but left the map. “We leave before dawn. And take a bath.”

She said that like they had made a decision. Apparently they had, because with that, she left him.