Rosaliy

Drake was already at breakfast by the time Rosaliy arrived.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked, somehow with a straight face.

She stifled a yawn and did not bother replying. Those shrieking creatures had zipped around the palace half the night breaking things and pushing furniture down stairs. Drake deserved much of the credit for stopping the horrible things. He had braved Daniella’s room to find a book open to a description of these obnoxious shadow creatures complete with a method to contain them.

The whole thing felt like an inside joke where Daniella was the only one inside. Also, nothing about the joke was funny. Neither Katyrinna, Alexander, nor Kalilya had returned. Sorceress Athena and Dmitri were still gone. Rosaliy was on her own. The situation was not even mildly amusing.

“Some servants in the hallway were complaining they found a few hiding in closets and under beds this morning,” Drake added. At least somebody was amused.

Last night had been one disaster after another. The solution to eliminate the creatures was a vat of a syrupy liquid, but the ingredients required were also powerful attractants for the shrieking, destructive nuisances. Since the lightning fast creatures could pass through walls and doors—which made no sense at all considering the damage they were doing—nothing stopped them from swooping in on Rosaliy while she was making the solution. They broke nearly all her mixing bowls and a big stone basin, leaving her soaking wet and sticky by the time she learned they were especially attracted to the birch bark. By leaving a pile outside the door to the laboratory, she was able to distract the shadows just long enough to finish a bubbling syrupy concoction. They dove in headfirst and did not return, so she hoped that was the end of them. The stragglers would find the basin eventually after they were ousted from their hiding spots.

“Daniella,” she muttered through gritted teeth. “I’m not surprised, but why now? After ten years?”

He shrugged, popping a cream-filled pastry into his mouth. “Because she can?”

“You’d think she would have stayed to gloat.”

“You have a point, actually.” He rolled a piece of ham around some asparagus spears. “Any chance she has good intentions? She really seemed to like those kids.”

Maybe if Rosaliy had not been up half the night being terrorized by blurry, screaming monsters, she could have considered Daniella’s actions in a favorable light. However, as Queen of Kianne, that woman had done so many reprehensible things, several of those things to Rosaliy’s family directly. Chances were good Rosaliy would be just as biased against her.

“How could anyone steal children and destroy a palace with good intentions?”

He didn’t answer. “So what’s the plan?” Drake asked through a mouthful of eggs.

The original plan had been to head to Kianne and search Daniella’s castle full of powerful magic. Now it seemed too obvious for her to have done all this just to go there, unless the creatures were a ruse to slow down pursuers. But did that make any sense? When it came to intellectual posturing, Rosaliy was out of her depth.

“You said she left some of her supplies in her room?”

“Those shadows did a number on the place,” he warned her. “You’ll have a tough time finding anything that’s not shredded or broken.”

When they were standing at Daniella’s doorway, surveying the damage, Rosaliy had to admit Drake was right. There was no way to tell even what Daniella had taken before her room had become a temporary habitat for those destructive monsters.

Drake bent down and scooped up a small book from the wreckage. “This book was Lillya’s. She was carrying it yesterday.”

The only thing notable was that the little volume had somehow avoided being ripped to shreds.

“That’s not earth-shattering,” Rosaliy said, trying her best to temper her sour, sleep-deprived mood. “Lillya’s usually toting around a book or five.”

“This one was special,” Drake argued.

He rifled through the pages, shrugged, and held it up to her. She reached for the book and flipped open the cover. It was inscribed with silver, glistening lettering:

Don’t tell anyone about this book. Head to Taragon.

“Please, Daniella. There’s no way I’m following orders from you,” she muttered.

“What did you find?” asked Drake absently, righting a bookshelf so he could reach the other side of the room.

“A bossy message in a book,” she meant to say, but no sound came out of her mouth.

And then she was going to point to the message, but it disappeared.

“Nothing,” her lips said.

She was tempted to throw the book in a fire right then and there. Not only was the enchanted book ordering her around, it was compelling her to follow those orders. Kianne must have been the right direction after all. Hopefully she would not be somehow forced to change direction.

Drake stared at her curiously while she stood motionless, still gripping the book. He rounded a pile of shredded clothes and craned his head to see the book. She snapped the cover shut. More accurately, her fingers closed the book. She was unsure how involved she was. Her body was following orders from an enchanted book, and she did not like it one bit.

Silna rushed in, or, rather, she rushed to the doorway and stopped. Nobody wanted to enter the room where maniacal shadow beasts might spring forth at any moment. “Rose! Sorceress Athena and Dmitri are just returning.”

Rosaliy thanked the girl while Drake poked cautiously at a pile of shattered glass. This was a waste of time.

“Daniella would only have left evidence we were meant to find,” Rosaliy spoke, annoyed at not realizing this before she was entrapped by a book, “and I am not in a mood to play her games.”

So they followed Silna. Of course, the book came with, seeing as how Rosaliy could not put it down.

When they reached the formerly shining marble entryway—now missing a few chandeliers, several paintings, and a sizable chunk of the banister—former soldier Dmitri was glowering at the destruction. “I leave for a few days…” he grumbled.

It was a good thing he had not seen the palace an hour ago. The whole staff had been hard at work to return the palace to the partial shambles it was now. Before Katyrinna, Athena and Dmitri had officially run this palace. Now, since Katyrinna was happy to let them manage her sometimes temperamental massive marble structure, they still ran the palace.

“Rosaliy,” Athena called upon noticing her, stepping over the head of a decapitated statue of a phoenix. “To my study, if you would. Please explain this madness. Why has no one been responding to our communications?”

Rosaliy asked Silna to take Drake to the stables to get a few horses ready.

“If you wouldn’t mind, Drake?” she tacked on.

He was amenable, and Silna offered to make sure food was packed and ready, so Rosaliy headed to Athena’s study to fill her in on the chaos. She hardly knew where to start. The children were missing, Daniella was missing, the seeing pool was dead, shadowy beings had been running rampant through the palace all night, and Queen Katyrinna and Alexander had been taken by the Naxturaen star ancestors. Rosaliy had no good news to temper the bad.

“The beings were not dark magic and did no harm to anyone?” Athena mulled over. “They were…a distraction?”

“Kat and Alexander were taken right after they appeared,” groused Rosaliy. “If they were a distraction for Kat, the whole ordeal was unnecessary.”

“Perhaps they were exactly necessary,” Athena disagreed. “The Naxturae were alarmed into removing Katyrinna.”

Rosaliy’s head was too fuzzy to care if that was the case. “Either way, we don’t have time to wait for them to come to their senses. We need to go to Kianne as planned.”

She was so relieved she was able to convey the plan to go to Kianne. The book did not have total control.

“Yes,” agreed Athena, “if Daniella may have gone there to access her old supplies, Kianne is our only source for clues.”

“Even if she didn’t, she has a stockpile of invasive searching equipment that will be very useful for locating the children.” Rosaliy tried to add on anything about Daniella’s enchanted book, but when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. She must have looked like she was yawning, because she earned a sympathetic pat on the arm from Athena.

“I wish I could send some of the Naxturaen soldiers with you, but they are combing the Glade or working with Cedric on the portal. Daniella, I assume, did a very effective job cutting off Crystal Palace from the outside by deactivating the seeing pool. I’ll have to see what I can do about that problem.”

“I don’t have time to wait,” said Rosaliy. “Besides, that’s what Drake is for. We’ll travel faster on our own.”

“The Baysellian? Do you trust him?”

She needed to be careful on this topic if she wanted to get moving. Drake was not in cahoots with Daniella, so that was good enough for Rosaliy. “He’s hiding something, but he seems nice enough. Alexander trusted him.” Sort of.

“Very well. At least take the enchanted belt and a mirror to communicate.”

Athena juggled the keys on a keyring and opened a chest near her worktable. She drew out a wide leather belt with a dragon clasp and a mirror safely encased in a soft drawstring bag. She pushed both objects across the table to Rosaliy.

Rosaliy ran her fingers across the thick leather. The belt was enchanted to protect its wearer from physical harm. Issabeth had put it to the test deactivating a Malum death trap the Bellicus found near Malum territory. It was a shame Issabeth was not wearing the belt now, but she never would have consented to wearing such a thing for a mundane camping trip in the Glade.

“Hopefully its magic isn’t too severely drained,” Athena said, “but Katyrinna’s enchantments are incredibly powerful, especially when they are intended to prevent harm.”

“Speaking of enchanted objects,” Rosaliy said casually, hoping to catch the book off guard, “have you ever heard of an enchantment that can stop someone from speaking about being enchanted.”

If she had thought she would be able to ask the question at all, Rosaliy might have asked in a less alarming way. A cloudy, confused look crossed Athena’s face, and her gray eyes examined Rosaliy with a trace of worry. Great. If she behaved in too suspicious a manner, Athena would stop her from going, and Rosaliy so badly needed to do what she could to find Kat’s children. She owed Kat so much, and this was her chance to repay her in some small amount for all her kindness.

“Do you have reason to think such an enchantment might have been used or might be useful?” Athena asked.

Yes, because of a book filled with Daniella’s tricky magic, she wanted to say, but instead she shook her head. The book would not let her speak directly.

“Of course not,” answered book Rosaliy.

Actual Rosaliy recovered with, “This is Daniella we’re dealing with. Anything is possible.”

“Extra paranoia is certainly warranted when that woman is involved,” agreed Athena, relaxing. Rosaliy’s trustworthiness was a blessing and a curse. “As to your question, I haven’t heard of such an enchantment being used in a long while, but they were quite common during the wars. Sometimes such enchantments were used on captains and heads of armies so they would be unable to reveal army locations and such under the influence of Malum magic. The spells were harmless, but effective.”

Rosaliy tried not to look too interested. Her question was hypothetical, after all. “Can they be reversed? I mean, could they be reversed?”

Athena was pondering the past, so she missed the slip. “No, that would be against the purpose of such a spell. There were usually time limits or an expiration trigger of sorts built in.”

“Like what?”

“As in the general of an army could reveal his secret plans to another Naxturaen officer in the event of his imminent death or once the secret campaign had begun and the knowledge was no longer secret. Good spells usually accounted for a few eventualities, although goodness knows a few Naxturae must have carried a covert mission or two to their graves.”

That was an unsettling thought.

“It’s a shame Talyrin isn’t here to tell you more,” said Athena, brow crinkling just a bit with the shame of it. “Is your informational need urgent?”

“No,” said Rosaliy. That was the enchantment again. Her informational need was the definition of urgent. “How powerful were these spells?”

“As with any magic, their strength and efficacy varied based on the skill of the enchantress.”

Her enchantress was very skilled. Rosaliy could assume there were no loopholes.

“This seems more than an idle question,” Athena pointed out.

That was all the questioning Rosaliy would be able to do unless she wanted to be confined to her room. Besides, going to Kianne was doing the opposite of the book’s orders. It sounded like the enchantment was virtually harmless, especially if she ignored any book-based edicts.

“If I find anything suspicious, I’ll let you know.” Rosaliy tapped the cloth-protected mirror.

Dmitri came in with a damage report, so Rosaliy was able to escape further inquiry.

“Wait,” Athena called before she left. Rosaliy froze. “You’ll need a way to mask yourself from Daniella and a way to incapacitate her. Stop by again before you leave.”

She promised. She and Drake needed to be moving. Kianne was a two-day journey. Drake had already been packed to leave, but she needed to gather her things. She tried to leave the book behind, but every time she turned around, the book was back in her bag. Was she putting it there or was the book moving itself? She flipped open the cover and the message returned.

“I got it. Thanks,” she seethed, debating destroying the book. She could see such a dramatic action backfiring, however, and she doubted the book would let her destroy it at all. She sighed, shoved the little volume in her bag, and went back to collect a potion from Athena.

“A swallow every day should mask you from most tracking spells, although I can’t promise to know how to offer total protection on that front,” Athena instructed, handing over a glass-capped vial filled with a shimmering blue liquid.

Rosaliy also received a tiny shard of net and red rings. “Hopefully one or the other will be useful,” said Athena. “I’m afraid Daniella will have planned for anything I can offer you, but perhaps you will have the element of surprise.”

Daniella wanted her in Taragon, so maybe she did have the element of surprise. Rosaliy downed a swallow of the minty liquid and headed outside to meet her Baysellian travel partner, on horseback and waiting.

She strapped her supplies onto her horse, looped the protective belt around her waist, and wasted no time leading them across the drawbridge and dead south.