Drake

Any time passed without Rosaliy was hazy and dark, and time passed with her was mainly spent pondering her hair or facial expressions or trying to read her thoughts. Something about this seemed abnormal to Drake, but the worries were fleeting.

“Corin,” Rosaliy was saying. “You didn’t have to see us off yourself. Really, you didn’t.”

Her smile seemed strained, but Drake might have been seeing what he wanted to see. I mean, Corin was a— What was he, anyway? He was something like a king with no actual ruling power. Maybe he just came with the castle. He was rich, anyway. Rosaliy could have the best of everything with him. She deserved the best of everything.

She was radiant this morning—golden, slightly wavy hair tied back like normal, rosy cheeks, wearing a cloak Corin insisted she take. It was pale blue with ruby threads that shimmered in the early morning sunlight. Traveling in the sun all day had caused the reappearance of what must have been childhood freckles across the bridge of her nose.

Corin bent forward to kiss Rosaliy’s cheek. Drake felt the urge to punch him in his smug face, but the urge was combatable. Rosaliy didn’t want him to hurt anyone.

“Do you need anything else?” Corin offered, still lingering.

Rosaliy backed away. “Strangely, yes,” she admitted, taking out a handkerchief. “I could use some of your blood to track your mother. Drake, can I borrow one of your knives?”

She had not finished the question before he had placed a knife in her hand. Doing things for her soothed that nagging cloudy feeling of unrest. Coincidentally, he was happy to assist in the stabbing of Corin.

“Thanks,” she said, handing the knife to Corin.

The quasi-king moved to slice the knife across his hand, and she grabbed his arm in a panic. “A few drops! Not all of it!”

Corin complied, slicing his finger to squeeze a few drops onto the handkerchief. Drake envied him for having something Rosaliy wanted.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay with him?” asked Drake sadly, watching Corin saunter off.

A cold chill slid down his spine.

“Drake, look at me,” Rosaliy demanded.

He hadn’t realized his vision had gone so hazy. He tried to focus in on Rosaliy’s very serious, lovely face.

“I want to go with you, Drake. We talked about this. You being you pleases me. You don’t have to do anything else.”

That warmed him and cleared his head a little, despite its ridiculousness. Why would anyone like him for what he was?

She handed the knife back and felt his forehead. Her fingers tingled against his skin. “Are you feeling any better this morning?”

“Better than what?” he asked.

“Better than me being the center of your universe as you wallow in a pit of despair.”

“What would be better than that?”

She shook her head. “Maybe if I had rubbed the fish on me instead of making you eat it, I’d be less appealing.”

“Nothing would make you less appealing,” he answered automatically, “but no more fish, please.” He did remember the catfish monstrosities with searing clarity, and he was sure she had packed a few of them in case of emergency. “Kianne fish tastes like mud.”

“It smelled, and that was the point,” she said. “I have a hard time believing you’d do anything for me but eat a fish.”

“I had a hard time believing that was a fish.”

She giggled. She was so beautiful when she smiled and her eyes danced.

“Being with me makes you happy?” he asked, doubtful. It made no sense.

“It would please me more if you could shake this spell, but I don’t think it works that way.”

He shut his eyes tight and tried not to be under the spell Rosaliy claimed he was under, but he felt no different. He did feel dizzy and confused from all the conflicting sensations.

Just as darkness was creeping back in, he felt pressure on his cheek. When he opened his eyes, Rosaliy was right there. She had kissed him. She smelled like lemons. She said lemons would make him less in love with her, but one of his only decent childhood memories was picking lemons on his father’s orchard. That smell was the closest thing he had to home. “Any girl would be lucky to know you, Drake,” she said. “You haven’t let me down once. Hang in there. You’ll be back to yourself in a few days.”

A nagging voice told him she was lying, because those statements could not be true, but Rosaliy was a terrible liar. She must have believed her words. He was also sure he did not want to be back to himself, whatever that meant.

He must have faded off again, because Cade was there with horses loaded down with supplies and Rosaliy was already on one of them. She was in a hurry to be moving, so Drake mounted his horse as well, wondering what would be the thing to change her lofty opinion of him. There were so many possibilities.

“Are you going to be safe with him?” asked Cade, eying Drake warily as he walked her horse out of the royal stables.

“I’ll be fine,” she insisted. “He’s nothing like this. I promise.”

Drake wondered what she meant. He remembered a time before loving Rosaliy, but it seemed empty and pointless.

“He didn’t exactly make a good impression before he got hit with the spell,” Cade pointed out. “Maybe I should come with you?”

“So I can save you from every grass snake from here to Taragon?” she teased. “No thank you.”

“That was one time,” Cade argued grumpily. “It was huge.”

“Right,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Besides, I need you to search the castle for any more traces of those kids, and I need you to dig up more information on Hale: find out where he went, tell me when he returns. You have the book I enchanted?”

“I’ve got the book,” Cade acknowledged, holding up the empty volume she had given him. “You can really see anything I write in here?”

“For the next week or so,” she agreed. “If I was a better enchantress, it would last longer, and I’d be able to write back, but it was the best I could do under pressure.”

“My talents consist of nailing pieces of wood together and herding sheep, so I’m impressed,” Cade replied.

“I hope you’re not too upset about missing out on the festival.”

“Hanging out in Kianne Castle for a while.” Cade made an exaggerated sour face. “Sure, it’s a sacrifice, but you’re my only sister.” She stuck out her tongue at him. Cade leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Hey, can you change him into a tree or something if he turns on you?”

Her eyes flashed in annoyance. “I hope you’re joking.”

“You’re at least wearing your magic belt, right?” he pressed.

“I’m leaving now, Cade,” she said, nudging her horse forward and ignoring the guards who cleared the way for her to clear the gate.

“Perhaps it would be easier to take side roads,” she sighed.

Drake really didn’t care which way they went or why. No matter where they went, they ran the risk of battling traffic heading into the city for the festival. Progress was going to be slow.

“Your brother doesn’t like me,” noted Drake.

“In his defense, you did get him arrested.”

Being arrested did tend to make people cranky. Drake usually saw it as a little vacation of sorts.

“I deserved to be there,” he said absently.

Rosaliy looked at him sideways. She was particularly lovely in profile. She wanted to ask about the Silas situation. He could feel it. That hot, cloudy, choking feeling moved in. Silas had been such a mess. Silas was above bribes and too stubborn for threats. The options were to have him killed or force him out of town. Forcing him out of town had seemed like the better option at the time, but good people did not make those sorts of choices. Drake was not a good person.

“Hey!” Rosaliy shook his arm. He was half slumped over the neck of his horse, and his eyes were swimming with black spots. “Snap out of it. You’ve been pardoned, remember? Like it never happened.”

“Not facing consequences isn’t the same as not being guilty,” he muttered.

“You’re very hard on yourself.”

“I’m not hard enough on myself,” he disagreed.

“I find that hard to believe,” she said dryly. “I’ve never met anyone harder on himself.”

“If you knew…”

“Drake,” she said in what he assumed was the voice she reserve for the sternest of lectures to her students. “I’m not going to pretend I really understand what you’ve done in your past, and I can’t say it doesn’t matter, but I do think you’ve changed. Or that you want to change. Or maybe that you didn’t really need to change all that much, and you just needed to be yourself the whole time. Or some combination of the above.”

“Running away doesn’t count as change,” he muttered.

“Normally, I’d love to ponder the idea of greater good, but those kids are counting on me, and I need your help. Right now, I need you to believe you can help, so I don’t lose you completely.”

He nodded weakly. “You think they’ll be in Taragon?” he asked in his best attempt at helpfulness.

Her face scrunched up. “No,” she admitted. “Daniella’s leading me there for some reason. It’s naive to think her purpose is to deliver stolen children safely into my care. Honestly, I don’t even want to go to Taragon, but what choice do I have?”

Those were the kinds of tough choices Rosaliy made. How best to help people.

“I’m just glad I didn’t have to go with my first plan to break you out of the dungeon,” she said with a too-bright smile of obvious subject changing.

It was effective. The idea of Rosaliy breaking him out of a dungeon was plenty amusing. “I’m so glad I’ve inspired you to criminal behavior,” he replied sarcastically. “What was your plan?”

“Distract the guards and blast the lock?” she said, not sounding very confident.

“I don’t even know where to start,” he chuckled.

“Well, I’m not a dungeon escape expert.”

“No one is,” he pointed out. “That’s why they’re dungeons. No escaping by definition. If you’re going to attempt an escape, it has to be before the incarceration part or after you’ve convinced your captors some sort of transportation out of the dungeon is necessary.”

“How would you do that?” she asked.

“I am counting all of this as your two questions for the day,” he told her.

“That implies you have a lot of personal dungeon experience,” she said.

“Does it?” he muttered. As long as discussion did not gravitate toward the reasons he had landed in various prisons at various times, prison itself was a reasonably safe topic. In Bayselle, it was a fact of life to be locked up for one reason or another.

“Deal,” she agreed. “Enlighten me on how to escape captivity.”

“If someone were taken prisoner and needed to escape, there’s a window of time when captors first grab their prisoner and make plans. Said captors are at their most careless.”

“Escape immediately. Got it.”

He frowned. “Well, now, that’s an oversimplification. It depends on the situation.”

“When is escape not the best option?”

“When you’re in no immediate danger, and you need information,” he answered.

“But you lose your chance to get away,” she argued.

“No,” he dismissed. “You just have to make yourself important enough to your captors for them to want to keep you close: unique information or skills only you possess. At that point, you’re close to your information source, and since no one likes to hang about their dungeons all day, you have outside access—plenty of escape opportunities.”

“I feel like I should be writing this down,” mused Rosaliy.

“I doubt you have to worry,” he pointed out. “It’s not like you’re in much danger of being taken prisoner.”

“I’ve been locked up in a dungeon before,” said Rosaliy defensively.

“For a crime?” he asked suspiciously. “That you actually committed?”

“Well, no,” she admitted.

They picked their way out of the city through loaded wagons and throngs of people coming in for the festival. Rosaliy received constant smiles and nods, to her chagrin. Drake worried Silas might be waiting for him at the main gate, but nothing prevented him from exiting the city and picking up the pace in the Kianne forest beyond. To be totally accurate, the guards on the wall who were very sad to see Rosaliy leave and wanted to show her who could hit the farthest target with their bows were a bit of an obstacle.

Rosaliy breathed an audible sigh of relief when they were free of the city. “If you don’t mind,” she told him, “I’d rather avoid Emilia’s outpost this time. We could get farther along in a day, and there isn’t too much danger out in the southern Taragon wilderness.”

“And we’d avoid Emilia,” he pointed out.

“Avoid people in general,” she laughed, increasing the pace. “I’m tired of being the center of attention. Remind me if I ever complain about being ordinary how much I hate being special.”

There was nothing she could do about being special.

With that, they sped across the rolling grasslands northeast of Kianne. Drake appreciated wide, open spaces. He could see danger coming for furlongs in any direction, and the bright, unfiltered sun reminded him of the desert sky.

“What are you thinking?” asked Rosaliy, startling him. He had been thinking about something other than her for the first time in days. Was he cured? Rosaliy bent over to refill a canteen with water from the little creek they had run across, and her hair spilled over her shoulder, picking up reds and golds from the afternoon sun. The urge to touch that hair was nearly overpowering. Nearly was progress, but he would have to say no on the curing.

“I was thinking about the desert,” he replied.

“I’ve heard the animals there are huge and just pop out of the desert anywhere,” she said.

“That’s something of an exaggeration,” he chuckled. “It’s the small ones you want to check your boots for in the morning.”

“Everything about it sounds terrifying,” she said.

“People are terrifying,” he disagreed. “The desert follows rules.”

“I’ve never heard anybody with anything nice to say about the desert,” she pointed out, tying her canteen back on her horse who was frantically consuming on as much tall grass as he could while they were stopped.

“I’m not sure I have either,” he admitted, “but there’s just something about the desert.”

“What is that something?”

“It’s changeless and changing—the sand is always in motion, but the expanse never really seems any different. It’s easy to get lost in the neverendingness of it.”

“See, that’s exactly what would scare me about the desert—getting lost in it.”

“I’m pretty lost now,” he pointed out.

She pointed. “Just keep heading north until you hit the big mountain range,” she teased.

The next time they stopped was to make camp near a gully. A small stream wound through a ravine, disappearing into a patchy forest on the other side. The lower ground was soft and damp, so they decided to sleep on the higher grassland.

“Are you going to disappear again tonight?” he asked, partly to prepare himself for the possibility of her disappearance.

Rosaliy considered the sky with her hands on her hips. “Last night was the last time Kalilya was able to pull me up. Now they’re stuck for a while.” She shook off the thought, like it was too heavy to consider. “I’ll go grab some firewood from down below.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t get separated,” he tried to say casually, like the idea of separation was not equivalent to having his arm ripped off.

“I’ll be fast,” she promised. “Besides, nothing can hurt me,” she reminded him, pointing to the belt. “Even if they could, this spell is affecting the animals, too. If I run into anything, it will probably just try to lick me to death.

She had a point. When they had stopped for lunch, a crow had stopped by to proudly deliver her a shiny bit of broken armor.

She lowered herself into the ravine where she was able to hop the stream and head into the forest. He did not like watching her go, but that was probably the spell. Rosaliy knew her way around a forest. She waved, and Drake watched her disappear into the nearby woods.