Drake

The only plus side to debilitating mental distress was being able to ignore the physical distress of crossing the desert through the blistering midday heat. Mindlessly crossing a desert may not have been advisable, but Drake had experience and location on his side. If they had been slogging through the desert proper and not the northern fringe, the heat would have been unbearable; this was survivable.

“You need to drink water,” Drake reminded a still-shaken Daniella.

She did not acknowledge his words, but she did reach for her water skin and obediently gulp down water, oblivious to her cracked lips and violently pink skin. Drake had tried to convince himself time, distance, and flushing out the estrellmar’s poison would be all the ex-queen required to snap back to her new old self, but seeing as how his leg felt like it was on fire, the direct effects of the poison had burned off long ago. As much as he personally preferred to rebury and ignore all the mucky feelings the estrellmar had dredged up, he needed to do something for her.

Drake reined in his horse to fall back next to Daniella. They walked side by side in awkward silence. Well, the awkwardness was all on his side; Daniella showed no awareness he was there.

“Did the estrellmar bring back any happy memories?” he asked suddenly. He winced at the words. Maybe he should have segued into the sunshine and rainbows.

Her eyes drifted toward him, and she stared, wordless.

“I know,” he sighed. “I’m terrible at this empowering optimism thing. I can only imagine what kind of out of context memories the estrellmar dragged up—you don’t even know they were all real.”

“Real.” Her eyes stared straight through him, glazed and troubled. “They were real.”

He was officially making things worse. “All I know is you need to deal with what you saw.”

Hypocrisy, yes. Bad advice, no.

“What I saw,” she murmured, looking away. “You told me I had done some terrible things. That was an understatement. Why would anyone do those things?”

“Power. Control. Fluid morality.” This was not going the right direction at all. “You chose to save my life, so that’s a mark in your favor, right?”

“Without you, I would have died in the desert,” she replied dully.

“No chance you were together enough back there to think that through,” he argued.

Her eyebrows rose, and she looked at him askance. She was an admirable kind of cold and calculating, this former queen.

“Well, either way, I appreciate the saving,” he said.

She let the tepid praise settle on her, but it sat there without sinking in. It was like she was trapped inside an iron shell. Normally that shell kept the attacking armies of emotion from getting in, but right now it was trapping the conflict inside with her. Drake had to admit he knew exactly what that felt like.

“I understand,” he said quietly. “What it’s like to—” He faltered. “I even understand that I don’t understand.” He sighed. She needed anyone other than him to be sitting here. What did he have in common with a queen who once had nations at her feet?

She did not point this out, but she did run a hand across the back of her bright red neck. Drake unearthed a bandanna and doused it with drinking water. He handed it over. “Your Kianne skin isn’t faring well under the desert sun.”

“You need the water,” she objected, taking the damp cloth anyway.

“There’s a creek up ahead.”

At least he had forced her into a passing acknowledgment of her own discomfort. That was progress.

After she pressed the bandanna to her smarting neck, she asked, “How do you deal with it all?”

He was tempted to misinterpret her question, but it had an easy answer. “By not. I figure I’ll be dead by the time it all piles up too high to avoid.”

“At least you have a plan,” she muttered.

If permanent avoidance was a plan, he sure did.

“You remembered the children,” he prodded. “Do you know where they are?”

She shook her head from one side to the other, just once. “No,” she half whispered. “I sent them away in the care of a man—a soldier with a bright red cloak.”

That might have been Hale. Since Hale remembered nothing, that was a dead end. Daniella was quite the intricate planner.

“Maybe this whole thing is helping your memories come back,” he tried next. “That’s a good sign.”

“I’m not so sure,” Daniella murmured. “There’s something—” Her face tightened, trying to dredge up something else, but failing. “There’s something catastrophic about memories coming back. That’s all I know.”

He exhaled, trying to care, but too tired to care.

By the time they reached the creek, they were spent. Drake should have insisted on watches or doing minimal hunting or foraging to avoid exhausting their food supply, and he should have wrapped his smarting leg. In reality, they were barely able to choke down all their food, down their weight in water, and unload the horses so they could fend for themselves. Drake threw a blanket on the ground and shoved a bag under his head before he was lost to sleep.

His sleep was mercifully dreamless, but short. He awoke to the dead still of night in a clammy sweat. He really should have taken the time to wrap his leg. He had nearly talked himself into getting up to do that when he noticed the fog all around him. They were not close enough to the ocean for fog. Fog was not a fringe-of-the-desert weather pattern.

He heard a distant voice complaining. Although the words were in another language, they were plenty alarming.

If he knew Flifary, he would have heard one voice snap, “I know it’s dark. You try pinpointing an exact location in the dead of night. They’re close.”

And he would have heard the other reply, “We’d best find her, Dalor. So help me, if you screw up one more time…”

“I’d like to know what you would have done,” Dalor complained back.

“You’re just lucky I came for you,” seethed Iketa.

As they argued, the voices drew closer. Drake felt woozy, and he was definitely running a fever, but he dragged himself over to Daniella and woke her with the never-appreciated hand over the mouth. She drew in a startled breath through her nose, and her eyes snapped open. “Flifary nearby,” he whispered in her ear.

In the fog-dissipated moonlight, he saw the glinting white of her alarmed eyes.

“Get to a horse,” he whispered, barely audible. “I’ll get their attention on me.”

She shook her head. He was not being as noble as it may have appeared, but he could hardly convey that. He knew he would pass out the second he tried to run.

“You need to get your message to Rosaliy,” he insisted. “Head for Seavale.”

“Take the other horse the opposite direction,” she ordered. “They sound like they’re on foot.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he whispered. The idea of riding a horse sounded much less appealing than lying right here in the dirt, but if making her feel like he had a chance to escape got her moving, so be it.

The frightened horses were huddled nearby. Drake scooped up a water skin from the discarded supplies for Daniella and a locater flare for himself. He would not be needing any water.

He pushed Daniella onto a horse who was anxious to leave. Smart animal. “West.” He pointed that way. “Go slow until you hear them both following me, then get out of here as fast as you can.”

Daniella disappeared into the fog, and in her absence, Drake realized he was in even worse shape than he first thought.

It took a few tries to mount the horse, and he nearly slid off the other side on his successful attempt, but he managed to grip the horse’s mane with his nearly unresponsive fingers. The horse was more than happy to run. Since it did Drake little good to escape the grip of the Flifary just to fall off and die in the Naxturaen grasslands while they located Daniella anyway, he clutched the flare. Did he have matches? A numb, rolling sleepiness washed over him. It very much looked like he was going to fall off and die in the Naxturaen grasslands.

“Over here!” yelled a voice. Oh, that was his voice. Good plan, Drake.

His voice was weak and the horse was not making nearly enough noise in the soft, sandy dirt, but he caught the attention of his pursuers. The Flifary voices yelled. Drake’s horse took off in earnest, and he could barely focus on hanging on. If his trackers were on foot, they were going to need to change strategy to catch him. Maybe that bought Daniella more time. Then, he heard the snarl of a jaguar behind him.

The horse went down and Drake flew clear, landing flat on his back, breath knocked out of him. How he was still awake, he had no idea. Maybe he was not awake. That fall must have broken something, and he was feeling no pain. He heard the squeal of the horse, though, in his floaty, painless, half conscious state. The big cat snarled and yowled. The horse must have gotten a solid kick in. Poor horse. Not even here of its own free will. He could feel the flare in one of his hands. He did have matches, he remembered. In his pocket. He tried to grab them, but that arm refused to follow orders. He would definitely be in pain if he could feel pain.

He dropped the flare on his chest, reaching his working arm around to grab at the little roll of matchsticks in his pocket. He managed to pull a match and scrape it against its sandpaper wrapping. He had the presence of mind to roll the flare off his chest before he lit it.

The locater flare screeched and took off through the sand, its eerie red light illuminating the scuffling animals as it streaked past. The jaguar flattened himself to the ground, steeling for a fire attack. The horse had the sense to bolt. Drake hoped it found a happier life in the Naxturaen Glade.

All things considered, at least Drake was going to be unconscious well before the beast ripped him apart. His eyes closed. He saw brightness through his eyelids, but his eyes would not open anymore.

“Aach,” said a voice, “I told you he was just a distraction.”

“He’s the one from the mine,” replied the other. “He must be more important than we realized.”

“Grab him, I guess,” the first voice sighed. “Daniella’s popping in and out, so we’ll snag her soon enough. Would everybody just stick to the plan, already?”