Drake

Rosaliy never resurfaced, not that Drake could have picked her out through the haze on the water. With a landing like that, there existed no possibility of her being conscious. Broken bones were fixable. Breathing underwater was a bigger problem.

Drake ignored a rising wave of panic and the sneaking suspicion this was his punishment for seeing Rosaliy alive for the briefest of instants. Instead, he embraced a cold sense of urgency, yanking at his boots. Cliff diving was a terrible idea, but he had done it before and lived to question the wisdom of his decisions. Funny how many truthful sentences he could state just like that. Blank was a terrible idea, but he had survived it.

“Stop,” cautioned Esmona, holding out a hand. Her eyes were fixated down below.

“You’re not going to talk me out of—”

“Zzzt,” she shushed him, snapping a hand in a dismissive gesture.

Drake could see thick fog rolling in below him. This was not a normal haze. That meant exactly one thing: Trouble.

“The Flifary,” he choked out, finally getting one stubborn boot off his foot. He needed to be down there.

“What?” Esmona exclaimed. “The Flifa— Are you really going to jump?”

That was the plan.

“Wait!” yelled a voice. A girl dangled from a hole in the ceiling next to what appeared to be a chandelier turned into a ladder. She dropped, landing with a light thud in the middle of the weather-wrecked room across the chasm.

“What are you?” Esmona spluttered, knife at the ready. “Are you the princess? I can’t kill you. Who was that?” She waved at the water below. “She looks dead already, not that I’m going down to check. It would really improve my mood to be killing somebody right now.”

“I’m going with you,” the girl told Drake, flinging off her shoes. “I have, umm…” She side-eyed Esmona. “Something useful.”

“I knew you were up to no good,” Esmona complained. “Princesses sneaking about, Malum magic, Flifary doing who knows what…”

Drake needed to get to Rosaliy now, but if the Flifary saw him, he would reveal Rosaliy’s location. Of course, if he didn’t get to her quickly, Rosaliy would drown.

“I need a distraction, Es,” he ordered. Not that ordering Esmona around did any good, but perhaps she would be caught off guard and take him seriously.

“I need a night off, a tub of rum, and a tray of canapes,” she complained, rolling her eyes. “Boys,” she hollered. The two pirates had finally worked their way around to Drake’s location, but they were dumbfounded over what to do in the midst of the chaos. “Go fire some cannons at something.”

An explosion rumbled the castle. Distant screams implied a shot had landed too close to the castle for comfort. The furry lump down the back of his shirt trembled.

“Ah, Alonzo anticipated me,” said Esmona.

“They’re leaving,” said the girl, peering down at the shoreline Drake could not see. “Or at least moving. I’m going.”

Drake would have argued, but arguing safety threw his own choices into question, and the girl had already dived over the edge anyway. Matias broke into the room just in time to see her leap. He screamed an incoherent garble of the girl’s name and some version of “no” and “stop” all at once.

“Oh, good,” Esmona lit up when Cliff followed Matias in. “At least I get to hurt somebody.”

“Touch him, and I snap you in half,” Drake threatened, finally yanking off his last boot.

“Assuming you survive,” Esmona scoffed.

Excellent point. Now would be an opportune time to pass on Cliff’s father’s last words to him, but it was not really, and Drake had already jumped headfirst. Still burrowed in his shirt, Quita questioned her poor choices while she shredded his skin on his back with her monkey claws. As Drake hurtled toward the water, the fog was already thick. There was another explosion nearby and a flash of light, but Drake could only concern himself with meeting the water. He shot into the water, exhaling just enough to keep the water out of his nose, and he flew beneath the churning waves. Luckily, the ocean was already deep this close to shore, or this would have been a short trip for everyone.

The water was dark, but the outline of a swimming girl churning the water below him was faintly lit by a glowing ball. He propelled himself down, sweeping through the water. The girl reached Rosaliy dangling limp in the water first, and instead of pulling her upward, she fumbled with Rosaliy’s belt. Drake sped toward them, and before he could do anything, he was encased in glass. He thudded to the base of it while the girl gasped in a breath of air. “You can breathe in here,” she panted.

He hated to test her words, but his fingers stretched out to touch what certainly felt like a solid wall, and he was kneeling on a flat surface, not suspended in the water. He finally dared to open his mouth and inhale air without dying.

A glowing rock was sealed inside with them, so he had a good view of Rosaliy slumped on the flat base of the dome, drenched, ashen-faced, and clutching something in her hands. His heart nearly stopped. To come all this way just to see her die was just the kind of horrific injustice Drake was accustomed to, but resigned cynicism was not making him feel any better.

“She’s not breathing,” wailed the girl, thankfully more together than Drake was. She pressed on Rosaliy’s chest. That spurred Drake to action. He pinched the dripping Rosaliy’s nose and breathed into her mouth. If one was going to drown, one would do best to be surrounded by Baysellians. Through Drake and the girl’s combined efforts, Rosaliy choked up sea water, trying to gasp in breath while her body was wracked with the choking coughs attempting to expel water from her lungs.

The girl breathed a sigh of relief and flopped back against the wall of the dome. “I was worried we were too late.”

Drake had skipped worry and jumped right to certainty. He stretched out a hand to touch Rosaliy’s cheek, not ready to acknowledge she was alive. Rosaliy moaned, and she squeezed her eyes shut, feeble coughs still jarring her body.

“What hurts?” he asked.

“Everything,” Rosaliy whimpered.

He could barely feel appropriate sympathy for her situation. She was alive. She was talking.

The girl produced a little jar. “That’s what this is for,” she promised, unsealing the clasp and tipping the liquid into Rosaliy’s eerily blue lips.

Too late, Drake realized what was happening. “Oh, Rose,” he tried to warn her. “This is going to—”

Rosaliy’s eyes shot open, and she screamed, bolting straight up, which was a good sign, overall, even though it looked incredibly painful. Healing potion was brutal stuff when it was zipping around one’s body knitting bones back together. Drake distinctly remembered a broken arm when he was twelve and a rather unsympathetic Senira.

Her fingers dug into his arm. “What happened?” she gasped, her whole body shaking.

“The Flifary and some evil lady showed up,” the girl explained. “Plus angry pirates. You’re very popular.”

“The Flifary and the Malum woman were after Issabeth,” Drake clarified.

Rosaliy bit back another cry of pain, her grip tightening. She was so wonderfully solid and not dead.

“You broke a lot of bones with that fall,” he told her. There was not much he could do but state the obvious at this point. “Maybe next time, try a smaller entry point into the water. If you plan to take up diving as a hobby.”

She gritted her teeth. “I’ll remember that the next time I’m blasted by magic,” she murmured, relaxing her grip into a sudden and unexpected hug. “I’m so glad to see you.” He was glad to see her, but before he could express the relief tentatively settling over him at finding her not smothered by a mountain worth of rock, she asked, “What is that?”

Rosaliy pulled at the back of Drake’s shirt, and a soggy, trembling Quita tumbled out. Wild-eyed, the monkey screamed dramatically, throwing herself at the sides of the dome, pinging from one spot to another, trying to escape. Jadelynn made to grab for Quita, but the tiny monkey stayed out of her grasp, even in the tiny space.

“Oh,” Rosaliy whimpered. “Laughing hurts!”

“Lie down,” he advised, making no move to help her do so while her arms were wrapped around him. She did not move, and he did not mind.

“You’re better off down here,” Jadelynn warned the monkey when the furball finally stopped to catch her breath.

Rosaliy tipped her head back to look up through murky water. “What’s going on up there?”

As if to illustrate the question, something thunked on top of the dome.

“What was that?” asked Rosaliy.

A dark ball slid off the dome and continued its trip to the bottom of the ocean.

“Cannon ball,” he answered. “Flifary must still be up there.”

“At least they can’t see us,” said the girl.

“Issabeth,” Rosaliy exclaimed, wincing. “You said Issabeth? I need to help her.”

She tried to use him as leverage to stand, which was amusing, but not an attempt he was inclined to humor. Where did she intend to go while she was half broken and trapped two breaths away from the ocean floor?

“You won’t even be able to stand for a few hours, Rose,” Drake objected, “much less battle the Flifary.”

“But I have to stop them somehow,” she insisted, tipping her head back to look at him. He was struck by how consumed she was with the need to do good. She had a glow in her eyes he hadn’t remembered noticing before. “That’s what Daniella told me. Where is Daniella?”

“I have no idea,” he admitted. “The Flifary caught up to us on the fringe of the desert. I just hope she got away.”

“We need her,” said Rosaliy, releasing him to grab her arm. She squeezed her eyes shut. Honestly, why did something like healing potion cause so much pain? It needed a more accurate name and a disclaimer. “I need her to translate the message.”

“She did. Assuming you’re talking about the message in your secret book.”

“Right,” she agreed. “The one I couldn’t talk about. Wait.” She blinked up at him, then shook her head. “Apparently I now can. You know what was in the message?”

He nodded.

“Then we need to get to Flifary Island. Or, wait.” She winced and gritted her teeth through another wave of bones knitting back together. “You need to tell me what’s in the message, and I need to get to Flifary Island. Right away.”

That made him smile. She had been dead moments ago, and now she was trying to save the world. Getting to Flifary Island was not a top priority for him, but he was amenable to any desire posed by an alive Rosaliy. “How do you propose to do that?”

She gripped the wooden box somehow still sitting on her lap.

“Jadelynn,” Rosaliy murmured, like she had just realized the girl was here. “You need to get to safety.”

Drake was under the impression they were better off down here. He circled his finger at the dome around them. “How long does this thing last?”

“A long time,” Jadelynn assured him. “You could probably live down here.”

No, thank you, but at least Rosaliy could safely stay here to finish healing up before she threw herself at the Flifary. She rested her head against his chest as if to question his non-selfish reasoning for staying locked away in a dome underwater.

Jadelynn raised her eyebrows.

“You’re the ex-princess,” he realized. She was soggier than he remembered, but familiar. “The one studying to be a Sorceress.”

She agreed with him before asking, “So how are we going to bring down the Flifary?”

The “we” did not slide by Rosaliy, despite her distress. “You were such a huge help, Jade,” Rosaliy argued, “but I’ve already put you in far too much danger. Besides, I need to go alone. The more people with me, the easier we are to track.”

Jadelynn looked dubious.

“You’re the one they’re tracking, Rose,” Drake felt obligated to point out.

“Ugh,” she moaned. “That’s true. Apparently I was supposed to stay out of their notice. Thanks, Daniella, for getting me that message in a timely manner.”

“Nobody can track you in here, at least,” said Jadelynn.

That was good to know.

Then, Jadelynn’s eyes lit up with a new idea. “Since I’m probably not talking anybody into letting me come along on this ‘bring down the Flifary’ adventure, even though I’d be very useful…” Jadelynn flashed a smile at Rosaliy.

“Right…” said Rosaliy, matching her tone.

“What if they weren’t looking?” Jadelynn finished, blue eyes glowing with her plan.

“Huh?” said Rosaliy. Drake could have seconded that “Huh?”

“I don’t have time to run all the details by you,” said Jadelynn in a rush. “I’m going up.”

Rosaliy heaved a sigh with a little whimper of pain at the end. “I don’t have the energy to argue with you. Don’t put yourself in danger.”

“Not a chance,” Jadelynn agreed, much too easily. “You might want to hold your breath,” she told Drake. “And grab that monkey.”

Jadelynn snatched the glowing rock out of the air and gave it to Rosaliy. Then she handed the jar of healing potion to Drake.

“Cliff needs that,” Rosaliy objected.

Jadelynn cocked an incredulous eyebrow. “I think you’ll need a supply of healing potion more than Cliff.”

“Have you met Cliff?” Drake wanted to ask, but he refrained.

“Nice to meet you, Drake,” Jadelynn said with a grin. “Ready?”

It was a warning more than a question, and he wouldn’t have known how to answer her anyway.

Drake had just managed to scoop up an angry, biting Quita before Jadelynn held out a metal ball in her palm. Drake took a deep breath as ordered, keeping a tight grip on the squirming monkey. This was definitely a time for blindly following orders. Next, water hit him from every angle.