Rosaliy

Rosaliy heard Daniella’s version of events, which was colder and more precise than Drake’s, but still gave her the general impression of what had been going on around her while she was in her magical coma.

Rosaliy pushed herself onto her elbows. She felt woozier than she preferred, but she could work past that.

“What,” Daniella snapped, “are you doing?”

“Getting up,” Rosaliy replied. She had no energy to argue.

“I’m specifically supposed to prevent that. The cross Sorceress whom everyone claims is my progeny said you would attempt to be up the instant you were conscious. The gray-eyed Sorceress who seems to resent me said you were not under any circumstances to leave this room until all the magic had flushed from your system.”

This would not do. There was no way Rosaliy was going to lie around useless. “But…I need—” She floundered for reasoning Daniella might respond to. “We’ve come all this way, but we still need to find the children.” They were the whole reason for the original journey.

Daniella’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Am I to assume you’ve had prophetic dreams to that end?”

That woman’s weaponized sarcasm could cut through walls.

“There must be some sort of clue to their whereabouts,” Rosaliy insisted.

“When the Queen returns,” said Daniella in a chilly tone.

“But that won’t be for weeks—not until the moon is aligned.”

There was a soft knock on Rosaliy’s door. Drake peeked his head in. Of course, he was washed and changed and back to his old put together, vaguely mysterious, unreasonably attractive self. Meanwhile, Rosaliy looked and felt like she had been trampled by a herd of stampeding horses.

“You were instructed to sleep,” Daniella accused.

“I thought about sleeping,” he replied, his eyes on Rosaliy.

“Come in,” Rosaliy beckoned. “What’s been going on?”

“What seems like normal chaos for this place,” Drake answered, slipping into the room. “How are you feeling?”

Rosaliy felt like someone was alternately setting her on fire and then dropping her into a vat of ice water, but saying that would keep her confined to bed for a week.

“Fine,” she said. “I feel fine.”

Drake had come in serious and concerned, but a smile broke over his face. “You really are a terrible liar.”

She heaved a sigh. “I can’t lie around doing nothing when an island and all the people on it have been dropped into the Glade and there are missing children to find.”

His eyebrows rose. “You have an idea where to look?”

“Apparently I need a way to speed up the moon,” she grumbled, sinking back onto her bed. All this aimless arguing was exhausting.

“Are you being serious?” he asked, taking a few steps forward. “Because every time I think you’re not being serious, you’re being serious.”

“She wants to bring back the Queen,” Daniella clarified, “and there won’t be enough power to bring her back until a particular moon cycle.”

Rosaliy’s eyes shifted over to Daniella, who looked like herself but had just taken the time to explain a magical concept to another human being without sarcasm or a demand for results. She must have taken to Drake. Also, Rosaliy was suddenly aware she had both Drake and Daniella in her bedroom. She had many conflicting feelings about this.

Drake nodded slowly, as if he had an idea.

“What?” Daniella demanded before Rosaliy could. “What are you thinking?”

“No,” he said. “Surely someone smarter than me has had this idea already.”

He was going to leave it at that, but the two women staring at him convinced him otherwise. He winced and explained himself. “Now, I have no idea what I’m talking about, but the Flifary were channeling magic from the sun.”

“Dalor was using the sun to power his ridiculous weapon,” Rosaliy agreed.

“The sun comes up in a few hours,” Daniella added.

“Arlana!” Rosaliy exclaimed, just before realizing she had been the last person in the room to come to this conclusion. “That’s brilliant.” She beamed at Drake.

“It’s an assumption made from halfway paying attention to what goes on around me,” Drake disagreed.

Rosaliy would have argued with him, but she was too excited. “I need to speak with Sorceress Athena right now.”

She planted her feet on the ground and nearly tumbled over. Drake caught her before her knees gave out completely.

“It would be wiser to bring the Sorceress to you,” Daniella scowled. “I’ll go.”

“Did she just offer to be helpful?” Rosaliy asked Daniella’s departing back.

Drake was also staring after her. “She feels terrible about the things she’s done. Maybe she needs to set one thing right.”

Rosaliy could not wrap her head around that, nor could she try. She did, however, have so many things to tell Drake, except suddenly her mind was completely blank, and his closeness was increasing her heartbeat and making complete thoughts impossible.

She gripped his arm for stability and tried to look him in his clear blue eyes without getting lost in them. “Drake, I—”

Her door burst open. Matias sauntered in. Iketa with a rogue jaguar would have been more welcome at that moment.

“I thought you might be here,” he sneered in Drake’s direction.

“You can’t just walk into someone’s room,” Rosaliy snarled.

Matias glared at Drake. “He did.”

“He knocked,” Rosaliy spat back.

“He did knock,” Drake agreed.

Matias shot him a cold glare and looked like he might say something else, so Rosaliy interrupted. “Why are you here?”

“Making sure he—”

“No,” Rosaliy cut him off. “Here. At Crystal Palace.”

“I helped Jade lift the spell on the palace,” Matias replied importantly.

She hated to ask, but she had to. “What spell?” she sighed, plunking down on her bed. Standing had been a failed experiment.

And then she was subjected to his rendition of how he had rescued an entire palace from the brink of death while fighting to keep from succumbing to a sleeping spell himself. She would have to ask Jadelynn for the real story, she supposed. She wished her spell neutralizer would work on her now. She was feeling decidedly ill.

“Matias, you need to leave,” she told him flatly. “My head feels like it’s going to explode, and I need to get cleaned up. I’m sure my skin tastes like a block of salt.”

“I could lick you and find out,” Matias offered.

“Did you really just—” Drake was laughing too hard to finish that thought.

Athena saved all of them by gliding past Matias into the open room. “It’s good to see you awake,” she said warmly, a small notebook and ink pen in hand. “Now you can explain what happened to you.” She held up the jar of healing potion. Just seeing it made Rosaliy feel queasy. “How hurt were you when the potion was administered?”

She tried to remember. “A few broken bones,” she answered weakly.

“Which ones?” asked Athena, still writing.

“Most of them,” she admitted.

“Plus you almost drowned,” Drake offered helpfully.

Athena made a little sound of incredulity. “Extensive internal injuries,” was all she said as she noted that on her paper. “And then?”

Rosaliy flushed red. “I misjudged the extent of the healing potion in my system when I used an invisibility potion.” Athena jotted notes with a pencil.

“That I can balance out,” sad Athena, nodding.

“Well,” Rosaliy said, “except there was also a language potion.” Athena’s eyebrows rose as she noted that. “Things were already going downhill after that, but when I was frozen by one of Dalor’s mystery concoctions, that’s when everything started going very wrong,” Rosaliy admitted.

Athena stopped writing, and she stared at Rosaliy with judgmental gray eyes.

“I know,” Rosaliy muttered. She had lectured her share of Sorceress trainees on magic overload.

“The best I can do for you is order rest and chamomile oil,” Athena decided, tapping her silver pen on her notebook. “A magical solution is bound to react poorly with the healing potion still at work in your system. You’re young and resilient, and I imagine you’re feeling quite ill.”

That was an understatement.

Athena blinked, looking around her. “What are all of you doing here?”

“Matias was just leaving,” Rosaliy told him.

“I’m not leaving unless he does,” Matias insisted haughtily.

“You’re all leaving,” Athena reiterated firmly. “Dmitri will make sure your recently habited rooms are made ready for you.”

Instants after his name was mentioned, Dmitri appeared as if summoned. His ability to lurk and appear when needed was eerie.

“That was where I left them,” he grumbled, shooting them each a disapproving look. There was nothing worse to Dmitri than handled problems who insisted on continuing to be problematic.

“Then you know your way out,” said Athena pointedly. Even Matias knew better than to argue.

“Wait,” yelped Rosaliy. As much as she wanted Matias to go, she needed Drake to stay, but of course she was not going to say that in front of this audience. “A—Athena,” she recovered. “Drake had an idea to bring back Queen Kat.”

Athena turned her gaze on Drake. “Let’s not go that far,” he mumbled sheepishly.

“Sun-fueled magic,” Rosaliy said for him. “Can Arlana bring them home in the morning?”

Athena nodded approvingly. “I had already made plans with her to return our Baysellian guests.” She nodded at Drake and Matias. “I believe the star realm is within her power…perhaps with some assistance.” Athena and her far away look said she was already plotting.

“But I need Drake,” Rosaliy blurted out. “To find the children,” she added hastily. “Who are still missing.”

Athena brushed this off. “In the morning.”

Chandra burst in with an armful of suspicious containers loaded on a tray. “I have every home remedy the kitchen staff has ever heard of,” Chandra was saying. “Surely one of these will work, poor dear.” Chandra patted Rosaliy on the cheek and deposited the tray on Rosaliy’s table.

“Perhaps not all at once,” mused Athena, taking a vial of green ooze off the tray, examining it dubiously, and wrapping her hand around the glass tube. “And perhaps I should examine these first. Is this one made with poison ivy extract?”

Chandra answered with a one shoulder shrug. “Silna claims toxins are needed to rid the body of toxins…or something.”

Oh, horrors.

Chandra grabbed a glass full of gloppy, gray liquid. “Rock paste always cured what ailed me when I was a pipsqueak,” she insisted. “Mixed it myself.”

“That’s so sweet, Chandra,” Rosaliy mumbled. She doubted powdered rock had ever cured anyone. She would avoid the glass of liquid chalk.

During Chandra’s interlude, Dmitri had intimidated Drake and Matias out of the room with crossed arms and an icy glare. He made to follow them when Chandra physically intercepted him. “By the way,” she said hurriedly once she had thrown herself in his path. “Daniella’s room is uninhabitable.”

He grumbled something under his breath. “Set something up on this hallway for now.”

“Me? But, I—”

She was silenced with a stony glare.

“I’ll get right on that,” Chandra chirped on her way out.

Rosaliy had not noticed Daniella reenter the room, but she was quietly occupying a corner. The woman’s eyes focused in on Dmitri. “Everyone who works in this palace answers to you, yes?” she said to him.

“I’d like to believe so,” Dmitri grunted back. Knowing him, he was annoyed to find himself yet again motionless when everything had to be done. Rosaliy was sympathetic.

“May I speak with you?” Daniella asked.

His dark eyebrows rose, turning his stony face into a stone that had been mildly surprised. “You’re asking permission?”

“It will be short-lived,” promised Rosaliy. “Just enjoy it.”

“Not in here,” Athena decided, scooping them out of the room. “For purely selfish reasons,” she insisted to Rosaliy, who looked like she might object. Athena squeezed Rosaliy’s hand softly; her gray eyes warm for the first time. “I need you to be well and rested for whatever is to come.”

Rosaliy very much wanted to hear what Daniella was going to ask, and she even more wanted to talk to Drake to make sure he did not disappear before she could really talk to him. And she wanted to talk to Arlana about launching a new search for those kids.

“The island!” Rosaliy exclaimed, almost jumping out of bed again. “There’s an island sitting in the middle of the Glade. What happened to the divination stone?”

“Rosaliy,” Athena admonished her. “Sleep or I will have you tied to your bed.”

Since the last thing Rosaliy needed was guards set at her door to enforce rest, she decided to lie down to pacify the strained Sorceress. She would even close her eyes, she decided, listening for the click of her door as Athena left. Her magical senses were fuzzy and floating and fading in and out, but she could tell the Sorceress was waiting by the door, making sure she stayed inside. Rosaliy could use the rest anyway. Just a minute, though. She had too much to do to rest longer than that.

Her traitorous body was asleep and dreaming about her long list of tasks to accomplish within seconds.