“They’re here! They have the Scepters!”

  “Don’t let them speak! She can control you with Wisps the same way she’s controlling the king and queen!”

  The Wisp Seekers only touched down in Woadrok for a few minutes before a group of guards began to swarm them, shouting accusations at them and refusing to listen to anything they had to say.

  “We aren’t under any sort of control,” King Henry insisted. The guards seemed to take this as more evidence that he was.

  “Please, just listen to us!” Anna begged. One of the guards loosed an arrow, which whizzed past the dragon’s head. Jarnvaror roared down at them.

  “Easy, Jarn,” Peter said. “I don’t think they know what’s going on any better than us.”

  “It’s no use,” Andrew said. “We need to get out of here.”

  So, with his passengers rooted firmly back on his back, Jarnvaror leapt back into the sky, flying north away from the capital.

  “I don’t get it,” King Henry said. He was holding back tears of frustration as he looked back at the castle he’d grown up in. “Why won’t they listen to us?”

  “Daniel has probably already gotten messages out to all of the cities and major lords calling us fugitives,” Andrew said. “I bet he had at least one accomplice in the palace for magical communication who he protected from Sol’s investigation.”

  “But we’re not fugitives!” the king snapped.

  “I think we are, actually,” Peter said.

  “Does this mean nowhere in Grealand is safe for us anymore?” Queen Emily asked.

  “Well, I doubt he could communicate magically with every city lord,” Andrew said. “But we don’t know who has the means to do that and who doesn’t.”

  “Uncle Arden would take us in while we sort this out,” Henry said.

  “He’d probably be branded a rebel if we went to him,” Andrew said. “And we still don’t know what happened to Jeremy and Hannah after we left Borac. They could be hostages. The Green Vale is probably a bad idea.”

  “What about going home?” Peter suggested.

  “The whole reason we left was to stop more problems from getting there,” Andrew said. “They’re not equipped to defend against the Grealish army.”

  “We also need to be somewhere we can find out what’s going on,” Anna said. “It sounded like Daniel was using Lady Thalia to provoke the other nations. I wouldn’t be surprised if a war is brewing.”

  “Ah. Yeah, we never hear anything in the Iron Valley,” Peter said. “Probably wouldn’t be the best place to go for that, either.”

  “Well we can’t just leave!” the king insisted. “We have to do something.”

  “It’s our responsibility,” Queen Emily agreed.

  “We aren’t just leaving,” Anna said.

  “But if Daniel’s locked the capitol off to us, we’ll need to find somewhere to lay low while we get our bearings,” Andrew said.

  “I don’t understand why he’s doing this,” Henry muttered, not for the first time since they’d fled Borac.

  It had only been a few days since the attack in the arena. The first day, the group had hardly spoken to one another. Anna hadn’t bothered to conjure her shield against the wind while they flew, and they flew aimlessly into the night. In the morning, the royal twins had suggested they go to Woadrok, explain to the officials there that something strange had happened, and wait until the party from Borac returned to sort things out. The Wisp Seekers agreed to this, mostly because they weren’t sure what other options they’d had.

  Every moment of conversation since then involved someone trying to think of what reason Daniel could have for working with, or maybe being a leader of the Wisp Stealers. Perhaps he was trying to usurp the throne? But he wasn’t in line for the throne. The king and queen explained that the throne of Grealand, as established by their ancestor Horace Greal, the royals must represent both of the races he’d united. That was why he’d married an Elf, and why all his descendants were Half Elves.

  Andrew suggested the idea that he might have been paid off. Anna and the royals both had dismissed this idea. “I felt his emotions, remember,” Anna had said. “He didn’t seem like he was motivated by greed.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t be!” Emily had added. “Perhaps he and Sheil were being threatened?”

  “I don’t think so,” Anna had told her. “And for the same reason. His motivation was more personal than that.”

  They’d talked themselves in circles on the way to Woardok, only to find themselves fleeing almost as soon as they’d touched down. Anna could only maintain the barrier against the wind for so long, and soon, they were spending the flight without talking, the sound of the wind roaring all around them.

  Having found no refuge in the city, they flew west, closer to the mountains and made camp near the Jet River. A settlement was close by, though the group decided it was better not to go into it yet. This, Anna saw, revealed a new problem that she hadn’t considered before.

  “We have to sleep outside again?” Henry complained. “Surely the inn would take us. It’s not like they’ve stabbed us in the back, too.”

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  Anna exchanged a glance with Andrew. He gestured for her to answer the king’s concern. “Well,” she said, “Even if they have an in,” she glanced back over her shoulder at the town, “and I doubt they do – it’s a very small town – we probably couldn’t afford to stay there.”

  “Can’t afford to?” the King said. “I thought we paid you better than that.”

  “Oh, the pay was fine, we just didn’t carry it all around with us everywhere,” Peter said.

  “And we need to conserve what we’ve got left for more important things, like supplies,” Andrew added.

  “I see. Well, I’m sure my word will good enough for the people of such a small town,” the king said.

  Anna saw Andrew shake his head at this. The queen seemed to notice, but not her brother. Anna decided to respond in a different way, though. “I don’t think it’s safe for either of you to use your names in town,” Anna said.

  “Why not?” the king demanded.

  “Daniel will be looking for you,” Anna explained. “Those men in the arena targeted you, right? Well, if he’s able to track where you’ve been by using your names like that, then he’ll be able to do it again. And it will be easy for him to make it look like an accident.”

  “Maybe he’s not after us,” the king said.

  Anna could only shrug at that.

  “Anna’s right,” Andrew joined in. “Until we hear more about what’s going on, it’s too dangerous for any of us to reveal ourselves.”

  “Could we at least go there to get some food?” the king asked. “The rations are so bland.” Emily didn’t say anything, but she nodded in a way that Anna took to imply agreement.

  Anna exchanged another glance with Andrew at that. During their first night, the king, at least, had seemed quite excited to try rations, and even his sister had seemed to view it as a welcome distraction from thoughts about Daniel. Over the second day, he’d seemed disappointed that they were still having it but had said nothing. Anna knew the pair wasn’t used to traveling rough. She wasn’t sure how to tell them that this was all they had while on the road, unless Andrew took a day to catch fresh meat.

  Still, restocking their other food supplies was a reasonable suggestion. Andrew relented, though he insisted everyone else stay at the camp while he went into town. He was gone for a little less than two hours. During this time, Peter napped, leaning into Jarnvaror’s neck, while the twins began muttering about Daniel again, trying to figure out why he might have sided with the Wisp Stealers.

  Anna, listening to them, found she learned a good deal about Daniel. She asked questions, hoping to find out more. She’d known he was their cousin. Now she learned what the exact relation was. About two generations back, the younger sister of one of the Scepters, herself fifth in line for the phoenix, had decided to marry a knight of the palace. Their child was Daniel.

  Anna asked about how Daniel had grown up. The twins were too young to remember any details. The only thing they remembered that was remarkable was how he’d been recognized for his intellect fairly young and had started being groomed for his position as Chancelor before their father’s death. He’d demonstrated himself to be a master at organizing other people.

  Anna asked about other things. Both his mundane likes and dislikes, along with the sort of things he enjoyed or hated the most. The twins seemed to see where she was going with this and started listing every time they’d seen him happy or upset about something.

  “I think the angriest I ever saw him was when he heard a stable master had beaten the stable boy in punishment for something,” Emily said. “He told us it was nothing for us to worry about, but he looked furious.”

  The king nodded in agreement. “There was one week where he was gloomy every day,” he added. “I just though it was funny at the time. But now.. I wonder if it had to do with all of this.”

  “Oh, I remember that,” Emily said and Anna noticed that she blushed as she was talking. “I asked if he was okay. He mentioned a letter from a Lady before telling me not to worry about it again.”

  “What?” the king asked. “I didn’t think he had time for relationships, the way he was always working. It’s hard to remember him being anything other than tired.”

  “Did he ever relax?” Anna asked.

  “Well… he stopped being formal around us,” Henry said. “At least, when mother wasn’t around.”

  “He normally talked her down from things,” Emily said. “That’s part of why it was so surprising the other day.”

  Anna nodded. She tried fitting all these details in with what she knew about Daniel. They fit nicely with the picture she’d had before of a normal young noble working to support his country and young family members by managing the staff and most of the nation’s paperwork. But then, he’d had an uncanny ability to control his expressions. She’d been totally fooled by everything up until the moment she’d felt his feelings through the Wisps. Then there was that horrible core of resentment he shared with Sheil. Anna doubted they could understand Daniel or any of the actions he took without understanding that.

  But for that, they needed to meet someone who knew the either of the pair better than Henry and Emily did.

  Andrew returned around that time, bringing a pack full of food preserved for their journey. Peter woke up and volunteered to cook dinner for everyone while Andrew sat down and listened to Anna’s recap of the discussion. Once the meal was finished and the pair had gone to sleep, she expressed her reservations to him in an undertone while Henry and Emily enjoyed the comparatively fresher food. He agreed with her.

  “I don’t have any idea who would know that about him though. Well,” he added, glancing to the southeast, toward both Woadrok and Borac, “I don’t know anyone who’d let us ask, at least.”

  “Do you think Sol believed us?” Anna asked.

  Andrew shook his head. “Couldn’t tell you,” he said. “Regardless, our focus, I think, should be on finding a safe place for the pair of them while we figure out what’s going on.”

  “We went over that, too,” Anna said. “Leaving the country is dangerous in the best of times, and we have no idea how Borac has affected things. And inside the country, no one can stop Daniel if he has Lady Thalia under his control. Your family are probably the only people who would keep us secret from them, and they might be the first place that he looks.”

  Andrew’s face darkened at that and he stroked his chin, thinking.

  Then Peter looked over his shoulder at Anna. “What about your family, then?” he asked. The others all stared at him. He looked around at them. “What?”

  “That may not be a bad idea,” Andrew said. He looked at Anna. “You’d know better, of course.”

  “I… really?”

  “Well, the Dwarves generally keep to themselves,” Andrew said. “They’re like a nation within a nation, right? They’re on good terms with Grealand, and they don’t care for most foreign affairs, so long as they can work their trades. That’s most of what we’re taught about them. Is it accurate?”

  Anna nodded. “That’s mostly how things work,” Anna agreed. Then she gestured to the twins behind her. “But they’re royals. My father is just a merchant. He travels a lot. He’d be good to them, but even if they’re safe, they wouldn’t be comfortable. And I doubt they’d be safe if they’re suddenly seen in all the towns inside the mountains.”

  Andrew nodded, at that. He looked between Peter and Anna. “What about the Dwarven king?” he asked.

  “Lord Hogarth is a duke, technically,” Anna said.

  Andrew waved his hand. “But he’s independent of Grealand. He has no obligation to follow orders even if Daniel finds out they’re with him,” he said, gesturing to the sleeping twins. “We could go to him and explain what’s happened. Everything. He may be willing to take them in.”

  Anna considered this. She’d never met the lord of the Dwarves herself, but her father seemed to like him. She considered in silence for a few minutes, turning Andrew’s reasons over in her mind. Then she clutched her bracelet, hoping Halcyon would be able to give her some guidance. The Wisp reacted, letting her feel his presence. His calm. Finally she looked back at Andrew.

  “Alright,” she said. “Let’s take them to Lord Hogarth.”