It’s the truth. She has nothing to hide or to be sorry about. “They took her because they knew I’d follow her back here.”
“Taken? She was supposed to be safe in your realm.” Hadrain’s gaze wanders the room and stalls on Bodog. The little guy ducks into his cowl and shuffles backward. Kera’s father storms over to the suddenly whimpering dwarf. “Was it you?” he demands. “You stole her when she was a child. Did you do it again?”
Bodog shifts from pale to dark, trying to blend in with the color of the paneled walls, and I realize I don’t know him at all. “You were in prison because you stole a child?”
Lucinda stills. Her pink tongue darts out, like she’s licking cream from her lips. “Interesting.”
All this time he led me to believe he was unjustly imprisoned, that he was being persecuted for being different, when in fact he’s no better than a criminal.
Bodog knocks into the wall and curls against it, shoving the walking stick out as if it has the power to keep him safe. “I only wished to protect her.”
Hadrain grabs the stick. “Do not lie to me.”
The wood shifts in Hadrain’s hands. It creaks and moans until a familiar face appears in the grain. “He tells the truth, my friend.”
I know that crackly, dry voice. Still, I can’t believe it.
“Faldon?” Hadrain shoves the stick as far from him as his arms will allow. “What trick is this?”
“No deceit,” my renegade grandfather assures him. “Although at the time he didn’t know it, Dylan saved my soul by trapping my spirit in a tree. Bodog found me and fashioned this walking stick from one of the limbs so I can keep an eye on the boy.”
“Huh,” Wyatt snorts. “A talking stick.” He looks around. “And nobody else finds that a little weird?”
“Not anymore,” Reece says, though he folds his arms across his chest, clearly not comfortable with the idea of a soul getting trapped in a piece of wood. “Though the irony of Dylan having the ability to control fire and his grandfather being a piece of wood isn’t lost on me.”
Not only did Bodog lie, but he’d been helping my grandfather, the man who was ordered to kill me and nearly succeeded, to spy on me. What more is Bodog not telling me? Though
Signe puts her arm around Hadrain and leads him to a nearby chair. She orders a soldier to fetch the older man a glass of wine. With the stick still gripped in his hands, he sits. He’s aged ten years in less than a minute. He catches Signe’s hand. “No one leaves the Unknown alive.”
“Rubbish.” Faldon’s face recedes into the grain and then reappears facing his friend. “They say that because no one has ever tried.”
“Hey,” Halim calls from his perch next to the map. He swipes his dirty hand across a section and it’s like a flap in a children’s picture book—push it aside and you see a hidden object, but on the map it’s a section of land. “There are a lot of black thingies over here.”
Wyatt rushes to the map and pushes Halim away. “What did you do? Don’t touch the map, kid.”
“I didn’t…well, not much. I only moved a few things around. We needed to cover this side better, because that’s where the Corlians are from…and you know they breed like rabbits. Fresh soldiers are coming.”
Wyatt glares at his brother. “Where’d you get this kid?”
“I’d listen to him.”
“My dad taught me chess.” Halim sneaks back to the map and moves a few more units around. “Which everyone knows is war on a grid. It’s all about position and power. We have great position and a good bit of power. Only an idiot can make a tangle of this.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Untangling this.”
Catching Halim’s hand in action, Wyatt shoves his face into the boy’s face and points at the map. “Does that even remotely resemble a grid? No grid. Don’t play chess with my men. This is not a game. Got that?”
The two start bickering, and I turn to Reece and Leo. “If Halim’s right, and a new wave of soldiers is on its way, we have to get Kera before this thing blows up and we’re trapped here. The griffin’s dead, but there has to be something else big enough to fly us into the Unknown. Any suggestions?”
Silence hovers over us, and then Reece shrugs. “How about flying monkeys?”
Leo frowns and pushes his hair out of his eyes. “Are you serious?”
“I’ve been dragged into a parallel realm where there are talking sticks, a magical prince, and a dwarf who acts like a mood ring. Flying monkeys make perfect sense.”
“Here’s a tip, bro. Unless you’ve seen a flying monkey, don’t offer it as an alternative.” Leo drops his head and rubs the back of his neck. “Flying monkeys. That is messed up.”
Reece’s eyebrows rise. “Sorry, Cranky Crab Pants. Miss your nap time today?”
“We need something bigger,” I say, steering them back to the problem at hand. “I wish we had a mongo flying lizard.”
“Or how about a Pegasus?” Reece offers. “They have griffins, doesn’t it stand to reason they have a flying horse or two?”
Leo’s head pops up. “I’m an idiot.”
I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want me to agree with him, but when I try to get him to expound on what he means, he rushes over to Lucinda, pulls her out of the chair, and points to me. “Don’t go anywhere until I get back.”
One moment they’re there, the next, they’re gone.
“What the…” Reece looks from where they were to me, his mouth hanging ajar.
Oops, forgot Reece has never seen Lucinda before. “Leo’s girlfriend isn’t human.”
Wyatt turns to us. “What was that all about?”
I shrug. “Wish I knew.”
Halim, who’s turned into a pint-sized general in the making, punches Wyatt’s shoulder. “Pay attention. If we move these over here, then we cut off their supply of men.”
“I already thought of that, but we don’t have enough manpower to move there without weakening these defenses.” He points to an area thick with black and green. “We’re leapfrogging over to here, which will cut off their tail. If I do it right, I can keep biting off chunks without them noticing.”
“Are Granel and Jason in on this together?” I ask. It’s the only plausible explanation. “Granel needs a leader and Jason’s ego fits Granel’s type.”
Hadrain pushes away the wine Signe holds out for him. “You know who is behind all this?”
“We came across a dying Corlian. He said their new leader was young, brutal, and reckless, and that he’s not from around here. That description fits Jason. He’s from my realm. I think he’s the one who’s been trying to get me here.” I recall the dream I had, how angry he was, and how insistent he was that I come find him.
“I’ve already bumped into him. He’s got a super-villain complex bigger than Darth Vader’s and it’s directed at me.” I no longer know what’s going on in Jason’s head, but I’m pretty sure for him, our friendship has become another disposable commodity.
Reece runs a hand against his forehead and looks at his brother. “Jason?”
“Carl’s kid, the one into wrestling.”
“That little shit is causing all this? How’d he get involved?”
“Me,” I say, though it irks me to admit it. “I brought him here. This is all my fault.”
The room grows silent. Condemning. I don’t blame them.
Wyatt coughs, breaking the quiet. “I don’t think the two of them are working together. Granel left before we knew about Jason.”
Halim jumps down from the chair he’s standing on. “The Corlian said their new leader was powerful. How did a regular human get magic?”
“Does it really matter?” I snap. I don’t want to say. It’s bad enough I brought Jason here, but to tell them I think I might’ve transferred some of my power into him when I saved his life…well, I’m sure they’d like me even less, if that were possible at this point.
“We humans are amazingly adaptable,” Wyatt says.
“Not that adaptable. Someone’s helping him,” Halim mutters.
Adaptable, yes. Invincible, no. I won’t make the mistake of underestimating Granel again. When he took off,
