“I can’t say what Corian hasn’t told you.” Mattie shrugged. “But it seems you’ve already got that figured out. Though I do have to ask, why wouldn’t that walking furball tell you any of this? It’s not exactly a secret, on either side of the Border.”
“Yeah, I gathered that much.” Cheyenne shook her head with a wry chuckle. “He told me he’d made a promise not to tell me who L’zar was—or is, I guess—in Ambar’ogúl before I completed the trials. And a promise not to go into politics or talk about the Crown, either.”
Mattie squinted. “Are those two promises, or just one?”
“Does it matter?”
They smirked at each other. “Not in the slightest.”
“It drove me nuts at first.” The halfling ran a hand through her black hair and shrugged. “But I know about making promises and what it means to keep them. Or break them. I’ve been putting together the pieces on my own.”
“And let me say, you’re doing a damn fine job of it so far.”
“Well, I’ll be doing a lot better when I pass the trials and figure out how to keep those idiot bull’s-head loyalists from popping out at me everywhere I go and blowing up my stuff.”
The Nightstalker woman cleared her throat. “I heard ‘blowing up your stuff.’ Not another euphemism?”
“Nope. That’s how I got the Panamera.”
Mattie threw her head back for one of her belly laughs. “I’d love a sit-down with your insurance agent.”
“My insurance didn’t get me a Porsche after my Ford was bombed by an O’gúl loyalist, so…”
“Right. And you have other ways of grabbing yourself a brand new Porsche.”
“Sounds about right.” Cheyenne playfully rolled her eyes and glanced out the window.
“Look at that.” Mattie nodded at Persh’al, Corian, and the goblins—all of them with human illusion charms but unmistakable just the same—stepping out of the convenience store with plastic bags in hand. “Just in time, I guess. I have one more question for you, Cheyenne.”
The halfling turned and met her friend’s gaze. “Yeah.”
“How did Corian react when you told him you knew me?”
Cheyenne couldn’t hold back a laugh of surprise. “I asked him if he’d heard the name Maleshi. That’s all I had. And he, uh… Well, he might’ve lost it a little. Told me not to throw that name around, and it had nothing to do with him training me or whatever.”
“Fair enough.”
“We dropped it until I showed him your spellbook.”
Mattie coughed and shot a wary glance out the windshield as the rest of their group approached the SUV. “You showed him?”
The halfling grinned. “Believe it or not, Mattie, I found one Nightstalker who was more than happy to tell me about the drow legacy box, train me with it, and teach me how to cast new spells. Admittedly, you’re a lot easier to get along with.”
“Ha. I’m also a lot harder to punch in the face.”
“I’m starting to pick up on that.”
Mattie shrugged and opened the door so they could get out for the other magicals joining them. “Maybe I got a little sloppy just handing out the spellbook without any warnings. Never occurred to me who else might see it. Just out of practice.”
Cheyenne hopped out after Mattie and leaned against the side of the car as Persh’al opened the driver’s side door.
The Nightstalker woman leaned toward the drow halfling and muttered, “Wait ‘til you see me in action.” With a wink, she opened the front passenger side door and slipped into it before Corian rounded the front of the car.
He glanced through the passenger window, then raised an eyebrow at Cheyenne. “You two have a nice chat?”
“Yeah. I think we’re all caught up now.” She pulled the lever to bend the middle seat forward and stepped aside for the goblins. He won’t ask. As long as he’s not the one telling me, he’s not breaking his promise.
“You guys gonna stand there all day while a portal explodes, or you gonna get in the car?” Byrd thumped back against the back seat and chuckled. “Next time I get out of this car, I’m not getting back in.”
“Oh, so you’re gonna walk back, then?” Lumil snorted and strapped on her seatbelt. “’Cause no one’s opening a portal for you to jump on home when we’re done.”
“Shit.”
Cheyenne lifted the back of the seat again and slid all the way over to sit behind Persh’al. Watching her with narrowed eyes, Corian got in last and closed the door. “Let’s go.”
* * *
When they pulled off at the same section of dirt road of Green Ridge State Forest in Maryland, Persh’al grunted and peered into the woods on the other side. “Here’s to not having a repeat battle, huh?”
“Even if we did, it’s a first for me.” Mattie opened her door and swiftly got out of the passenger seat. As soon as the others had filed out of the SUV, Corian nodded across the road, and they took off in renewed silence for their half-mile hike through the thick woods.
After about five minutes, Cheyenne paused. “Wait.”
The entire party stopped where they were and turned to her, waiting for her to explain the command. At least I don’t have to fight for their attention. The halfling pushed down a little squirm of discomfort under so many gazes and focused on what had made her stop. “Something’s different.”
Corian raised his eyebrows and gazed around the forest. “Like what?”
Cheyenne closed her eyes and forced her breath into a calm, slow rhythm. Heart of Midnight has nothing on drow hearing. “Voices,” she muttered. “Maybe a dozen? Hard to tell from here, but we’re not alone.”
“Man, I love watching drow do their thing.” Byrd smirked and eyed the halfling. “Miss having one around, too.”
“Go dark,” Corian muttered. “If a dozen people are out there making that much noise, they’re not watching as closely as they should be.”
A round of spells circled the
