“Here,” Tatiana said, and his attention focused back on her. She had reached for a jewelry tray on a dresser near her bed, and from within she lifted up a pendant. It was on a silver chain, and at the end a dark, rough-cut stone dangled. It looked almost black, but when the light from Tatiana’s open window caught it, a hint of dark purple flashed from its gleaming surface. “Jerah said the hag gave each of them these. It shrouded them against the Blight for a time. I don’t think it still works, though.”
She held it out for Florian to take. He grabbed it by the stone, letting the chain fall against his hand as he took it. Looking it over, it seemed quite plain. But as he focused on it, he could faintly sense the thrum of dormant magic beneath its surface, like a distant heartbeat. It didn’t seem like enough for it to actually function, but he thought maybe it could be recharged somehow—if the pendant truly could shroud its wearer, then it would certainly come in handy, but it wasn’t exactly what he had hoped she would find.
“Could be worth using to track down the location,” Tatiana offered as he studied it in silence. “Sometimes finding someplace is easier if you have something from there. So it could help if you’re going to try magical tracking.”
Florian blinked, unaware that was even a possibility; but he supposed with fae magic anything was theoretically possible, if he could phrase it correctly. Maybe it would be helpful, but it wasn’t the kind of help that he had been looking for.
“I’ll take anything that I can get at this point,” Florian said, pocketing the necklace and hoping his disappointment wasn’t too apparent on his face. “Thank you, Tatiana.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “If I find anything else, or think of something before you leave, I’ll let you know.”
Florian was so glad to see Kade at dinner that he didn’t think to ask if he had found anything until long afterward, when they had gone back up to their room. Kade was just emerging from the bath, hair still damp and a towel around his hips.
“So did you find anything after all?” Florian asked, as he sat up from where he had been lounging in bed. The slight grimace that crossed his face was all the answer Florian needed.
“No,” Kade sighed, opening his wardrobe and letting his towel fall to the ground. He had never had any qualms of being naked around Florian even in entirely non-sexual contexts—it was unsettlingly intimate, but he wouldn’t complain either. “I skimmed through as much as I could, but I think you’re right. We found everything he had to say about the hag, and he didn’t say anything about the best way to get there, or what he saw on the way. Seems like he was so frustrated at having to get all the shifter kings together that the actual journey was easy enough to forget about in comparison.”
“Tatiana gave me this,” Florian said, lifting up the pendant from where he had set it on their bedside table so Kade could see it. “She said my dad got it from the hag when he went there. I guess it’s supposed to have its own shroud on it, so they could go home through the Blight. But the magic’s worn out.”
“May I?” Kade asked. He had a pair of shorts in one hand, and with the other he reached for the pendant. Florian handed it to him, watching as the taller man turned the stone over in his hand, and seeing it glint that dark, almost-black purple in the faint twilight that shone in through the window. After a moment Kade passed it back to him.
“Doesn’t seem like much,” he sighed, meeting Florian’s eyes. “I guess we should start planning how we’re going to do this. Or...” He hesitated, glancing away. “I don’t think you’ll like this idea. But we can just skip going to the hag and head for the dragon kingdom to find the next Arrow.”
Florian blinked. The idea of not going to the hag at all had honestly not occurred to him. It had been something that Jerah seemed so certain was necessary, but without him, getting there was going to be much harder. Theycouldjust move on to the next Arrow marked on the map instead; after all, there was no guarantee that the hag knew anything at all about what they wanted to ask her, or if the answers would actually be helpful to them, even if she did know.
But... If the hag had answers, he wanted to know, even if it wouldn’t directly help them. Florian thought of the brief flash he’d seen of the Summer Queen, Soleil, and he wanted more than anything toknow—to know whose memory was in his head, what connection he had to her. He knew that when his curiosity burned the way it did now, it wouldn’t stop until he had the answer.
“No, I still want to go,” Florian replied, and Kade nodded, a slight smile twitching at the corner of his lips.
“I thought you’d say that,” he sighed, and sat down on the bed next to Florian. “If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do. But it’s just going to be more dangerous. We won’t have any idea of what to look for, or what to expect along the way.”
“That’s okay,” Florian said, suddenly feeling full of resolve. “We know enough to figure it out. We can do it.”
Kade laughed indulgently. “If you say so.”
Over the next few days they prepared to set out into the Blight once more, making as much of a plan as they could with what little knowledge they had. While the hag’s home was marked on the map, the circle that marked it encompassed an area that would take days to fully scout. Worse, the map itself was from before the Blight, so they had little idea of what to expect in the wilderness, or how different the landscape might be from what the map described. There was no guarantee that the road marked on the map would still exist in the Blight.
It would be slow going, as it would just be the two of them once again, and Florian was unsure if he would be able to maintain the shroud and speed up their pace as well. Between the two the shroud was, of course, far more important, so they would likely just have to walk. But if Florian couldn’t speed them up, this journey would be the longest that they’d ever been in the Blight all at once.
“Well, at least we’ve got something of an eject button,” Florian sighed, as they were determining how much food they would need to bring. On foot, it would take nearly three weeks to arrive.
“A what?” Kade asked, looking at him blankly. Florian laughed.
“Like an emergency exit,” he said. “In case we run out of food. It would suck having to do it over again, but I could always just poof us back here if shit starts going sideways.”
“Sideways?” Kade asked, frowning.
“I mean if it goes bad.”
“Sideways is bad?”
“Er, no—I guess it’s just a phrase. You know what I mean.”
Kade laughed, shaking his head. “You say such funny things.”
They planned to set out in two days, giving them enough time to pack everything they would need, as well as enjoy a little more rest and relaxation before heading out once more. Florian slept in as late as he could and ate whatever he felt like having, knowing that the next several weeks would be quite unpleasant in comparison.
The day before they would be heading out, Kade asked him,
