“After you,” he said, gesturing toward the wall of bright, white light that marked where the Blight began.
Florian stepped ahead of them, looking into the blank white expanse with a tense expression.
“I hate this,” he muttered under his breath, then stepped forward.
Heat instantly prickled at his skin, making him shudder. The dragon kingdom had been quite temperate, if humid—every trace of that humidity was gone now, though, and the air was dry and hot in his nostrils. Kade stepped through behind him, silently taking his place at Florian’s side. Koji followed a moment later, a startled cry escaping him as he became visible in the bright light.
“Wow,” he said, rubbing his arms and looking around. “You’re sure the shroud is working?”
“Oh, yes,” Florian replied darkly, remembering how quickly Kade’s skin had burned in the few seconds the unfiltered light of the Blight had touched him through the ripped cloth of their shelter during their first trip into the Blight. “Without it, we’d be dying right now.”
Koji bit his lip, glancing away to scan the horizon. The land here was hilly, much less flat than the parts of the Blight that Florian and Kade had traversed before. There was no hint of plant life, only dust and stone. The rocks here seemed darker, though: more grayish in tone compared to the Blight’s landscape near the Winter Court, where everything had a reddish clay hue.
“No Blight monsters, at least,” Kade said, scanning the horizon as well. One hand had settled on the pommel of his sword, a familiar stance despite the month or so that had passed since their last trip into the Blight. “For now.”
“You keep an eye out,” Florian said. “I’ll try to speed us up. Koji, can you be navigator? The map should be alright to bring out. The shroud should work on it.”
“Yes,” Koji replied quickly, though his voice was faint. He was turning in a slow circle as he looked around, answering more out of instinct than any real understanding of what Florian had asked him. He couldn’t blame him, though—the Blight had been morbidly fascinating to him, too, during his first trip.
That hadn’t been so long ago, now that he thought of it. He was becoming jaded so quickly.
“Let’s go,” Kade said sharply, and this seemed to snap Koji from his thoughts. He nodded, and the three of them set out, heading further into the Blight.
The first hour of their trip passed in silence, but after that, Koji seemed to return to his usual chatty self. He went on a bit more about how surprised he was that they could traverse the Blight like this at all, until finally Florian asked him,
“How did you think your dad made it to the hag, then?”
Koji paused, looking at him with obvious confusion. “My dad? What do you mean?”
“He went with all the other leaders to speak to the hag, like... thirty years ago or something,” Florian said. “My dad asked them all to come. That’s where...” He trailed off, unsure of how to explain. It was where they had received what Jerah thought was a prophecy about Florian, but what Elodie had made clear was only a prediction—something that might be fulfilled, but could just as easily come to nothing.
Finally, he settled on, “Elodie, the witch, asked them all to come so she could tell them how she thought they could end the Blight.”
Koji stopped, frowning. Florian stopped too, looking askance at him. Kade went on for a few more steps before pausing to look back at them as well.
“My father left the dragon kingdom,” Koji repeated, the disbelief obvious in his voice. “And heard a hag tell him how she thought they could end the Blight? Really?”
“This would have been before any of us were born,” Florian added quickly. But this did not seem to assuage Koji, who let out a bark of a laugh before turning away, running a hand through his hair.
Florian glanced at Kade, whose expression was unreadable beneath his sun goggles. But he had the distinct impression Kade was also remembering their conversation about Koji’s sheltered life, and Florian wondered just how clueless the other man really was—or, perhaps, how in the dark Tetsuo had kept him and all the dragon shifters.
“Wow,” Koji finally said softly, shaking his head as he spoke. “All this time, and he... She told him how they could help, and he still wouldn’t? What did she say? Do you know?”
Florian glanced nervously between Koji and Kade again, but Kade was looking at him with the same neutral expression—whatever he wanted Koji to know would be up to him. But he didn’t want to be like Tetsuo, leaving him in the dark, especially now that he was involved in what they were doing.
“She basically told them that a descendant of Jerah’s would be a Changeling and would be... Well, I guess the most likely to succeed at trying to gather the Arrows and get rid of the Blight,” Florian said. “To be honest, um, my dad thought it was, like, a prophecy or something. But when we talked to her—the witch—she said that it was just a prediction, one version of the future that she saw and wanted to give the best chance of happening.”
“You talked to the hag?” Koji blurted, sounding more surprised at that than anything else Florian had said. “Really?”
Florian laughed, relieved that of all the things he could’ve latched on to, it was the strange fear of hags everyone in the Veil seemed to have. “Yeah, we did. She was nice, actually. Her house was pretty hard to get to, though. Living in the Blight and all.”
To his surprise, Koji laughed, still shaking his head.
“This is all unbelievable,” he said. “I didn’t know about any of this. He talks about the Blight as if it’s just... something we have to work around, and not something that can be fixed. But he knew it could be fixed all along and didn’t even try to help. I know he was mostly concerned with the dragon kingdom’s survival, but...”
Much as Florian agreed with him, the words were making him feel strangely guilty. The last thing he wanted was to make Koji’s relationship with his father worse.
“Well, it wouldn’t be that easy,” he said quickly. “And, you know, there’s no guarantee it will work, regardless of what the witch said. If he’s old enough to remember when the Blight got even worse, when another group tried to end it... Maybe that’s why he didn’t want to get involved.”
