The silence stretched on for a beat too long when Delilah missed her line.
“You’re right,” Fitz said, which was wrong. “The family tree is muddled enough. A quest is our best way forward.”
Maximus glowered and twisted something in his fists. I caught a glimpse of metal but didn’t understand the shape of it.
I settled back in my chair, observing the scene carefully. Something had happened, but I couldn’t tell what.At least I’m not back in my bedroom.I tried to remember what I’d been doing before everything started to repeat, but the same fog obscured those moments.
“What kind of quest should we go on?” Delilah asked. It felt like she had stolen someone else’s line to make up for missing her own.
“We have to defeat a Great and Terrible evil.” I’d spoken out of habit, but as soon as I said the words, I realized I might have found the solution for our problems. What was more ‘great and terrible’ than messing with someone’s head? Making them live the same things over and over again? It wasn’t torture, yet, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be eventually. After months, after years, after a lifetime of never seeing what came next.
“But the Desolated Lands don’thaveany great and terrible evils,” Angelica said. “That is the point of the Kingdom Defense Spell and the reason we’re here!”
Are you sure?I relaxed back into my chair, thinking through the problem. How did you hunt prey that made you forget it existed?
“You’ll have to travel outside of the Desolated Lands.”
It’d been so long since he’d spoken, I’d almost forgotten the soft, measured sound of Wilde’s voice. I stared at him, trying to read his expression. He gazed placidly at a completely uninteresting point somewhere vaguely in the middle of the room.
The others quieted, retreating to their own minds to consider his words. Fitz shifted nervously in his seat, like he wanted to protest but didn’t want anyone to know he was scared. Maximus glared at Wilde, like he hated him for being the one to suggest something we all knew was inevitable. Delilah nodded encouragingly at Wilde, waving for him to continue, but he stayed silent.
Angelica broke the silence. “Where should we go?”
With a question to answer, Fitz leapt from his seat and started gathering up the books scattered about the room. “I’ve been doing a lot of research lately, collecting every pamphlet and book on quests I could find.” He paused, brow furrowing as if he’d said something wrong. After a moment, he shook his head and plowed on, “I bet we can find something useful in here. A monster to slay, an evil mage to defeat—”
“A curse to break,” Delilah and I said at the same time.
She whipped her head around to look at me, brown eyes wide. “How did you …”
Know what you were going to say?It’d been a coincidence this time, a line in neither of our scripts. The fact she’d also immediately thought of a curse solidified my suspicions.
Someone had cursed us, and I needed to find out who.
Chapter Seventeen: Wilde
After Midnight
A Pleasant Guest Suite in an Unfortunate Castle
Exhausted
“I forgot howannoyingFitz is,” Delilah groaned as we stumbled into our assigned suite.
I would be staying with Delilah and Kit, while Trey and his fathers were across the hall. I looked over my shoulder at the closed door, wishing I was his guest instead of hers.
No one was in the shared space between bedrooms. Either Kit had already gone to bed, or they’d assumed we would all meet in the other room first.
Delilah flopped facedown onto the couch and mumbled something into the cushions.
“I can’t hear you.”
She turned just enough to free her mouth and demanded, “How did you ever seduce someone so heartless?”
“I did notseducehim,” I snapped, wrapping my arms around myself. The more she said it, the more I wondered if it was true. Seduction wasn’t evil on its own, though plenty of evil entities included it in their skillset. But I didn’t want anyone except for Treasure, even if it was only to use them for my own means.
“Are you sure? Because he still seems a bit in love with you. Every time he mentioned hisresearch, he got this faraway look in his eyes, like he missed someone.”
“We are not discussing this.” To drive home the point, I teleported to the lair, leaving her behind to enjoy Misfortune’s hospitality.
