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“Zen, I have to go back there,” Mirielle told me, and again, I started to shake my head, but she put her hands on my face to stop me.
“Endora, can you leave us, please?”
Without a word, the enchantress disappeared in her customary cloud of smoke, and I was left staring into Mirielle’s vivid cerulean eyes, her earnestness worrying me. Our suite remained silent for a moment as her hands clung to my face, her eyes searching my face as if she was looking for the words to say.
“Why don’t you want me to do this, Zen? What are you afraid of?”
“I don’t want you leaving the castle,” I answered bluntly.
“No one needs to know we’re leaving,” she told me. “It can be between the three of us.”
I snorted. “We’re not going without security.”
“The more that know, the bigger the risk of others finding out,” she insisted, and I realized she had a valid point.
No matter how much I vetted my staff, I could never fully trust them.
But will I ever trust Mirielle one hundred percent?
“No,” I said again. “The matter is settled. You’re not leaving here. Not now. Whatever this quest is, it can wait a while longer.”
“What if it can’t, Zen? What if it’s the missing piece that will get Agnan and the Order out of our lives forever?”
She was making all the right points, but I still wasn’t sold.
“I’m sorry, Miri, but the answer is still no. I won’t bend on this. Let’s go to bed. I have to meet with the Council of Ministers in the morning. We have a big budget meeting.”
I took her hands from my face and undressed as she released a heavy sigh. Guilt sliced through me as I realized that I was, in part, keeping her prisoner here, but it was for her own good.
It was my duty to protect her and the kingdom, and I couldn’t do that if we were running amok in the enchanted forest, looking for gods only knew what.
* * *
I couldn’t sleep now,the conversation keeping me up well after Mirielle had succumbed to sleep. Hers was fitful, keeping her tossing and turning, making me wonder what it was she was dreaming about.
Ensuring I didn’t wake her, I left our wing and made my way to Endora again.
“I had a feeling you’d come,” the enchantress said dryly, paint dripping from her brush as she pivoted toward the easel on which she’d been working.
As always, I never quite understood what it was she was painting, the all-black canvas splashed with red and blue. I didn’t ask, either.
“What did you see?” I asked, getting right to the point. “Inside Mirielle’s head?”
Endora placed the brush down on the easel and wiped her hands, removing her outer apron to hang on the back of her chair. She gestured at the painting. “Something like that.”
My eyebrows rose. “Are you trying to be enigmatic?”
A smirk crossed over her face. “No. But that’s how these probes work. They’re not so much… images as they are impressions. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t seen them.”
“Try,” I insisted, taking a seat on her worn sofa. I eyed it with a head shake.
“Don’t even start about my furniture, Zen. If I wanted new things, I would order them online like anyone else,” she muttered.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Good.”
She took a seat across from me in an ancient, squeaking rocking chair and crossed her legs. Her body began to sway, the groaning of the chair wearing on my nerves slightly.
