Only a dream.
She relaxed back onto her pillow, urging her heart to slow with deep, intentional breaths when the memories of last night slammed intoher.
Stone.
The tea.
Her deepest desires.
No, no, no.
Groaning, she pressed her face into her palms. The tea was meant to give her a clue to find Desmond and she had wasted it dreaming about Stone Odega.
The bottom level of the inn had been shrouded in darkness when they arrived, but in the full morning sun Aesira appreciated the cleverness of the space. The sandstone was bright against the sunlight dripping through the open windows. There were old wooden hubs placed atop metal barrels being used as tables, mismatched chairs stuffed around them filled with people of all sorts. Gears hung from invisible strings from the ceiling, swaying in the small breeze, ringing out a soft clinking sound.
She heard them before she saw them. Stone sat with Birdie, Bee, Nora, and Patch around a small barrel table.
“You really have lost it, haven’t you?” Birdie chided. Aesira managed to find an open chair and pulled it over, settling next to Nora. Stone’s eyes shot to hers briefly before he went back to pointing at a map he had sprawled out on the tabletop.
“I promise I’m just as sane now as I was when you trusted me last.” There wasn’t an ounce of arrogance in his voice, it was as ifhe was reading something already written. Factual. Calm. Aesira tore her eyes away from his face, for more reasons than one, and found on the map where his finger was pointing.
“Ravki?” Four very pointed “shh” sounds were directed her way. She mouthed sorry then glanced back to Stone. “I thought you said the maps were–”
“They are,” Bee said. “Fakes. Or ancient. Or fakeandancient.” She glared at Stone but he missed it because his eyes were on Aesira.
He studied her from brow to lip and she studied him back, not wanting to be the first to break away. Even if all she saw when she looked at him was images from her dream last night and heated moments from the tavern, she didn’t want him to know just how much he affected her.
“I know it’s a risk,” Stone said, finally looking away. “But Soo said the tea never fails, and if that’s true, this is the path we need to take.”
Against her control, Aesira’s stomach plummeted.
He drank the tea with her last night in a moment of solidarity. Only hers betrayed her and his seemed to work. “What about you, Commander? Did the tea give any direction on where to find King Desmond?”
It showed me ruins,” she lied, remembering the note from Desmond’s journal he’d written next to Ravki. “But other than that, no.”
Stone squinted a moment before he rolled up the map. “Likely Ravki as well, it’s rumored to have been destroyed in the first war.”
“By Vargah,” Patch finished for him between bites of his breakfast. “Making us an enemy to any remaining Ravkian.”
“There are no remaining Ravkians.” Again with the sure, factual, tone. Stone reclined in his chair, the rolled map clutched in his hand. He used his other to push his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “The war was a long time ago.Everythingwas destroyed. Ravki would have been no exception. As well as–” He caught himself, his mouth frozen around the word none of them dared to speak aloud.
Dragons.
“The king had maps that shouldn’t exist,” he continued. “Even if they aren’t accurate, he had to have gotten the information from somewhere.” Stone propped his elbows on the table and glanced at each of them, lingering a moment too long when he got to Aesira. “He had notes about a country that hadn't existed long before his time.” He let out a long breath before draining his mug, which only reminded Aesira of how dry her throat was.
“We’ll do another sweep around the Outpost, make sure he isn’t here and if he isn’t, there’s nowhere else he would have headed.” Stone set his mug down, his eyes bouncing between each of them. “We have enoughastrato get us to the Whispering Mountains and back. Enough food provided by the queen. With everything the king had written in his journals, with the maps he kept locked inside them, it only makes sense it was where he was headed.”
“How do you know his notes are true? Wasn’t the king…” Bee’s thoughts died in the air around them. She didn’t need to clarify, because everyone at the table already knew.
Wasn’t the king mad?
The cadre chattered quietly amongst each other, Patch leaning over to whisper to Bee, Bee leaning back to whisper to Birdie. Even Nora joined in, like she was an Odega herself. Leaving Aesira andStone to stare at each other. The corner of his mouth quipped up, a half smile, pulling taut on the scar that spanned the entire left side of his face.
She helped herself to a cup of tea, plopping a cube of sweetener in and watching it dissolve completely before adding another.
“Are you going to have any tea with your sweetener, Commander?”
She picked up a third cube, held Stone’s eye as she dropped it in. “Want some?” She smirked before taking a sip; sweet, just how she liked it.
