“We rode together today.” It was true and I was still coming down from the high of the day, the first time we spent a significant amount of time with each other. Even with the surrounding marchers and riders on the public road, the shared understanding of our mutual feelings made us isolated.
“I’d like it to be solely the two of us. There’s a place I know near here.”
“Are you asking me on a date?”
“Tomorrow’s date? The twelfth.”
“No, a date. Something you do alone with someone you like.”
Draw’s cheeks flushed, the pale pink standing starkly on his alabaster skin, and I pretended not to understand what he was thinking.
“Like go to dinner together or hang out,” I continued. “You spend time together just for the sake of being with the other person. You asking me to ride alone with you tomorrow is like asking me out on a date.”
He picked up his sword. “A date, then. Yes, that’s what I want.”
“Okay, I accept.”
“Dottie?” a woman called behind me, her voice slightly stuffy.
It was Meg. I saw immediately she had been crying. Her bronze skin was ruddy and her eyes were tinged red.
“I was just leaving, Lady Margaret,” Draw said, obviously aware Meg wanted privacy. He met my eye as he took my sword and wrapped both up.
I went to Meg. She was shorter than me and, at that moment, frail. “What’s going on?” I noticed she had her foraging basket still on her arm, as if she had just returned from the woods. It was full of clumps of green, pale orange flowers, and what looked like two oblong vegetables.
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” She glanced at Draw’s retreating figure. “I was hoping we could talk.”
“Of course.”
Meg was usually so placid, it concerned me that she was upset. I’d gotten to know her a little bit in the Maidens’ Chamber and we had ridden together twice on the roads, talking mostly about local plants, her dismounting from time to time to harvest from the forest’s edge. Once camp was set though, Meg was busy combing the surrounding forests with the other foragers. I typically didn’t see her again until the next day.
“Maybe we could sit by the fire?”
Dinner had already been served, and the sun was slipping over the horizon. The air around us was graying rapidly. The sweat on my skin was not only cooling but going cold. A fire sounded perfect.
We found one of the many campfires nearby. Two men sat on the far side, talking, their voices obscured by the general noise of the host as people tidied post-dinner, tended the horses, and chattered about the day.
“What’s going on?” Though I was sorry she was upset, I was pleased to be sought out. This kind of thing never happened to me in real life. I wasn’t exactly the sort of person others looked to for advice. I only hoped Meg didn’t need a magical solution.
“You know my fella, Westly? Well”—her voice was grainy as she spoke and she cleared her throat—“his squad has been directed by the queen to scout ahead. They depart in the morning.”
“Don’t we have scouts ahead on the road already?”
“Yes, but we haven’t received word back.” Meg’s lips pressed together as she worked up the nerve to say her worry aloud. “What if whatever happened to them happens to Westly’s squad?”
Meg’s black hair was pulled back in twin braids, and she looked incredibly young in that moment, urgency in her eyes. She had always seemed more grown-up, secure in her love for Westly, a quiet, confident contrast to some of the more boisterous of the court like Lu. Since I first met her, Meg had always seemed less like a character and more just a person living her life in Landsome.
I racked my memory of the books for any recollection of a squad going missing. I hated to admit it to myself, but even if they had, it would be incredibly minor to the plot of defeating the Dark Mage Amédée—the hardship of a few soldiers was not something the ghostwriter would have written about.
Oh.
Ohh.
Despite Meg’s concerns, I smiled. I finally realized what was going on. Their plightdidmake the books.
“Do you remember Lady Issa was taken by the Dark Mage’s apprentice?” It was a dumb question, everyone knew that.
Meg was polite though. She nodded.
