“Then steal your own food, Jasper,” Echo said around a mouthful of Gushers. Ingrate.
Before Jasper could fire off a retort, the Ala cleared her throat. “We have much to discuss, and little time to waste on the merits of junk food.” She picked up a notebook from the writing desk that had been one of the few bits of furniture in the library worth salvaging. For as long as Echo had known the Ala, her mind had appeared to be fathomless, full of a seemingly infinite store of knowledge gleaned from a millennium of existence. But now Echo noticed moments when the Ala would trail off mid-sentence. Her onyx eyes would glaze over and, for a few seconds, it would be as if she weren’t there. She always shook it off and claimed it was nothing, but Echo had seen the same lapse in the other Avicen who had fallen under the ku?edra’s enchanted slumber and been awakened by the elixir Ivy concocted. They had returned, but it was as though parts of them were still missing, still trapped in the darkness in which the beast had shrouded them. They were back, but they weren’t quite whole. The Ala had never needed to write things down to remember them before; now she used notes like a crutch, lest she forget during those awful, lost moments.
The Ala ticked off items on the list she’d written, mumbling to herself before looking back up. “Rowan,” she said, “you’ve had quite the journey today.”
Rowan nodded. “That’s one way of putting it,” he replied. “The reports of instability in the in-between we’ve received—people exiting from gateways they never intended to travel to and others getting lost—weren’t just rumors like we’d hoped. I found that out firsthand, and really wish I hadn’t.”
The Ala rubbed the bridge of her nose. “This is the last thing we need right now.”
“But that happens, doesn’t it?” asked Helios, the newest Drakharin stray. “People don’t focus strongly enough on their destination, or they get distracted and get lost.”
Rowan frowned as his gaze moved from the Ala to the Drakharin seated on the ground. He’d grown used to Dorian, to a degree, but Helios seemed to be having little luck thawing Rowan’s icy demeanor. Echo was willing to bet it had to do with Ivy. Although Rowan would never admit it aloud, she knew he felt protective of Ivy, and she had no doubt that the amount of time their white-feathered friend had been spending with a new Drakharin was failing to sit well with Rowan. Nevertheless, Rowan answered Helios’s query. “Rarely. Not as frequently as it’s happening now, and almost never with people experienced with traveling through the in-between, especially if they’re going from one familiar place to another using gateways they know well. And I didn’t mess up.”
A deeply unsettling thought occurred to Echo. “Do you think the in-between acting all wonky is my fault?”
“How in the world could that possibly be your fault?” Rowan asked. “I know you’re the firebird and all”—he said it so casually, as if it were a perfectly normal thing for a human girl to be—“but don’t you think that’s giving yourself a little too much credit?” He said the last bit with a small grin to soften it.
“Echo might be right,” said the Ala.
Echo grimaced. Usually she adored being right. Now was not one of those times. “I was sort of hoping you’d tell me I was insane to even consider it.”
“Everything in this world requires balance,” said the Ala in her most professorial tone. “You disrupted it when you welcomed the firebird into the world. Into yourself.”
“Yeah, but the ku?edra was supposed to be the counterbalance,” Echo said. “I mean, that was the whole point of it, right? The light and the dark, the action and the reaction. It’s physics. Fancy physics. With magic.”
The Ala huffed a soft, joyless laugh. “You and the new Dragon Prince tore holes in the world—”
“Sorry about that.”
“—and it would stand to reason that there would be consequences,” the Ala finished, ignoring Echo’s interruption. “But it’s all theoretical at this point until we’ve had our mages study the phenomena further. I’ll look into it myself when I have a chance.” An unlikely scenario, considering the Ala was the only one holding the huddled masses of Avicen together. Her attention wandered briefly, but she snapped out of it before anyone besides Echo noticed. The Ala glanced down at her notebook and then redirected her gaze to Dorian. “Any word from your contacts within Wyvern’s Keep about the Dragon Prince’s whereabouts?”
“Which one?” Jasper muttered, earning a glare from Dorian.
“Either will do,” the Ala said, as if it had been a serious question. Jasper had the grace to look properly chastened. “Find one, you find the other.”
Wherever Tanith was, Caius was likely to be. Echo leaned forward in her seat, hoping that Dorian had gotten further in his search than the last time he had checked in. Her heart sank when he shook his head. “No. Tanith hasn’t been to the keep in at least a fortnight. She’s sent messengers there, but so far I haven’t been able to track them and learn where she is or what she’s up to.”
“And Caius?” Echo asked. A presence at the back of her mind pressed against her thoughts, like a ghost leaning in to better hear the answer. Not now, Rose.
Dorian clenched his jaw so tightly, Echo could see the tendons working beneath his skin. “No sign of him either.”
“I would not give up hope just yet,” said the Ala. “I find it highly unlikely that Tanith would go through the trouble of kidnapping her brother just to kill him once she had him alone.”
“You’re assuming she’s being governed by reason,” said Dorian. “The Tanith I knew would never stage an assault on an island in the middle of the Hudson River. She isn’t herself. Not anymore. Not with that…thing inside her.”
“Be that as it may,” the Ala said, “finding the Dragon Prince—both of them,” she added in a mollifying tone when Dorian bristled, “is our first priority.”
“I may have something to help with that,” Echo said. She was hoping they wouldn’t need it, but if there had been no sign of Caius, then it was their best—and only—plan.
She retrieved the silver bowl from her backpack and held it on her lap. “It’s Perrin’s scrying bowl. He used to it to track the bracelet he gave me. He’d woven one of his own feathers into the braided strap. The tracking spell he worked into it must require something to latch onto, like a feather or hair or a personal belonging. I don’t really know the details, but I was hoping you might.”