Night was settling as the questers clustered in the Red Lion’s royal sitting room, a vain attempt by local craftsmen to mimic true grandeur. Silk-draped walls, gilded mirrors, and painfully polished furnishings surrounded them. Blair flinched at the garish display, so far from the quiet dignity of genuine nobility.
“Send her away,” he told the maid Bernard had posted outside. The door clicked softly, granting them privacy.
Kumar leaned against the window frame, his usual impassive face drawn tight. “The reports from the coast are worse than we imagined.”
Arbor’s voice was hollow. “No prisoners. The dark army slaughters everything in its path.”
“Eastport next?” Blair’s jaw clenched.
Kumar exhaled. “They’re burning every settlement southward, villages, farms, outposts, reduced to ash and bone.”
Silence fell. Hours before, they’d laughed over supper in the common room, delighting children with tales. Now, grim reality closed in like a wave of ice.
Rika sat between Arbor and Kumar on the central divan, her saddlebags nestled close. The room hummed with tension, Blair and Shandar lingered near the hearth, conspicuously apart. Whatever fragile alliance they’d forged that morning now hung splintered, brittle as ice.
But Rika's focus lay elsewhere.
She slipped the Star of Serenity over her head. Its weight settled against her chest, a ritual, a tether against unraveling.
Kumar's hand touched her forearm. "Is it wise? You should conserve your strength."
Her smile barely formed. "Routine keeps me sane. I just want to see Blaze."
She closed her eyes.
The rupture came quiet but violent. Her spirit tore free, the wild thrill of weightlessness replacing pain. Kumar's grip anchored her physical form as she slipped downward, through age-warped floorboards, into the stables.
Blaze shifted restlessly in his stall. Her presence brushed his flank, a whisper on the edge of sensation. He shivered, turned, snorted at nothing.
The groom paused, hand frozen mid-brush.
Rika drifted upward, past rafters and beams, through the inn's sloped roof. The grounds spread below, bathed in twilight gold.
Southeast, something shimmered. A distortion in the weave of the world, colors bending unnaturally.
She descended, drawn to the anomaly, her borrowed heart racing.
Three figures huddled around a campfire off Escap Road. One tended a horse. Two spoke in hushed tones.
Then, recognition. A pulse through her astral form like sunlight through cracked glass.
She passed through the shimmer.
"Merric?" The name escaped her.
The royal gamekeeper stirred his pot, teaching a young guard. He stiffened, as if hearing his name sung from the trees.
Kumar's voice entered her mind: Is he here?
Nearby, she replied, forgetting the Star carried her thoughts to shared ears. Let me reach him.
She placed both hands on Merric's head.
The flood came without warning, Queen Ellis's pale worry, King Vardon's measured weight, Sholin's piercing gaze. And beneath them all...
Fierce, undiluted love. For her.
It hit like flame across bare skin. She knelt midair, breathless, thoughts scattered.
Merric spun. "Rika?" he asked the darkness.
His guards exchanged glances, but Rika barely noticed.
She projected a vision: Red Lion walls, flickering hearth light. Her message tentative at first, his answer steady as stone.
"The Red Lion," he said, rising. "We'll come tonight. Baltan! Rasslow! Break camp, we move!"
Then something new, Merric pressed a hand over his heart. A gesture he'd never offered before.
Rika's spirit snapped back, folding inward like water into stone.
She gasped into her body. Kumar still held her arm, eyes searching.
"They're coming," she whispered, voice raw. "We must warn Bernard."
Kumar squeezed her hand. "I'll handle the innkeeper. Rest now." He guided her to a chair.
As she removed the Star, the door beside the hallway vanished. Panicked, she replaced it, the door reappeared. Once more she removed it, only silk remained.
"Blair," she called. "A hidden door. I see it only with the Star."
He ran his hands over the wall. "Nothing."
Shandar approached, muttering, "Stupid magic." Orange flame roiled around her hands. "I'll show you a door!" Green light blossomed from her fingertips, tracing a rectangle. The outline of a door glowed into view.
Arbor moved to open it, but Shandar caught his shoulder. "No, this needs magic."
"My lady," Arbor bowed his head, "you are too precious to risk. Merric arrives soon."
Their eyes met. Something unspoken passed between them. Shandar brushed his cheek. "Be safe, my friend."
Arbor knelt. "My lady honors me." He took an oil lamp and disappeared through the door.
Finrod cleared his throat. "You said Merric's name the moment you left us. Was he that close?"
"Yes." Rika described the distortion and the overwhelming wave of emotion upon touching him. "I failed to explore further."
"Perhaps he caused the distortion." Finrod's brow furrowed. "Have you seen such things before?"
"Never."
Finrod studied her. "He is much older than you. Is that... proper?"
Heat rose to her face. "Not like that. He saved my life, taught me courage, stood by me through disaster." She explained the paternal nature of their bond.
Finrod exchanged a glance with Blair before asking, "And his relation to your mother, Blair?"
Blair stiffened. "Ellis grew up beside him. He protected her as a child, introduced her to my father, remained her closest friend."
"Any other findings?" Blair asked Rika.
She blanched, realizing her oversight. "I'm sorry, I forgot to search further."
Blair gently lifted her chin. "We're safe until morning. Rest. Tomorrow, check the road ahead." He guided her toward the stairs.
After she left, Shandar and Finrod exchanged relieved smiles. A serving woman entered to light lamps, but Shandar waved her hand, every lamp ignited at once. The woman fled in terror.
"We must be gracious," Blair chided. "To them, this innkeeper's task is his pride."
Finrod raised his glass. "Spoken like a king."
Blair's smile tightened. "My mother taught me to remember what it feels like to be ordinary."
Shandar leaned against his chest. "A hug?" she teased. He stumbled over a chair, laughing despite himself.
Arbor returned, dust coating his clothes. "Escape route leads to an abandoned barn north of here."
A commotion at the stairway silenced them. Kumar entered with Merric and two guardsmen. Shandar slipped into shadows; Blair and Finrod remained seated. Merric knelt before Blair.
"My prince."
Blair introduced those present. "Rika is above," he added.
Merric presented the two young men. "Baltan Wainwright and Rasslow Langdon, both made at the temple alongside Shandar."
Once seated, Merric delivered his report. "Queen Ellis sends her love. Sholin entrusted me with gifts, a diary for Rika, a scroll for Shandar that only she can read." He bowed toward Shandar's hiding place. "Mistress of Fire, I stand at your service with these two." His weathered face creased. "Fate plays games."
Shandar emerged, accepting graciously. "My mother spoke of you as the Queen's rock. Guide us and look after Rika."
Blair and Finrod nodded their agreement.
Merric knelt with his men and intoned the ancient oath of service. When it was done, Blair helped Rika, who had returned silently, to her feet. Together with Shandar, they welcomed their new companions.
Merric pressed a black velvet-bound book into Rika's hands. "The diary of the last Astral."
Her fingers trembled as she accepted it.
At dawn, they gathered in the common room, guards, elves in human guise, Merric, and Bernard. Shandar held the door for Blair and Rika, her eyes narrowing at their closeness.
Bernard introduced his wife Karen, who curtsied before Blair, then promptly fainted.
Rika knelt beside her. "It's all right, Karen. The past is forgiven." The innkeeper's wife rose shakily, fetched food, and they ate while Merric spoke of war, dark armies, fallen cities, refugees streaming toward Tiereny.
Bernard offered supplies. Reid, a local, volunteered to guide them to Wund's Mound.
"The path opens only to elven magic," Reid explained.
Rika revealed her Star. Reid grinned. "You'll need living elves. None seen in five hundred seasons."
Finrod removed his crystal. The air around the three elves shimmered as their true forms appeared, tall, graceful, otherworldly. Reid dropped to one knee, his companion fled.
The age of legends had returned to the Red Lion Inn.
Blair stared at his untouched meal, unease etched across his face. He leaned toward Rika. "Could you visit my mother? The pen in the bottom drawer of her desk, she'll recognize it."
Rika nodded. The magic ripped her free, wild, and unpracticed. Her spirit tumbled upward, tangled in memory-threads and emotional noise until a pulse of garden light steadied her. She surged toward the Queen's Garden, drawn by scent, Ka spice, lavender ink, sun-warmed parchment.
In Queen Ellis's study, the pen stirred.
Ellis reclined on her lounge, one hand holding a cup of Ka, the other clutching reports. Across from her, Glorin waited. He noticed first.
"Mother, look!"
A pen and parchment lifted from the desk, floating toward Ellis like memory seeking voice. They settled on an untouched corner where gravity seemed softened by sentiment.
Ellis's fingers brushed the pen she'd once gifted Blair. "It's from him," she whispered.
The pen whirled, inscribing words like smoke:
Rika Blair is well. Merric and his young ones with us. Just short of finding Dagmar. I'm in the room. Speak freely.
Ellis's voice broke. "The daughter I never had."
Across the miles, Rika's cheeks burned. The Queen's reply unfolded in waves:
"Tell Blair his family is well. We will raise a show of force but cannot hold the city. Our last stand will be in Tiereny." Her voice strengthened. "Blair must save us, the gods chose him."
Then softer: "Rika... love him as I do. He is yours always. I knew when I first saw you. Believe in love. Let it protect you both."
The pen rose once more:
We have the Mistress of Fire! As my Queen wishes, so shall it be done, mother. Safe Journey.
The pen dropped to the floor.
Glorin retrieved it. "Rika? The one who slapped Saad? She is to be my sister?"
Ellis didn't answer. Her shoulders slumped, voice low and monotone. "If nature is truly in balance, and we survive the coming storm... Orders will wait. Mid-morning. I must think."
Glorin bowed and left.
Ellis touched the parchment once more. She smiled, not as Queen, but as something older, something softer. She'd heard her name spoken not in court, but from the girl who now carried their fate.