back at me. “What about you? Have you seen the merrows?”
I laugh again. I can’t help but laugh. Champions. We’re supposed
to be kings and here we are, eating skinny rabbit creatures and hiding
from beasts. So I tell him. All of it. From the moment I shifted in
the bathtub and Kurt and Thalia came into my life to take me to
Toliss. Looking for the oracle, the merrows attacking my school. How
the princesses showed up and made the student body crazy. Gwen and how
she helped me find Shelly. Shelly giving me the scepter. The strange
marketplace at the Vanishing Cove. The promise I made to the nautilus
maid-that part I keep to myself.
The rest comes pouring out of me. I tell him of my courting the
mermaid princesses. How Adaro came to Coney. How Nieve killed him. How
we found the eldest oracle, Lucine-then Kurt.
By the end of it, I’m spent. I stare at the fire, the red eye, the
wood consuming itself, and I wonder if I could have changed any of it.
“Kurtomathetis is King Karanos’s son?” Dylan marvels.
I nod once.
“There were rumors of how strange Kurtomathetis was in that
family. Thalia had their mother’s gift of speaking to sea animals.
Their father could control fire, a gift so rare it was only passed on
to sons. But it died with him, didn’t it?”
I don’t want to talk about Kurt. “So you’ve been here all this
time and you haven’t found the river folk?”
“More like they don’t want to be found.” Dylan shakes his head.
“The tribe is hidden in the center of the land, but I can’t get deep
enough into the woods without arriving back where I started. It’s like
I’m going in circles! There’s the beast, which the councilman failed
to mention. It nearly got me when I first got here. But there are
plenty of fish in the river. Game in the forest. Berries in the
bushes. It rains and I believe that marks the beginning of the day.”
“Then it’s a good thing I showed up. You saved me from the
lion-dragon-beast thing, and when I get out of here, you’ll be able to
go back home.”
“The trident pieces have been found, Lord Tristan,” he says. “I
don’t think I’ll be much use as another champion.”
I give him a light punch on the shoulder. “You are seriously not
seeing what I’m seeing. You’re a great fighter. Better than Kurt. He’s
like a ballerina with a sword. All you had is a carved piece of wood!
Consider yourself hired when we get back to our world.”
Dylan smirks at my words. He holds on tightly to his staff,
looking up at the mobile sky. At the tiny home he’s built for himself.
Then it hits me: it’s not that he can’t get out. It’s that he doesn’t
want to.
I say, “Time out. You’ve been here playing survivor this whole
time while the rest of us are trying to see this championship through,
and now that I’m offering a way out, you’d rather stay in the Land
before Time?”
“You don’t even have a way out! You’re barely in!” When Dylan
shouts, the vein in his neck pops out.
“Oh, it’s like that, right?”
“It’s like what?” He gets up and takes a step out of our circle.
“I didn’t ask for you to come here. I didn’t ask for my father to
choose me instead of my brother. Now they’re both dead because I
failed at the one thing I was supposed to do as his heir. I can’t go
back to my people.”
He sits on the ground with his back to me. Something stirs out
there. Perhaps it’s the beast and its trusty lizard-bird. Or maybe
it’s the Vale itself giving me a warning. Either way, I keep my dagger
in hand and rack my brain for something good to say to Dylan.
“I’m sorry about your family,” I say. “But you still have the
people of your court who are fighting the silver mermaid. Family is a
lot more than blood and DNA. Not that you would know about DNA because
merpeople don’t have biology class. And I’m not entirely sure what
they would teach you in mer high school other than advanced swimming
and sword fighting and that nobody likes dragons.”
“I don’t understand the things you say, Lord Tristan,” Dylan says,
trying to suppress his laughter. He gets up from his self-imposed
time-out then comes back to the fireside. “Do you know the last thing
my father and I fought about?”
I shake my head. My dad and I have only had one fight. It was over
whether or not I should get a summer job as a lifeguard. I never
understood why my parents got so nervous when I kept pushing to see
how far out I could swim until now.
“We fought about my place in our court. I told him I didn’t want
to be like him, with the next thousand years of my life mapped out for
me.” Dylan takes the platinum band off his head and holds it in his
hands. “He even had a princess all picked out! And she moved right
into my chambers without even asking if I wanted her there.”
The forest has gotten so quiet that not even the wind makes a
peep.
“What did she have, bad teeth?” I set down my dagger. “Oh man, was
she one of those octo-maids, because multiple hands might not be a bad
thing.”
“Lord Tristan!”
“Just call me Tristan.”
“The problem with the princess-” Dylan seems to be listening to
voices in his head. He looks down at his feet and swallows the dryness
from his tongue. “The problem was that she was a princess. My father
turned down my choice of stethos because he was from a lesser family.”
I raise my hand. “What the hell is a stethos?”
That word sparks a memory of Sarabell. The minute I think of her,
I think of Adaro, then Leomaris. The blue flames. Arion.
Then Dylan pushes me on the ground.
“What the f-”
“Tristan,” Dylan says, but he’s not looking at me.
A dozen warriors surround us, their skin as see-through as glass
and their bows pulled tightly, arrows aimed right at our heads.
Warriors surround us. Their armor is green leather. Their skin is
nearly translucent. I can see the outline of ribs, lungs, and hearts
beating. The River Clan.
I raise my hands, but that makes half of them turn their arrows on
me.
“Wait a minute, guys,” I say. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“I don’t think they want to talk,” Dylan warns.
“I’m Tristan Hart and this is Dylan of the Western Seas-”
One of the warriors steps forward. I wonder how fast I can reach
for my dagger. She raises a blade and, with one swipe at me, cuts the
leather bound around my chest. My harness falls off into her hands. My
weapons clink against each other.
Not fast enough, I guess.
“We know who you are, Land Prince,” the girl says. Her face is no
longer translucent but brown. Her irises are like the black and amber
swirls in tiger stone. She knocks the wind from me with a single hit
in the solar plexus.
While I choke, someone pulls my arms back and binds my wrists
together. Dylan falls beside me. She pokes me with Dylan’s staff.
“If you wanted to tie us up, you just had to ask,” I say.
She hits me again, and this time it hurts too much to speak. Her
warriors laugh. One lights a torch with the flames from our fire.
Another blindfolds us.
“Thank you,” I say to the blindfolder. “I forgot my sunglasses at
home. Damn UV rays, really bad for you.”
That elicits another blow to my back.
“A little lower,” I say. “I have all these kinks from my last
explosion.”
I feel hands pushing me forward and hear the quick feet of Dylan
beside me. “Do you want them to tear you apart?” he asks.
“Can’t make it too easy for them,” I say.
“You guys should try out my weapons,” I shout to the leader. “They