“Wow. What a big head.” I clucked my tongue. “She seems so quiet and kind, and then she opens her mouth and everyone learns what she’s really about. Quite the ego.”
“You know it’s true,” she said. “Don’t try to make me the bad guy! I’m just being honest.”
“Honestly self-absorbed, yeah.” I shook my head, seeing a cluster of elves standing to one side of the path, watching us as we passed, carefully avoiding the flowers. I was tempted to unravel the magic then and there. “Very enlightening, Penny. Should we expect you to tell the elves that you taught me everything I know? That you hooked me up with Darius and found me a place to live? I mean, is there no end to the things you’ll take credit for?”
“You have been absolutely unreasonable since I accidentally barged in on you and Darius on the island. You really have, Reagan Somerset.” I could tell she was crossing her arms over her chest. “This is going to come back to you tenfold, just you wait. Stop laughing, Emery! This isn’t funny!”
My grin faltered as the castle came more fully into view. Unlike castles in the Brink, which were built for defense, this one did not have an outer wall, a drawbridge, or a moat. In fact, it looked more like an incredibly fancy hotel made to look like a castle, with a wide, gleaming path leading through an expanse of grass, with lines of flowers to a large arch with a red double door nestled inside. The spires on the roof were made out of gold, or at least covered in it, and windows dotted the front of the three-story structure, much larger than arrow slits. I didn’t sense any magic shielding the place from attackers. They were confident in their safety.
Several elves were outside, tending to grass or flowers, one chiseling part of a fountain, the water gurgling as it ran out of a fawn’s mouth and splashed into the basin below. None of them ignored us—they all stopped what they were doing and stared. Clearly they hadn’t gotten the memo that we were on the way. They weren’t important enough to hear the news.
How easy would it be to get them to rebel?
“They do their own landscaping, huh?” I asked, connecting eyes with one of the gardeners. The onlooker’s brows pinched together, its eyes rounding in surprise. I had a feeling it suspected who I was and why we were here. “They don’t hire out to other creatures?”
No one responded to me, and I wondered how many of the people in my vicinity had ever actually been to the castle.
A sinking feeling filled my gut as we drew ever closer. The insanity of what we were doing pressed down on me. I didn’t want to bet my everything on Karen and the Red Prophet.
“It’s probably wise if we nix this whole idea and just go into hiding,” I murmured as I drifted back between Penny and Emery, just in front of the older dual-mages. Halvor glanced back with a scowl. I waved him away. “You do you, bub. I played your game on the way here. Now I’m looking for a safer bet.” I lowered my voice and said out of the side of my mouth to Emery, “But seriously, probably better if we peel off now, run for it, and spend our lives in hiding.”
“I would never do that to Penny,” he said. “It’s no kind of life for a person like her. Or you. You remember that island—you were going stir-crazy. We all saw it. If Cahal hadn’t been there to train you—to challenge you—you would’ve swum out of there just to get a little action.”
“Don’t burst my bubble.” I felt my magic thrumming within me, responding to the mounting stress. More eyes found us as we approached the wide double door at the end of the path. Elves lurked by the walls, their hair as still as their bodies, watching us silently. They didn’t have weapons strapped to them, which wasn’t reassuring. They clearly thought they were weapons enough.
At the double door, one of the elves stepped forward, cloaked in a green tunic and purple breeches.
“Second, you have come to visit,” it said.
“I am now the First,” Romulus said, and I barely saw his bow through the thicket of people around us. “My mother is in good health, but she has decided she would prefer to stay within the Flush, governing the people there, than join the rest of us in resuming our duties.”
“Ah, I see,” the elf replied, and it didn’t seem like he really did. That, or he was relaying some subtle context that I wasn’t programed to pick up.
“Emery,” I whispered, and Halvor glanced back with a hard stare, no doubt to shut me up. Emery glanced over. “You’re going to have to start thinking things at me so I know what’s going on. I’ve gotten used to it, and now I’m flying blind. No one wants me to get bored.”