Chapter Twenty-Six
Twenty-Six
Bill strode down the hallway toward them, his boots echoing in the cramped space, nodding to Juniper.
Juniper pulled his hood lower and gave Mo one last look, squaring his shoulders.
“If the path is made by walking,” he said softly, “I want to walk it with you, Morn Elmthorn. I swear on—on Burren cheese and spiced plum pudding and all the mead in Tús that I will get you and Bear out of this. Even if you don’t want me anymore. ”
The words hung in the damp, stale air between them.
Mo’s brown eyes sparked, one hand clenching tighter around the bars keeping him there.
Juniper, unfortunately, blushed a little at the sight. And then he followed Bill back out of the jail and into the blindingly bright sun.
Juniper said nothing to Bill and Phteven as he left—both because he didn’t know what he would say, and engaging in further conversation would only draw attention—and then Juniper was alone. Again.
As Juniper pressed his way through the crowded town, he passed more bands of mercenaries, who were poring over maps, arguing about routes, and some even brawling with one another for fun. Juniper would join in a heartbeat, if he didn’t have a farmer and a dragon to rescue.
Juniper went back downtown first, the area he was most familiar with.
That proved to be even more crowded, now with wagons resupplying the shopkeepers.
There was even one mercenary wearing a popular logo on his green cloak who was making his assistant sketch pictures of him holding up items from his latest gear haul.
“Start it off with ‘Come along with me while I go on the hottest quest of the season,’ ” the man was telling his assistant, who frantically jotted that down.
The gossip scrolls were always full of quest hauls just like it, and oh, how Juniper missed lying in bed just scrolling.
Or maybe he just missed Mo grunting when Juniper read the latest gossip about which courtier or prince had been gone for months at the king’s wellness retreat, or Mo telling him to stop scrolling and go to bed when one of the news scrolls had too many headlines about war, famine, and the end of the world.
Juniper raised his hand in a wave to the man showing off the latest in quest hydration technology. The man waved back, smiling in a way that could only be described as just as fake as Bill Bronson’s werewolves.
Juniper took a breath and then pushed open the door to the Nameless Inn.
It was by far the fanciest that Filleadh boasted—hence why Juniper had met a prince there to make a deal he now regretted even more than the Skincare Debacle of His Twentieth Winter.
And why he was using words like hence to describe it.
It was also, interestingly enough, where the woman he’d met at the Goose Shop had offered to meet him. Fern, her name was.
After he had also introduced himself as Fern, Juniper had hoped he would never see her again in this life or the next, but…well, this was an emergency. And he had a hunch. A wild one. Dare he say, even a bit whimsical, if whimsy had any place here.
It had been days since Juniper had met her, but he recognized Fern immediately—tall, imposing, long black braids with gold and red beads. An impeccably clean cloak, too. No logo in sight.
These days, it was harder to buy a cloak without a logo than it was to buy one with it. You had to pay extra for a layer of anonymity, it seemed.
The caife shop on the main floor of the inn was buzzing—a bruggane warrior woman was drinking steaming caife directly from a large pitcher, and a troupe of mercenaries who all looked part-sidhe were giggling over some wildberry steamers (and oh, Juniper would kill the fairy king himself if it meant he could have one of those steamers).
Fern’s party was entirely women—one a gruff-looking woman with a warrior’s build and a square jaw, another tall and willowy and carrying a crossbow in one hand and a pint of ale in the other, and a third who was short and petite but armed to the teeth with some very pretty little butterfly knives.
(Did Juniper have a thing for pretty knives? Something to explore later.)
“Fern?”
She was seated at the bar, thoughtfully tapping her long nails against a steaming mug of tea that Juniper identified by smell as rose hips. And maybe spiced elderberry.
Fern arched a perfectly threaded eyebrow at him. “Also Fern,” she intoned. “From the Glowing Goose. Though you look like you’ve been going through it ever since I saw you.”
“My name isn’t actually Fern?” Juniper said it like a question. “I, uh, was trying to play it cool.”
“Cool is definitely the impression I got,” Fern said. “Do you have a room here? You look like you could use a hot bath, stranger.”
Juniper let out a groan at the thought, a sound that had no place in polite society and belonged instead with the moss and Mo, probably.
“I do love a bath,” he said sadly. “So, so much. With bubbles and rose petals and salts and a great deal of steam. But I’m afraid it has to wait, because I have a best friend to rescue and a prince to defeat. ”
Fern’s eyebrow defied expectations and rose even higher. “You want to commit treason?” she asked. “And you’re just here at the inn he’s staying in, saying that with your whole chest? You are bold, traveler.”
“He’s just a minor prince,” Juniper reassured her.
She snorted. “Don’t tell him that.”
“And,” Juniper continued, “I have the moral high ground.”
“Feel free to tell the royal executioner that,” Fern returned, lifting her tea as if toasting Juniper’s imminent destruction. She sipped, her dark eyes on him. “Treason is still treason even if the government is wrong, you know. Actually, I think that’s their least favorite kind of treason.”
He could feel the other three women around them close in, ever so slightly, postures shifting to ready. Weapons easing from sheaths.
It was going well, he told himself. Nothing to worry about.
“Well,” Juniper said. “You didn’t say no.”
In fact, she looked marginally less bored than she had a moment ago.
“I didn’t say yes, either,” Fern returned. Her hand slid lower, to a knife sheathed at her hip. “Why should I help you, bold traveler?”
“Because,” Juniper said, squaring his shoulders.
It was time to act on that hunch of his.
It was about to sound very badass and brave of him, or he was about to be very embarrassed.
But did the best of plans really have any possible in-between outcomes?
“If you helped, it wouldn’t even really be treason.
It would just be a spat between siblings. ”
The women around Fern froze imperceptibly, but Fern regarded him with an unchanged look for a very long moment.
Then she shoved her knife back into her belt and barked out a laugh.
Excitement surged in his chest. Princess Fern looked only a little impressed.
“Tell me your real name, then,” she said. “Since you seem to know a great deal about me.”
Juniper did not jump up and pump his fist in the air with victory. If any gossip scrolls reported that after the fact, they were exaggerating and he was willing to sue them for libel. Or slander. Whichever it was.
He could never keep it straight.
“My name is Juniper O’Reilly,” he said when he had recovered from the shock of having gotten something right for the first time on this gods-blasted quest. “And I am here to save the love of my life.”
“I thought he was your best friend,” Fern—Princess Fern said, her eyes narrowing.
The larger woman on the other side of her shrugged one muscular shoulder. “It sounds like one of those best-friends-to-lovers situations,” she said. “You know how it is on quests.”
“Everyone boning like dogs,” the petite woman with the butterfly blades agreed, nodding her head as she withdrew a blade the length of Juniper’s fingers and began sharpening it with a tool on her belt.
Fern wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Never say boning in front of me again, Rosa,” she said. “Please. And you. Juniper.” She jerked her head to the vacant stool beside her. “How exactly will saving your best friend/lover piss off my dumbest, second-most self-obsessed half brother?”
“Who’s the most self-obsessed brother, then?” Juniper asked, horrified. “And does the government have a favorite kind of treason?”
So many questions had arisen from talking to Fern, and he would need longer than just today to get answers to all of them.
Fern rolled her eyes. “Don’t waste my time, traveler,” she said. “Stop daydreaming and tell me how this will enrage dear little Edward.”
“I think dear little Edward is rather easy to enrage,” Juniper answered honestly. “But he’s stolen a kid, who is also a dragon, and when Mo and I tried to stop him—it’s kind of a long story, actually—he captured Mo.”
The knife woman, Rosa, grunted. “You started with the boyfriend instead of the dragon?” she asked. “You must really know nothing about women.”
“I haven’t even kissed very many,” Juniper said. “Women are terrifying.”
“Thank you,” the broad-shouldered mercenary grunted, kicking Juniper’s stool with the toe of her boot. It seemed almost like an affectionate gesture, if rather violent.
“Shocked to hear you haven’t kissed many,” Fern said. “Tell me more about this dragon.”
“She’s just a kid,” Juniper said. “And if you even think about telling me that you want me to help you get her so you can make peace with the other dragon shifters in the mountains, I swear on Divona and my own mother’s grave that—”
“I would never tell you that,” Fern said. “Who gives a shit about making peace with a species my father wants to destroy? Nobody in this kingdom, I can tell you that. And anyone who believed that kind of story is a fool.”
Said fool stared back at her for a long moment.
“Right,” he said finally. “Yes, of course. A fool. Anyway, Bear is just a child. She shifts into dragon form, but she’s actually very small, and she likes cheese a lot.”