Chapter Twenty-Six #2
“Have you…have you actually spoken to her?” Fern asked curiously. “I heard that even shifters could rarely speak coherently.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the scrolls,” Juniper, who believed almost everything he’d ever read in a scroll, lectured her. “She’s not a political bargaining tool, or a piece in a game, or—”
“She’s all of those things, and that is why you came to me,” Fern said. “But Filleadh has been boring so far, and my brother deserves a comeuppance. I assume he has both the dragon and the boyfriend right now?”
Juniper bristled at the word boyfriend. It seemed like it reduced him somehow, as if Mo wasn’t also the sun and the moon and all the stars. As if Mo wasn’t a steady rock and an expert weaver and a wayfinder and a kind, kind man who feared being left alone. And also—
The women were staring at him again.
“Sorry,” Juniper said. “Where were we? Yes, Prince Edward has Mo and Bear.”
“Which one is the dragon?” Fern asked.
“Bear is the dragon,” Juniper answered. “What do you want in return? I have the coin the prince paid me, and I—”
“I have no interest in coin,” Fern told him. “All I need is in my father’s treasury.”
“And do you have access to that?” Juniper asked. “Even though you’re not the king?”
The broad-shouldered mercenary reached around Fern and thumped Juniper on the back of the head. “Impertinent boy,” she said.
She and Mo would get along.
“I want to talk to this dragon,” Fern said. “That’s all. I help you rescue both the dragon and the man, and then I get some time to talk to the dragon.”
“I’ll get Bear,” Juniper said. “And she’s a little kid, too. In addition to the fire-breathing stuff.”
He was not about to have another royal trick him and run off with a little girl who had already been through too much.
“Sure,” Fern said after a minute. “My guards will help you get the dra—help you get Bear. Where is she being held?”
“In the government building on the north end of town,” Juniper said. “Under heavy guard. Mo is being held at the local jail.”
“No issue,” Fern said. “I’ll talk to the constable, and he’ll do as I say, because I’m a princess.”
“But does Edward outrank you?”
Another thump to the back of his head.
“He is older than me,” Fern ground out. “By two minutes. But the king likes my mother better than she likes Edward’s mother, because Edward’s mother is one of those raw milk girlies who always publishes fake medical advice in the scrolls.
However, if the constable wants to tell a princess no, I’ll just knock him out and steal your boyfriend. I don’t think this will be an issue.”
The place had been surrounded by guards, and even if he’d had Bill and Phteven’s help, which he couldn’t count on, Juniper hadn’t liked his own chances. He would have taken the chance, of course. For Mo. And if Bear didn’t also need to be rescued.
Who knew quests could be so complicated? Until now, Juniper had assumed you just went out and glamped, camped, or cried in the woods, and came home after a brief, mostly uneventful, and slightly depressing vacation.
“And Bear?” Juniper asked.
“Rosa, Jax, and Elyse”—she jerked her thumb to the willowy woman with the crossbow—“will help you get into the prince’s camp. You’ll get Bear, since I assume she trusts you and will come with you? This will be a lot harder if she doesn’t.”
“Yes,” Juniper said. Well, she would trust him again once he brought her cheese and tried his best. Hopefully.
“Let’s go, then,” Fern said. “Do you have a sword?”
“Yes,” Juniper said. “Well, not anymore. I stole Bill’s sword, when he put it down. But it’s out in the forest somewhere.”
“No is a much shorter sentence than whatever that was.” Jax grunted. “Here, this will look like a sword on you.”
She pulled a large knife from her belt and handed it to Juniper, who squeaked only a little.
“Are you saying I’m small?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not,” Juniper said. “I’m actually above average height, if you don’t consider bruggane in your determination of average, and you shouldn’t, since all of them are at least a head taller than humans.”
Jax answered with another grunt.
Again, she and Mo should get drinks sometime. It would be fascinating to listen to them communicate through a series of grunts.
“That’s it?” Juniper asked. This was definitely too easy. He should ask more questions. He should be more suspicious. But if this was going to get Mo out, did it really matter if this plan came back to bite him in the ass?
His ass could take it. Probably.
“That’s it. Well.” Fern slapped her knees and stood.
“Is the knee-slapping a way of saying it’s time to go?” Juniper asked.
“Clearly you’ve never been to the Midwest,” Fern said with another eyeroll. The Midwest was far west of here, in a part of the land Juniper had never visited because it was said to be mostly plains and grain and winters even longer and more boring than the ones they had here.
“They do a lot of slapping there?” Juniper asked.
“Can I knock him out?” Jax asked. “At least for a little while?”
“No,” Juniper said. “Fern? Tell her she can’t knock me out! Even for a little while!”
“Then talk less,” Jax said.
“You heard her,” Fern said with a nod. “Talk less, Juniper O’Reilly. And you may survive this yet.”
After that very ominous proclamation, Fern shrugged her hood up and strode out the door, her dark red cloak billowing behind her.
“We…we didn’t even say where we were meeting,” Juniper managed. “And what is she going to do about the prince?”
A third thump, in the exact same spot as the first two wallops. Two he may have deserved, but three? Really?
“Her Highness has a plan,” Rosa told him.
Elyse, the woman with the crossbow, had yet to speak, but she nudged him with her arm and pointed to the door.
Juniper rose, hand still clenched around the blade Jax had given him. Just in case (because you could never be too cautious when it came to these blasted royals), Juniper put the remaining fire ale into his pocket, next to his flint and matches, which had, finally, dried out a bit.
“All right,” he said, squaring his shoulders. “Let’s go save Bear.”