Chapter Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
The prince had cut down several oak trees to construct a makeshift camp at the edge of Filleadh. He had also commandeered the nearby local government building, a small brick two-story, as his headquarters.
In the time since Juniper had sneaked into town, confronted the princess, and (maybe) gotten her to agree to work with him on this, the prince’s forces seemed to have doubled in size.
“Can you really get us in there?” Juniper whispered.
Rosa patted the butterfly knives. “I’ve got enough to share,” she said cheerfully.
“I look forward to bouncing them off of each other,” Jax said. She mimed the motion with her two large hands.
Elyse shrugged, stroking her bow fondly.
Not for the first time since leaving his warm hearth fire behind did Juniper wonder what exactly he’d gotten himself into.
When they reached the government building, Jax walked confidently up to the two guards standing at the doors, both wearing not the generic royal red, but the prince’s personal colors (mustard yellow, like most of the curtains sold in the market when Juniper was younger—it had been all the rage then, though nobody really knew why).
“Got dragons?” Jax asked.
“Huh?” one of them said, looking at the other for help.
Then Jax knocked their heads together.
Juniper squeaked again. “Really? Already?” he said. “We couldn’t just…ask?”
Jax picked one man up and dragged him into a nearby alley. Elyse and Rosa took the other, as if this was just routine. They returned a moment later, Elyse and Rosa wearing the mustard yellow cloaks they had stripped from the unconscious guards.
“Wise choice,” Juniper commented. “Mustard yellow wouldn’t have looked right on you, Jax.”
This time, he ducked the incoming blow, her hand skimming over the top of his strawberry-wildfire curls.
“Hmm,” she said. It almost sounded like approval.
“Bear’s upstairs,” Juniper said. “I can smell the ash up there. She probably set a small fire before they…before they muzzled her again.” The thought twisted inside him.
Jax kicked open the door, which Juniper was fairly certain had been unlocked. Maybe she just enjoyed the drama—this, Juniper could respect.
He followed, Rosa and Elyse on his heels. Inside, a few guards were milling about a round table, looking at a map, but they took one glance at the yellow cloaks Rosa and Elyse wore and just nodded at them.
They took a winding staircase up to the second floor, where Juniper could already hear Bear’s growls. He was going to give this little girl so much cheese and the softest of blankets and the finest of venison vegetable soups for the rest of her life.
Er, until they found her people. Of course.
He hadn’t begun imagining a life on their farm as a family of three, because that would be preposterous.
“In here,” Juniper said, gesturing toward a heavy stone door that he was not sure even Jax would be able to kick down.
One guard approached on the stairs behind them, his expression curious. Jax picked him up by the front of his cloak and used his head to knock on the door three times.
When it opened, she pulled the guard inside out and knocked him against his unconscious friend.
Before Juniper had the chance to step across the threshold, though, a great kerfuffle began downstairs. In the clamor, Juniper heard one of the guards below ask—
“Is that the princess?”
And at the same time someone else saying—
“By Divona, she’s pummeling the prince!”
Juniper whirled.
Fern was supposed to be saving Mo.
Juniper found himself face-to-face with Elyse. Or rather, face-to-face with her arrow, cocked in place, her crossbow leveled at his head.
“Get the dragon,” Rosa told him. “Quickly, boy, before Jax lets me carve you up.”
Jax grunted, which, Juniper realized upon reflection, probably meant Move.
He moved.
“All these royals are the same,” he grumbled. He was beginning to sound like Mo.
But blast it all, Mo would be here doing this if he could, so even if this princess was as conniving as her second-most self-obsessed half brother, Juniper was, unfortunately, precisely where he was meant to be.
He stepped across the threshold.
Bear was in her human form, seated upon a small cot, her knees pulled up against her chest. She had a mask tightly over her mouth, and her small wrists were tied, but when she saw Juniper, she growled out something that might have been a greeting or might have just been cheese and ran toward him.
He scooped her right up off the ground and tugged at her bonds.
“Hey!” Jax drew her sword and leveled it at Juniper. “Leave those on.”
Well, skewering might be imminent, but in the meantime: disobedience.
Juniper ignored Jax and untied the knot with expert ease, and then tugged the mask off. “It’s okay,” he told her softly.
Just the way Mo had when they’d first met her.
Bear clung to him, but scales began to ripple across her arms. “Who?” she asked, pointing at the three mercenaries standing between Juniper and the door.
They were likely only keeping Juniper alive because he was crucial to keeping Bear calm, but—well, it was past time for Juniper to make a choice.
And he was making one now. He took another step backward toward the window.
Glass panes, no bars on the window. “They’re friends of a princess,” Juniper told Bear, squeezing her a little.
“We have to get away from them, but I have a plan.”
“What’s he saying?” Elyse said. “Jax, gut him.”
Fools.
Juniper grinned at the three women. “Ladies, it’s been an absolute pleasure,” he said. “The head trauma, the excessive force, the sheer amount of weapons. The concussions I’ve received and witnessed. But—”
He didn’t have a witty conclusion planned, but he had the second-best option at hand: a window to smash.
He lifted the large blade Jax had lent him and smashed the hilt through the window.
“Bear, can you fly?” he asked.
She screamed and clung to him.
“I know,” he said, stroking her hair with one hand. “I want to stay with you, too. But I don’t have any wings. But if you do this for me, Bear, I will get you all the cheese you can eat. Okay?”
Jax was advancing, sword out, and Elyse was stalking just behind her.
“Don’t you dare,” Rosa said. “Juniper O’Reilly, I will fill you so full of holes you won’t know which way to bleed.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Juniper told her.
And then he brushed away the remaining shards of glass in the window, gently detached Bear’s clinging arms from around his neck, and pushed her through the open window as scales covered her arms fully.
Or at least he very much hoped she had transformed, because otherwise he’d have to explain to Mo how he’d rescued their little girl only to immediately throw her out of a window.
Half a second later, a small dragon rose, mouth open in a roar of rage.
“Cheese!” Juniper promised through the open window. “Bear, I’m sorry—”
A ball of fire came roaring at the window, and he dove for cover.
He’d always heard that tantrums were difficult to handle, no matter the age. He was going to have to invest in some parenting scrolls, immediately.
If he survived.
“It’s been real,” Juniper said. “Tallyho!”
And then he climbed out onto the windowsill and—jumped.
Ah, fuck. Fuck fuck fuck it was a long way down. And he hadn’t quite been as close to that tree as he’d thought he was.
He hit the branches harder than he’d expected, scraping each one on the way down, cursing as he went.
“Bear, don’t repeat this,” he called. He wasn’t even sure if she could hear him. “This is a bad choice! A no-no. An— Oof.”
He landed heavily on his back, gasping for air. There was none to be had, the air thoroughly knocked out of him.
He also conveniently landed directly beside the prince, who was splayed on the ground, his wrists pinned by his sister.
She was yelling at him, and he at her, and Juniper was opening and shutting his mouth like a fish out of water.
“Hey!” Prince Edward yelled. “IS THAT MY DRAGON?”
She’s a child, Juniper said. Or would have said, if he could breathe. Instead, he opened and shut his mouth several times in a row, no air coming in or out.
“NO, IT’S MY DRAGON,” Fern yelled back. “Wait, why is it up there?”
Juniper got his breath back. “And WHERE IS MO?”
“Who’s Mo?” Fern asked. “Oh, right. The friends-to-lovers situation. You’re down bad, traveler. But I need a dragon, or my father will never leave me alone.”
The prince took Fern’s distraction as an opportunity to roll away from her. He kicked in Juniper’s direction, and Juniper didn’t think, he just held up that great big knife to block and—
Then there was screaming, and a great deal of blood, and a piece of the prince’s fancy boot on the ground beside Juniper.
Along with, dare he say it, the prince’s pinkie toe.
“He’s killed me!” the prince screamed. “He’s dealt a fatal blow! Sister, help me!”
“Gods above.” Fern stood, dusting off her hands. “Pull yourself together, man. Who hasn’t lost a toe during a quest?”
Juniper scooted back nervously, holding tight to the bloody blade. He had not yet lost a toe on a quest, and he would kind of like to keep it that way?
Above them, Bear circled, sending another ball of fire through the open window at Fern’s entourage.
Then she swooped low, breathing fire in the direction of the camp. Several tents caught. And then a nearby building. And then a nearby bar.
“Not the rum,” Juniper whispered sadly. “Fern, where is Mo?”
“In jail, I assume,” she said. “Did you really think I was going to help you?”
“No,” Juniper said glumly. “You and your brother are the same.”
At that—which Juniper had meant as an insult—they both began screaming at once. At him. At each other.
Half the town seemed to be gathered, watching the spectacle.
The other half of the town seemed to be preoccupied with the fact that Bear was clearly burning it down.
And that gave Juniper an idea.
“HEY,” Juniper interrupted their screaming. “Listen up, you two.”
They stopped screaming to stare at him. Or maybe they were just looking for his audacity, which he clearly had a bit too much of.
“This town is going to burn,” he said. “Are you really going to let it?”
“Of course—” Prince Edward began.
In the distance, fire had caught a large hay pile, something that had obviously been stocked for the influx of horses the quest had brought.
Fern interrupted him with a hard punch to the shoulder. “Of course we wouldn’t,” she said.
The crowd drew closer, curiosity tilting toward unrest. And unrest? Well, Juniper was a bit of an expert at that, if not usually at this scale.
Fern, at least, was smart enough not to publicly admit that she was willing to let a village burn to the ground over a squabble with her brother.
“Right,” Prince Edward said. “We wouldn’t do that. Even if it’s a very small village nobody knows about. Or would miss.”
“Nobody would miss Pointe Gan Filleadh?” Juniper asked.
“That’s not what I said,” Edward responded.
“Right,” Juniper said. “I’m the only one who can stop this. And I have some conditions.”
“You have some conditions?” The prince seemed to remember suddenly that he was continuing to…leak from his injury. “You tried to kill me!”
“I can stop the dragon,” Juniper said. “And I will. But on three conditions.”
And finally, finally, he had everyone’s attention.