The Rogue Guardian

Chapter 67: Heart to Heart

I took a deep breath as I let my hair down, squeezing my eyes shut. Sneaking through the woods, evading guards, scaling a fortress, running around said fortress like crazy, and then having to sneak all the way back out... I mean, I was a professional, it was no big deal. By which I mean I was wiped out.

"You look exhausted," Kay said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "I would advise coming away from the railing before you fall overboard."

I shrugged, bracing my hands on the rail. The water below us rippled away from the boat, flecked with a thousand tiny star reflections. "Don't worry about me. You guys just got out of prison."

He tugged me away from the railing anyway, and we rejoined the group sprawled in a circle on the other side of the deck.

"To Morane Laerhart!" Lucien cried out immediately, more theatrically than necessary. "For stealing us right out of a royal fort!" He toasted with a flask of what I hoped was just water, because he was bad enough completely sober.

I could have pointed out that it was Joshua who had really performed the stealing-of-prisoners part, but it wasn't like he was paying enough attention to care, what with staying on the other end of the boat and moping, so I didn't. "I'm pretty great," I agreed as I sat down.

Liz snickered. "Sure are."

"Is that sarcastic?" I asked, swatting her arm.

"Not even a little. I mean, you realize there's only one reason they would imprison us so far from the capital, where they'd normally want prisoners so important, right? They knew from the beginning that their biggest threat would be you breaking us out, so they tried to get us as far away as possible. And that didn't even remotely work."

"Well," I said with a grin, "When you put it that way..."

Wes raised his own flask. "New toast then— here's to messing up the princess's plans no matter how damn inconvenient!"

We laughed, but something made me linger on his words with confusion.

"Wait... the princess's plans?"

"Yeah," Evvie said, resting her head on Liz's shoulder. "We heard it from some exceptionally smug guards. She's the one who ordered those extra guards that caught us on the ship."

I gnawed my lip angrily for a moment. At least I had someone to blame now beside myself, but still... I hated that. Just a few months ago I'd been ready to work with her, to stand with her against Aiden and the rest of the Phoenix. And now she was responsible for this.

This wasn't about the past, I reminded myself; it wasn't about what could have been or where my conscience thought I should stand. It was about Jaden. I could afford to consider where I really wanted to be in this messy conflict only after I'd found him or his killer.

And Magali... she was a suspect. Maybe not the one I suspected most, but that could be her greatest strength. As the princess, she could have easily found out from Tobias who my mentor was, could have tried to ensure my loyalty by taking him out. It was an entirely possible connection, at least compared to Iso, one of my few other suspects, who had no reason to know who Jaden was.

Of my suspects, in fact, it was Aiden who had the strongest connection to Jaden that I knew of, with Luca out of the picture. And if we were ordering up suspects based on that, Joshua was second.

"Hey, lighten up. This is a good night." Kay nudged me into paying attention again.

"Sorry. I'm just tired. I think I'll go sort out His Royal Grumpiness over there and then get some sleep." I planted a hand on Wes's head to lever myself up, to his loud objections, and headed over to Joshua.