Laric wanted to argue, but she wasn’t wrong.
“Let’s just get back,” he said, looking up to see if Sashaak was still up there. Laric felt a vague, distant sense of Sashaak, but not enough that he thought he could tell if Sashaak remained connected to him quite as much as before. That sensation lingered, but nothing more than that.
“I can help once we do,” she said.
“I would appreciate it.”
“The others might want to as well.”
Laric sighed. “I wanted to keep them safe. All of them. And you.”
“By preventing them from doing anything?” Rowan asked.
“I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t think we were going to have to fight mages.”
“Well, if we side with Korthal, that might be what we have to do.”
He frowned as he climbed into the saddle, gathering himself. Was that what they had done? He hadn’t even considered that, but perhaps Rowan was right. Maybe they had sided with Korthal.
But if that was the case, then they might already be on the losing side.
Chapter Nineteen
By the time they reached the outskirts of town, Xavier had started to come around. He was moving a little slowly, and there was a quietness to him that left Laric a bit concerned. How injured had he actually been?
Laric knew that they had to be careful with him, and they had to be careful explaining to others what had happened to Xavier because that injury was going to raise questions about what they had been off doing. People had probably seen them leaving town.
“Where should we get him help?” Rowan asked.
“No help,” Xavier said, stirring long enough to sit upright in the saddle. “I’m well enough. I can feel myself getting better. I’m just… exhausted.”
Rowan shared a look with Laric. “Maybe that’s the effect of the healing? I honestly don’t know. I know that it takes something from the person, but I thought it was supposed to take something from me, not from him.”
It was one more thing that Laric wished he would’ve had an opportunity to ask Talia about, one more thing that would’ve been helpful for them to know more about when it came to power—what it meant and how to use it effectively. But even though Talia might have been teaching them about magic, Laric increasingly couldn’t help but feel as if she had been doling out information in such a way that would prevent them from learning as much as they wanted and needed to.
“I’m not sure either,” Laric said. “But if he wants us to take him home, then we can just take him home.”
“What about the horses?” Rowan asked.
“I have my stable,” Xavier said, attempting to punctuate each word with an emphasis but only managing to slur them, making it sound as if he had been in a tavern drinking too much ale.
Laric just shrugged, and between the two of them, they guided Xavier into town until they finally reached his home. Laric hadn’t spent any time here. It was one of the many homes that had suffered no damage during the dragon attack, which now left Laric wondering if perhaps Xavier owning the place had somehow influenced the dragon, even though the dragon had, in turn, been influenced by mages. It was possible that the dragon had still tried to fight and resist being used, but then again, it had only attacked the outskirts of town in the first place. There had been no attempt to destroy the main part of the city.
“Open the gate,” Xavier said. “I’m having a hard time getting my feet out of the straps.”
Laric scrambled down from the horse, thankful to be off its back. He thought about Malinar flying atop Sashaak, those images of the two of them traveling together that had come to him from Sashaak. Would that be how he would feel climbing off Sashaak as well?
And yet, the idea that he could fly on the dragon’s back seemed…
Well, it seemed impossible.
The only thing that Laric had been able to do with Sashaak so far had been to see through his eyes, and not to actually fly. He didn’t even have the sense that Sashaak wanted him to fly with him. In fact, the only sense that Laric really had was that Sashaak was aware of him and would gift him potential, but that was about it.
And now, in the time that they’d been back in town, he had a vague feeling from Sashaak, but nothing quite as clear as he had before. Maybe Sashaak had been off chasing the other dragon, hoping to try to save it?
Laric shook those thoughts away, reaching the gate in front of Xavier’s home and finding that it was not just locked, but there was power over it.
He glanced back at Xavier. “I need your key.”
“Oh,” Xavier muttered, and then he shook himself, managing to sit upright and then looking toward the side of his horse for just a moment. “I think I’m going to have to climb down and help. I don’t have a traditional sort of key.”
“Try your grandmother’s,” Rowan said to Laric.
“He wouldn’t know how to lock it the same way, would he?”
“Just try it,” she said.
Laric shrugged, then attempted to use his grandmother’s key, and surprisingly—though maybe not surprisingly—the lock popped open.
Maybe his grandmother had shown him some sort of universal key that would open any lock that was magically closed.
“See?” Xavier said. “You can do it.”
Laric locked eyes with Rowan again before shaking his head. “He really needs help.”
“I need sleep,” Xavier said. “And then we can talk.”
“What is there to talk about?” Laric asked. “Because right now, the only thing I think you need to do is get some rest, and then we need to…”
