Alastair’s eyes flick quickly between Shira and Alora as he curls his fingers around his spellbook.
“Oh, I can promise you won’t,” he murmurs. There’s an undertone of deep, frantic amusement that threads through his voice. Jaylie can’t pinpoint the reason—until she catches his gaze snapping to the orb.
In a blink, Jaylie rushes toward him—but Alastair is much faster. His spellbook begins to glow just as he shoots his free hand forward and tears the staff from Shira’s grasp.
The last Jaylie sees of him is a flash of too-white teeth as he teleports away in a cloud of smoke.
In the silence that lingers in the library, Kain finally gives voice to all of their thoughts.
“Well, shit.”
Shira paces violently from wall to wall. At the rate she’s going, Jaylie reckons she’ll carve a valley down the center of her kitchen by sundown. For hours they had all sat in the dining room, strategizing what the Hell they were meant to do without their most powerful weapon.
“If it were a duel between me and Aurelio alone, I could likely best him,” Shira mutters. “It would be difficult, but possible.”
“I won’t risk you like that,” Alora insists. Despite Shira’s tired assurances, Alora still wrings her hands in her lap, feeling responsible. Guilt hangs around her in a cloud.
Shira shakes her head. “I doubt I could get that close to him anyway. The situation is much worse. We know from the wedding that his estate is crawling with guards. And I’m sure given my last entrance, they’ll attack me on sight.”
Loren clears his throat nervously. “You don’t think Alastair would give the orb to Donati, do you?”
Shira bares her teeth at the mention of the traitorous wizard, but she shakes her head quickly. “He cares little for Donati. I imagine he’s holing away in some dark cave, happy to conduct his experiments alone.”
“Can we go to the City Watch?” Jaylie asks. “You said you had reports, and piles of research. Would it be enough to convince them to act?”
Shira sighs. “We can try. But with your party gone this long, I expect Aurelio has realized that something’s gone wrong. He’s probably spinning tales and preparing for the worst as we speak.”
Morgana steps forward, muscular arms crossed over her chest. “Why don’t we play his game, then?”
Shira narrows her eyes. “How do you mean?”
“He’s got allies, wealth, power.” Morgana ticks off on her fingers. “Do we have friends we can call on? What about all of thecitizens he’s wronged—don’t they want to fight back, too? Fuck the Watch. We’ll go straight to the people. We’ll spread the word, see who shows up, then knock his fucking front door down.”
Her words are met with a heavy, thoughtful quiet—and then the energy in the room shifts. Loren’s lips slowly stretch into a grin. “I do know a thing or two about circulating a good story.”
“And as soon as I tell my father what Donati has done to me, we can certainly expect my family’s allies to show en force,” Alora adds.
Suddenly everyone’s full of ideas.
“We could tell Dorna, too,” Jaylie muses. “She’ll be eager to shake off the reputation of ever having worked with him. And she’ll have plenty of fresh young faces looking to make a name for themselves.” She knows because she was one.
“I have friends, too,” Kain says. He offers nothing more.
Shira sighs. “I suppose it’s a start. Let’s give it a week, then. We’ll do all we can, and then we’ll return to Belandar with whatever we’ve got.”
For the first two days, no one answers the call.
But on the morning of the third day, a stern-looking elf clad in shining plate armor raps a demanding beat into Shira’s front door. As soon as Alora sees him, she jumps into his arms, elated.
Three dozen soldiers from the Clares’ personal guard are the first to arrive. Alora was right; once she told her family of Donati’s crimes, their offended pride and need to protect their own was nearly enough for Alora’s father to declare war.
Next are the students from the Academy, led by a tall elven woman with a sparkling enchanted sword at her hip. She’s flanked on either side by a raven-haired enchantress with fire in her eyes and a smirking sorceress with bright red hair bound into twin buns at the back of her head. The trio makes quick work of setting up camp for the crowd of students that follows in their wake. Some had heard whispers of Donati’s crimes, while others had alwaysremained secret allies of Shira. They hail from magical circles within the realm’s major cities, and they appear on her lawn through portals, by flying carpet, after transforming into winged animals, and more.
But it’s Dorna’s connections who really answer the call. When Jaylie had first approached her, agreeing to meet at a small tavern not far from the tower, Dorna had nearly killed her with the daggers in her eyes alone. “You’ve got a lot of fuckin’ nerve showing up here when you are at the very top of my shit list.” But after the priestess had quickly explained the whole story, Dorna’s features had calmed, her brows drawing low over her eyes. “Fuckin’ Hell,” she said with a sigh. “It’s short notice. But I’ll see what I can do.”
After that, they come from all over the realm.
Adventurers, always hungry for a chance at fame, glory, and gold, show up in droves. As Jaylie walks through the makeshift camps set up outside of Shira’s tower, she watches them spar. A half-orc with her hair pulled back into dozens of braids dances circles with her rapier around a laughing blond boy wielding a sword. Across from them, Kain trains with a woman with a gem embedded in her greatsword. When he scores his first hit—a shallow cut to her upper arm—a boy in a green hood rushes out with a small crystal gripped in his fist to heal her wound. Morgana hovers off to the side, trading daggers and tips with a blue-haired halfling, an emerald-eyed elf, and a human woman with a scar across her freckled nose. Morgana waves at Jaylie as she passes, and the freckled woman meets her eyes and offers a friendly smile.
