Page 111 of I Ran Away to Evil 3
“Ah, perfect, you’re back,” his mother greeted them as Julian escorted Gerda, arm in arm, into another private room just off of the main ballroom. The music of the masquerade could be heard a short distance away, the dancing and merriment in full swing and undisturbed by their absence.
“Mother.”
Gerda asked. “You called for us, Your Grace?”
“I did.” His mother was standing in the middle of the room, all of the furniture pushed aside. She was interacting with her abilities, her hands up in the air and her eyes darting back and forth at an unseen interface while magic swirled around her. “I trust you are both well?”
“Yes, no need to worry,” Julian reassured her, ignoring the fact that he had been unalive less than half an hour ago. It wasn’t his first Revive potion, so it didn’t faze him much.
“I always worry, son.” Her simple honesty left him uncomfortable. She followed it up with, “But perhaps less so now that you have Miss Gerda at your side.”
“It isn’t—” Julian started.
“He doesn’t—” Gerda said at the same time.
The two of them paused and then disentangled themselves.
“I’m afraid we’ve had a bit of trouble since you left,” Calisto spoke, her eyes never leaving her notification tabs. “Our Keeper of Fate took a walk tonight.”
“From your dimensional dungeon? How?” Gerda didn’t seem surprised, merely intrigued.
Julian shot her a look. For the barest second, he suspected her ofknowingthis was going to happen. She’d already made it clear that she wasn’t going to share all of the details of her foretellings … but his heart told him that the trollwouldn’thave let the celestial escape if she could prevent it … and she would have told him.
“Someone let her out.” Calisto pinched her thumb and index finger together then opened them wide in quick succession three times on her interface.
Julian pulled the key out of his storage.
Gerda noticed and asked, “Is there more than one key?”
“I have one,” Calisto replied. “And Knight Commander Karl. He’s the one who let me know that she’d escaped.”
Karl was an honorable, trustworthy half elf in charge of the Coral Mare Knights, but Julian knew the full weight of Alice’s powers. “Did he let her out himself?”
“No,” Calisto replied simply. “An invisible mage bypassed the guard and cut a hole into the subspace with a specialized Void power. Miss Alice walked out, and the pair teleported away.”
“Where?” Julian asked, knowing that the teleport restrictions were especially layered in that area of the coral palace.
“She went to the stairwell lobby, then appeared in the servants’ hall, then I’m assuming into a private room, and then to the east wing sky bridge, the herb garden, the wall, and then into the city,” his mother explained, unhappy. “It’s thehowthat frustrates me.”
“The ball iscrawlingwith rogues; any one of them could have let her go,” Gerda offered.
“Few are so powerful that they can break into a dimensional space—let alonemydimensional space,” Calisto said. For the first time, her eyes flickered from her task, briefly landing on his bridge troll. “It’s fortunate that you were accounted for all evening, Miss Gerda.”
“It is.” Gerda nodded, unintimidated.
“We have a few people we are investigating.” Calisto sighed as she closed her character sheets, waving them away with a soft gesture of her hand. She looked calm and collected, but his mother’s voice betrayed her aggravation. “Which is justlovely, as I now have until tomorrow to figure out the culprit and tell the Continental Council how I lost her.”
Julian asked after his first suspect. “Did Master Thomas let her out?”
“It couldn’t be Master Thomas,” Gerda interjected.
“Why not? I haven’t seen him all night.” Which meant she couldn’t have seen him either.
“Thomas is … um, busy. With important magical matters,” Gerda sidestepped the question. This after he’djustconvinced himself she wasn’t hiding anything important.
“I’ll need more than that,” Julian demanded, his voice harsher than he wanted it to be. Gerda could turn on him in an instant for overstepping, and the thought twisted a knot in his stomach.
Her eyes snapped to his, and he regretted it. She looked like she was trying to hide her frustration with him and failing. To his surprise, she grumbled a response.
