Page 20 of Chasing Tail
“No shit, Forrest. I’m trying to do the exact same thing with potions. I know the right potion for anything if I actually understand what I’m dealing with.”
Beck came charging into the room loudly enough to startle everyone. Callum nearly spilled his potions. Taron wasn’t the only one here who liked violence. Callum threw something at Beck’s head so hard, it sailed across the room and shattered against the wall.
“What was that for? And why are you into my potions supplies? Use your own. It took me ages to gather all these ingredients.”
“It’s an emergency, stupid. Kishi and Taron can’t talk because of magic. So we’re trying to help remove it.”
“You’re both stupid if you think you can remove a curse from these two. We all learned when we were children that we couldn’t remove a curse unless we know what it is. So how are you going to figure out a curse on two people when we don’t even knowwhatthey are?”
“And you’re lazy if you don’t even want to try,” Forrest snapped.
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t, but you know better. You could make things worse.”
Callum just grunted and threw something into his potion.
“Why did you come running in here like you were on fire and make me almost ruin this potion I’ve been working on?”
“Father is angry. His scouts returned to report wreckage on the beach, and it was definitely his best ship. Father wasn’t angry about the lives of the crew he sent. He was angry they failed the mission he sent them on. He’s being tight-lipped about what he wanted, but he’s not sending ships to look for survivors.”
“If the wreckage has reached shore already, then they haven’t been anywhere we don’t know about,” Forrest said. “The currents wouldn’t have taken it here, and none of the other surrounding countries would attack us.”
“Unless they came from one of the islands everyone thinks is empty,” Callum said.
“The ship had to have been far out based on how little wreckage they found,” Beck said. “If there were any survivors, they are still in the water holding onto parts of the ship. No one could have made that swim.”
This conversation was totally going the wrong way. Even though there was plenty about land I didn’t know and needed to figure out, this was the first time I felt out of my depth. Even if I wasn’t pretending I couldn’t speak, I didn’t know how to explain this in a way that would make sense to them.
I didn’t like where this was going at all. They were only a few steps away from thinking we were their enemy and giving us to their father. I started out just intending to use them to get to their father, but they had been nothing but kind to us so far. I wanted to work together, but I started this so wrong with my lies. I couldn’t fix it without breaking their trust.
“Not necessarily,” Forrest said. “When I touched Taron, I tried to use magic to figure out what he is. I still don’t know, but it reminded me of being in the ocean. Taron didn’t want me using magic on him anymore when he found out I had done that. So it’s entirely possible they could have swum here.”
“You’re supposed to be the smart one, Forrest,” Callum said. “It’s an excellent theory and the only one we have, but if these two are part of a secretive island race, why would they swim here instead of home if they could?”
“Focus on your potions, Callum. Iamthe smart one. You know Father. Look at Kishi and Taron. They both have excellent musculature. Taron threatened to stab me with a fork for touching Kishi. Neither of them would have gotten captured without a fight. Their people would have fought. Father hates witnesses and loose ends. You can imagine what the crew left behind.”
“Just stop,” Beck said. “We’re throwing out all these theories right in front of them, and they can’t tell us anything yet. Father isn’t looking for them, so we have time. There’s an excellent chance they are here because Father hurt them somehow. We’re probably making things worse trying to figure things out.”
Beck would have been correct if Taron and I were anyone else. We weren’t focusing on our losses at all or even remotely dealing with it because we were throwing ourselves into killing the man responsible for their deaths. We’d both have to deal with our grief eventually, and it was probably going to hit harder than a whale’s tail, but for now, we were utterly avoiding it. Their theories didn’t bother us. They weren’t onto the truth just yet, but they knew their father was an evil man.
I had a feeling these three druid princes had the best education in the entire kingdom. They’d figureda lotabout us by just observing us. All three of them were pretty damned close to the truth about us, even if they weren’t there yet.
They knew the truth about their father, though. Their immediate thought process when we met was that he was going to hurt us. Now that they had spent time around us and were trying to learn more about us, they’d figured out we were only here because their father had done something awful.
They hadn’t hit on one significant truth. We were here to kill their father and his wicked wife. But, honestly, we probably weren’t the only people who wanted him dead.
I was honestly hopingtheywanted him dead too because pretty soon, I was about to drop this farce I couldn’t speak, and I really didn’t want to hurt them.
