“Hang on, what do you mean, there’s still no sign of Dare!?” As those words exploded out of me, I was on my feet, having bolted up out of the chair that Athena and Abigail had invited me to sit in as soon I answered their summons the next morning. Whatever I’d been expecting to hear from them, it wasn’t that it had been over twenty-four hours since anyone heard from Dare.

  I’d spent the last few hours I was conscious the day before talking to Sariel and telling her everything I knew about Cassiel. She had been, uh, surprised to find out there was a whole sort-of Seosten she couldn’t remember at all. And when I added in the part about them being a human from one of the worlds that Sariel’s Orb-child had made, who was transformed into a Seosten and sent to meet them in Tartarus the day they’d saved Chayyiel from that place? Yeah, it was kind of an involved conversation. By the time it was finally over, all I could do was sleep.

  Seriously, that was a busy day. Finding myself on the Fomorian world after finally closing all the rifts, absorbing every memory of all my individual selves going through their own adventures, getting back off the Fomorian world, making it to what turned out to be Crossroads, escaping the place with the magically transforming sapient ship lighthouse, then going right back out again to save Gaia? Even my ability to go without sleep was pushed right up to the limit. I had been out.

  It was a nice sleep too, the best, longest rest I’d had in awhile. Then I woke up, had breakfast with Tabbris, Shiori, Columbus, Vanessa, and Tristan, and got this summons. I had assumed it was to talk about the rifts themselves, or maybe about Ehn, or even something to do with Jacob. The list of things they might’ve wanted to talk about wasn’t exactly short. And then they hit me with this news instead. News that made me bolt to my feet and stare at the two of them in utter disbelief. “How could she still be missing? She can’t be missing, she’s-- I mean, she has to be around somewhere. Why wouldn’t she check in? How could she just-- how could anyone-- I--”

  Abigail held a hand up to stop me, speaking carefully after giving a quick glance at Athena. “I know you’re close to Professor Dare, Flick. That’s why we wanted to let you know. We don’t think anything… we know she’s alive. They have magic that can tell us that much. She is alive.”

  “And she was in well enough health to send the package with her blood, so we could complete the spell to track Gaia’s location,” Athena noted. “Which means she knew she couldn’t make it away from whatever might have been delaying her soon enough to help with the rescue. There’s no reason to panic now and assume the worst just because she’s been out of reach for even longer than that. The only reason we’re bringing it up now is because… well, we thought that once things calmed down last night, we’d either be able to contact her, or track her down."

  Abigail was nodding. “Yes, but just because neither of those things have happened doesn’t mean she’s in any worse of a position than she was in when she sent that package. Don’t jump to the worst conclusions. There are plenty of reasons she might have had to go off the grid.”

  “Yeah, she’s alive, I think--” Fuck, I was so out of it, I almost said something about how we would know pretty quickly if she was dead. Which would’ve led to needing to explain why it would be so obvious. The Fomorian Banishment spell had already reacted badly enough to just Koren and me finding out. I couldn’t imagine what it might do if Athena and Abigail got added to the list.

  Shoving that impulse down, I changed it to a simple, “I know she’s alive, she has to be. It’s Dare. Whatever she was doing yesterday was important enough that she couldn’t come back, even to save Gaia. It had to be something pretty big. But why isn’t she back yet? Why hasn’t she even checked in to find out if Gaia’s okay? Do… do you think it went wrong? Do.. fuck, do you think the Loyalists took her?” That could be pretty bad on its own, especially since we’d just saved Gaia from those fucks after a year of imprisonment. If they had Dare now, on the same day that we’d finally rescued Gaia, I… yup, I might just go scream in a corner for a solid hour or two.

  “We don’t think it’s the Loyalists,” Athena carefully answered. “Or any other Boscher group. I took the liberty of speaking with a couple of our deep cover spies, and they insist that there’s no sign of any high profile prisoners. Or any other prisoners, for that matter. The Loyalist leadership are too angry about losing Crossroads island, the Heretical Edge itself, and Gaia. If they had the kind of leverage Virginia Dare would present to offset that, there would be some sign of it.”

  Abigail hesitated, glancing away thoughtfully before looking at me. “And uh, beyond that, there hasn’t been any word about any of the Loyalists ever seeing Dare yesterday. It’s possible that something might’ve happened and they’re just not talking about it, but… well, it’s Virginia Dare. She’s close to Gaia. As Athena said, if there was an incident involving her on the same day Gaia was rescued, you’d think they’d be talking about it. Even if they didn’t catch her, or… or worse.”

  I was quiet, so Athena spoke up again, her voice very matter-of-fact. “As far as we can tell, no one on that side even knows she’s missing. And our attempts to track her magically have been… unsuccessful. Either it’s being blocked by strong magic, or she’s not on this world now.”

  Fuck, fuck, shit, god damn it, why did this have to come up right now? Was it just completely fucking impossible to get a break for five minutes? We went through all that, all of that shit, and now there was a whole new problem? Dare was missing, maybe offworld. If she really was away from the planet, that was bad, right? Bad for the banishment spell. How long would it stay up if she didn’t make it back? Assuming she was gone to begin with. She might still be here, but how could we find out? And how could I even ask them about anything even slightly related to the banishment spell without instantly giving away why I was asking? I couldn’t talk about this with anyone but Koren, and she didn’t know any more than I did. We didn’t-- wait, hold on. I was being dumb, there was one other person who knew the truth, one person I could talk to now.

  “Gaia,” I blurted quickly. “She might know how to find Dare, how to make sure she’s-- she might know something. Have you asked her about it? Have you told her about what’s going on yet?

  Abigail shook her head. “Gaia’s been through enough. We don’t think it’s a good idea to make her start exerting herself again. She already had to help save herself, and we have no idea how taxing it was to control those ships for so long. After spending the past year in that suspended animation cell, we don’t want to push her too far, too fast. Don’t you think she deserves a rest?”

  “Yeah, she does,” I agreed. “But one thing I’ve learned over the past couple years is you don’t always get what you deserve. And if we don’t tell Gaia what’s going on with Dare, it’ll be worse than just disturbing her rest. I-- she cares about her. Dare’s been her apprentice for a long time. Why do you think Dare’s blood worked as part of the tracking spell? It’s like you said, Dare and Gaia are close. They’d both want to know about the other being missing. Gaia would want us to tell her.” And I had to tell Gaia because she was literally the only other person I could talk to about the extenuating circumstances in this case, who might actually be able to answer some very important questions. Like, is the entire world about to be invaded by the Fomorian armada?

  Abigail started to argue that point, but Athena stopped her. “Felicity is correct, Gaia would want to know.” She gave me a brief, curious glance before continuing. “As much as I would like to let the poor woman have a few precious days of rest, if not weeks, time may be of the essence here. As bad as it might be to interrupt her recovery, it would be worse to have to tell her that something happened to Virginia Dare that she could have prevented if we had involved her in the first place. And, to be totally honest, if something did happen to Virginia, I would be… upset.”

  “We’d all be upset,” Abigail agreed, letting out an audible breath. “Fine, okay, I guess you’re both right. We can find out if Gaia knows anything that could help. Just let me make sure she hasn’t checked in while we were talking.” She rose, moving to the other side of her office to make the call. I heard murmured voices for a few seconds before she disconnected and quietly cursed.

  “Right, gonna take that to mean we’ve still got nothing.” Grimacing, I checked the time. “It’s still a little early, but I’m pretty sure they’ll be up by now. Probably having breakfast. I just-- great.” It was my turn to mutter a curse, before turning. “I’ll talk to her. If um, if you guys hear anything…”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “You’ll be the third to know,” Abigail promised. “And Flick, see if Gaia can come up with a list of any enemies Dare might’ve been trying to deal with yesterday who aren’t part of the Loyalists.”

  “Yeah, I’ll--” I started before freezing. I went completely motionless, then cursed. Then I cursed again, pivoting to kick the chair out of the way, the cursing coming faster and more incoherently.

  “Felicity,” Athena interrupted, her voice sharp, “use some slightly more helpful words, please.”

  “Bell!” I finally managed, before pushing on with words that were even more helpful than that. “I mean, Joseph Bell. I mean, Bedivere! I mean, Invidia-- wait. Hold on.” My hands covered my face as I took a few deep breaths, struggling to get myself under control. Yes, there was a threat that might’ve taken advantage of all the distractions yesterday to actually do something to Dare.

  Well, it was safe to say I had their rapt attention now. Both Abigail and Athena were hanging on my every word. I just had to calm down enough to explain what the hell I was talking about.

  Deep breaths, Hot Type suggested. We don’t know Invidia’s involved, this might just be an unrelated thing keeping Dare out of contact. Hell, we don’t even know if Bell is still possessed at all. Jacob might’ve done something about that already. The guy has been keeping himself busy.

  They were right, of course. But I still needed to explain, just in case Invidia was still puppeting the leader of Crossroads’ investigation team. So, after calming down enough to actually make myself understood, I launched into it. I told them all about what had happened back at that rift, and how it ended. Most importantly, I told them about Bell-Bedivere, ending with, “So, maybe Jacob did something about it, I don’t know. But either way, we need to find out for sure. I just have no idea how we’re supposed to do that. I mean, it’s not like we can just call Crossroads and say, ‘hey, here’s a fun little spell that’ll tell you if any of your people are possessed, would you mind using it on Joseph Bell real quick? Sure, go ahead and put us on hold, we’ll wait.’”

  For a long moment, both women just stared at me in complete silence. Finally, Athena very slowly summarized it. “You’re telling us that the Whisper who possessed the ghost of Charmeine and started calling herself Invidia has also possessed the founder and leader of Crossroads’ investigative division, who happens to secretly be one of Arthur’s own knights? Bedivere. He was Bedivere the whole time…Your ancestor.”

  I coughed despite myself, offering a weak shrug. “When you put it like that, it sounds absurd. But, um, yeah. That’s exactly what I’m saying. And I'm also saying that she has every reason to go after Dare. If she is still possessing Bell, she might’ve been able to get close without Dare realizing just how bad it was. She might’ve thought Bell was on our side, or that-- I don’t know, I don’t know! We just have to find her, we have to find Dare, find out if Bell is possessed, and--”

  Abigail was in front of me. Her hands found my shoulders, squeezing. “Flick, breathe, it’s okay. We’ll figure it out. First things first, we check on Dare. And the best way to do that is still Gaia.”

  With a nod of agreement, Athena started moving to the door, already taking some sort of communication stone out. “Yes, and I will… ahem, see what I can find out when it comes to Joseph Bell himself. There are still some of my people back in the Imperium who are willing to talk to me, and a few of them might be able to get close enough to Bell to check for possession.”

  “Wait!” I snapped quickly. “They have to be careful. I mean, look, Bell was really smart to begin with. He wasn’t made the head of the investigators by accident. He was the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes! And Invidia isn’t dumb either. If she is still possessing him, she’ll be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. Especially right now. She’ll know I’m back from the rifts.”

  Athena’s mouth opened, probably to tell me that she knew what she was doing, and that her people could be very subtle when they had to be. Then she paused, considering briefly before giving a slight nod. “I will make sure to stress just how dangerous it is, and make it clear that they should exercise extreme caution. But they will stand a better chance than any of us at finding out for certain. Unless…” She squinted at me. “If you could make contact with Jacob somehow, he could tell us for certain whether he’s done anything about that particular situation. And he could answer a few other things while he’s at it. I, for one, have a long list of questions.”

  “You’re not the only one,” I replied flatly. “And if I knew how to contact him, believe me, I would have already. But I don’t. I have no idea where he is, why he hasn’t shown up to explain things now, or… fuck, anything. I don’t know. All we can do is wait for him to come to us. Unless I’m supposed to try to guess where he might be, like… like the Roundabout, or our old house, or…”

  “One thing at a time,” Abigail put in before I could spiral too far. “Getting answers out of Jacob can wait for now. Go talk to Gaia. We’ll see what we can find out on this end. And Flick, I’m sure Virginia is okay. She did send that package, so she had to know she’d be out of reach for awhile. I doubt she would’ve had a chance to do that if she was being ambushed by Invidia. Like I said before, let’s not start jumping to panicked conclusions already. Wherever she is, she’ll be okay.”

  I hoped she was right, for all our sakes. For the sake of the entire world, not that I could actually say that. I had no idea what would happen to that spell if Dare was-- fuck, I wasn’t thinking that.

  Yeah, Hot Type agreed, let’s just nip that whole line of thought in the bud. Dare’s fine. She sent that package. She knew she was going to be gone. Like Abigail said, it’s not like Invidia would have let her do that if she was holding her prisoner. There’s no way Invidia wanted Gaia to be free. So, take a deep breath and stop panicking. The spell’s still intact. We’d know if it wasn’t.

  Right, right, yeah, of course. Obviously, we’d know pretty quickly if the spell went down. It was still up, so Dare was okay. Wherever she was, whatever was going on, she was okay. I just had to hope she stayed that way until we found her. Gaia could help with that, and with all the questions I had about the spell itself. I could talk to her. She was back, I could talk about all this.

  I was already over three-quarters of the way down the corridor by that point, before slowing what had been a full-on sprint. You don’t think I’m pushing this whole ‘talk to Gaia about Dare’ thing so hard just because I’ve really missed her and want the excuse to drag her into things already, do you? I mean, I did miss her, and I do want to talk to her about everything. But she deserves more than one night of rest. If I drag her into all this now and it turns out Dare is fine, I can’t--

  “Yo!” A sudden voice cut through my thoughts, making me jump a bit. I’d been so focused on talking to Hot Type I hadn’t even noticed that anyone else was even in the hall with me, let alone close enough to talk. That, uh, probably wasn’t a good habit to get into. Even if it was just Koren this time. She was right there, giving me a weird look. “You awake there, Flick? You heard about Dare, right? She’s still gone. Which means… you know.” She wasn’t whispering, but I could see half a dozen or so assorted secrecy spells on coins and stones in her hand. Even then, she still didn’t say it out loud. The ‘you know’ was more than enough. Wyatt really had taught her well.

  “Yeah, I know,” I confirmed. “I was just gonna go talk to Gaia about it. Come on.” With that, I started moving again, trying not to run that time. This was important, yes, but if both of us went sprinting through the halls like terrified chickens, it might make someone ask why Dare being gone was that big of a deal. And that was just… not something I wanted to get into right then.

  The two of us headed for the quarters that Gaia had been given. Partway there, I realized we actually did have an easy way to talk about this without any chance of anyone else overhearing. With the other girl's permission, I touched her shoulder and possessed her. Just like that, we could talk in complete privacy. I told her everything I was thinking, and she told me that she had actually been doing some ‘independent research’ into the banishment spell off and on over the past year. From that, as far as she could tell, the spell would be passed on to someone else if Dare died. It wasn’t clear who or how exactly that would happen, just that it would. And if she was gone from Earth, it would take a few days for the spell to totally collapse, but it would get weaker over time and we’d see and feel the effects of it getting worse. And yes, that included us here on the station, all the way out in the middle of the sun. Everyone in the solar system would feel it. So, great, if Dare was off the planet somehow, we had a couple days left before the whole spell would collapse and the Fomorians could invade. But at least we’d probably know it was happening within a few more hours.

  Of course, that would also make things worse. Because as soon as the signs that the spell was starting to weaken started to happen, others would connect it to Dare being missing, and start to realize what that meant. Which would damage the spell even faster. But we didn’t have to worry about it, because Dare was absolutely still down there on the planet, right?

  Right?

  Eventually, I stepped out of Koren as we approached the doors leading into Gaia’s quarters. The two of us looked at each other with matching winces about what we were about to do, then I reached out to ring the buzzer.

  At least, I started to. But the door slid open soundlessly before my hand was halfway there. Gaia was standing in the doorway. The sight of her made me gasp reflexively. Even after losing her for the past year, even though she was clearly still malnourished and tired, Gaia Sinclaire radiated authority and power. I had the strangest urge to bow. She looked at Koren, then to me, a grim smile appearing. “I thought you might be on your way. Come in.

  “It seems we have much to talk about.”

  Joke Tags: Either That Arc Title Is An Evil Misdirect Or They Won’t Actually Need To Deal With All This Right Now. And I’m Pretty Sure I Know Which One The Audience Would Prefer