Once again, I swivel to Carrick. “You weren’t able to take any of them out?”
He shakes his head grimly. “Like Boral said, everyone has left. I suppose blowing up her house put a little fear into them.”
“It was still the right thing to do,” Rainey says primly. “You saved human lives, Carrick.”
He nods in agreement. “It’s all about the choices we make with what’s presented to us at the time.”
“Like trading me for the Blood Stone,” I murmur, leaning over and briefly resting my head on his shoulder. A thank you, of sorts. “Although, you know keeping the Blood Stone would have been a sound choice.”
“No, it wouldn’t have,” Carrick rebukes, and I lift my head. “Putting aside the fact that I wanted you alive and well for my own selfish reasons, Onyx has said you’re going to have to be the one to battle Kymaris. I don’t think it was meant to be down in a dank dungeon. It’s going to be a final showdown at the ritual, I believe.”
It’s all conjecture at this point, but I have to agree with Carrick about the way things have been transpiring. Kymaris and her minions have gone into hiding. We can use the time trying to find them or trying to figure out where the ritual will be and making our stand there.
“Game isn’t over until the final buzzer sounds,” Maddox points out.
“That’s right,” Zaid says confidently. “We have nineteen days until the new moon. Anything can happen.”
“One thing must happen,” I say, setting my sandwich down as I slowly scan around the island so I can meet every eye. “We have to go rescue Zora. Now.”
No one says a word.
They all have varying opinions, and they stay silent because we’ve hashed them all out already.
Carrick, the one who has been the most skeptical of my sister, breaks the silence. “Agreed. That has to be our priority.”
Rainey looks appalled, but everyone else is immediately accepting as evidenced by their nods and determined expressions. She sees it, too, so she says nothing.
“Everyone should be relatively safe here,” Carrick continues. “Without the Blood Stone in residence, there’s no reason for Kymaris to assault us here. She’s made enough references to settling the score with Finley on the ritual battlefield, so to speak, that I think it’s safe here.”
“Plus, she’s in hiding,” Myles points out. “Along with all her minions.”
“I’ll reach out to Kaesar,” Boral says from the end of the counter where he’d parked his stool beside Maddox. “The worst that will happen is he won’t answer my calls.”
Being able to get inside information now is a long shot. Boral was invaluable through his connection to Kaesar, but I suspect everyone in Kymaris’ camp is keeping their heads down and circling the wagons tight.
But that doesn’t mean Boral’s useless.
I lean in his direction, having to look past Rainey and Myles to do so. “You’re our expert on the Underworld. You’ll have to be the one who guides us.”
Boral nods. “As I told you when we were in Micah’s realm, I’ll be glad to help.”
For the first time since I can remember, Zaid doesn’t scoff at something his father says. He’s normally extremely dubious of Boral’s intentions, and he never minds being vocal about it. Instead, he just studies his father with an almost detached curiosity, as if he might believe that some good can come from the Dark Fae.
“Should we go in through Micah’s realm?” Carrick’s lower hand comes to my back, perhaps as a quiet means of support that he doesn’t mind me taking the lead on the planning, or, more likely, because he just wants to touch me. Regardless, I like it.
Boral considers my question. “What you have to know about the Underworld is it is so vast that you could travel through it for a hundred years and not see it all. The Underworld is even more vast than the Earth realm.”
I blink in surprise, thinking of the time I projected into Zora through a dream. It seemed like a massively big city inside an even larger underground cave, but I hadn’t considered there was more.
“The Crimson River leads to The Pit, which is close to Kymaris’ castle. It would be easy to get there, but then how would you even find your sister?”
My heart sinks as I realize our first obstacle is a doozy. “When I projected into her during the dream, the city she was in was near The Pit. I could see the glow of it from there.”
Boral’s smile is grim. “That’s the city of Otaxis. One of the largest. Making it there isn’t the problem. Searching through the thousands of Dark Fae to find your sister will be, though.”
Growling in frustration, I lean away from the counter and cross my arms over my chest. I stare blankly at the rest of my sandwich before turning to Carrick. “I can contact her again. Tell her we’re coming.”