“Oh. Okay. Don’t do it again,” she finally managed.
Adrian straightened and flashed a sweet smile. “Thank you. I didn’t know dragons were real until recently. I thought they were legends and stories.”
A noise escaped Mio, and she waved his comment off. “Yes, well, be careful. A dragon would rather eat you than bother correcting you.” She turned on the balls of her feet and continued to lead the way through the tunnel.
Rayne didn’t know whether her warning was an exaggeration or the literal truth, but it didn’t feel like it was something he necessarily wanted to test out.
“Will you get in trouble for helping us?” Caelan inquired.
Her head tilted to one side and then the other, her white-blond hair sliding like a silken cascade down her back and shoulders with the movement. “It depends. If someone from a rival clan to the Takahashi discovers you’re in my house, it could cause problems. But if an ally of Takahashi or Clan Takahashi finds out, I can say I was bringing you to them, which would win me merit with the clan.” She stopped and spun around to stare at them, tapping her pale pink lips with one finger. There was a crafty look in her eyes that Rayne had to admire. Something about her reminded him of his younger sister, Zephyr. She was never daunted by anything and always had an answer as to how to turn things in her favor. “I’ve got some ideas. It will be fine.”
“Are you part of Clan Takahashi?”
Mio frowned as she turned away and resumed their walk through the dark tunnel. She moved as if she had no need of their bouncing flashlight illuminating the narrow path. “No, not a member of the clan,” she admitted after several seconds. “I’m sometimes a servant in the manor house. I scrub the floors and wash the dishes.”
“And I’m sure that makes you privy to all the interesting conversations that happen in the manor house and gives you a good awareness of what would most interest Takahashi Masaru,” Rayne quickly added.
She didn’t look at him, but he did notice that her head was held a little higher. “That is true,” she agreed.
It also meant that she could give them some good inside information on how to potentially handle the head of Clan Takahashi. They were walking into this situation completely blind, which did not feel like a wise position when dealing with hostile dragons.
“Do you know Drayce Ladon?” Caelan asked, and Rayne had to bite his bottom lip. He’d been debating whether to ask Mio or to hold off until they had a chance to get a better lay of the land. They had no idea how or why Drayce left the Isle of Stone in the first place, let alone whether he’d returned.
Mio glanced over her shoulder at Caelan, her brow puckering slightly. “He’s a dragon? I don’t know of anyone by that name.”
“He probably changed his name when he came to Erya,” Eno murmured.
“In his human form, he’s about my height with blond hair and emerald-green eyes. Goofy grin. As a dragon, his scales are all black.”
She shook her head. “The black dragons are part of Clan Takahashi, and I know all of them by name. There’s no Drayce. You must—” She stopped herself in the middle of her sentence and turned to face Caelan, her wide eyes locked on his face. “Unless you mean…Souta,” she said, the final word in a gasp, and immediately covered her mouth with both hands.
“What?” Caelan demanded, but she was already shaking her head and hurrying down the path at twice her earlier speed so that she was nearly jogging.
It didn’t take much for them to catch up with her. Caelan even darted in front of her and carefully grabbed both of her hands in his. “Please, what do you know? What’s Souta?”
“I can’t.”
“Please, Drayce is my best friend.” Caelan bent his knees and lowered his body so that he could gaze directly into her eyes. “He disappeared suddenly, and I need to find him. I need to make sure that he’s not hurt and that he’s safe.”
Rayne’s heart twisted as he waited for Mio to speak. She knew something, and it was not good. He moved around Mio to see her brow heavily lined as she chewed on her lower lip.
“You should forget about your Drayce,” she said at last in a low voice.
“I can’t. I won’t,” Caelan snapped.
“If he is here, we’re not leaving this island without him,” Rayne promised.
Mio looked at him and then Caelan before pulling her hands free in a huff. “You need to forget about him. If we’re talking about the same person, his name is Takahashi Souta, and he’s the youngest son of Takahashi Masaru. He was chosen to be the protector of the Guardian of the Godstone. If he’s back, it’s in disgrace.”