Chapter 78 Chapter 78

Chapter 78 Chapter 78

Isla's POV
The war room smelled like old parchment and cold tea by the time we finally sat down to actually plan instead of just reacting to whatever the day threw at us.

We'd put it off too long. Between the king and James and Alexandro's mouth and the creature nearly taking the courtyard apart, there hadn't been a single clear stretch of hours to do the thing that actually mattered most, which was finding the woman wearing my sister's face before she got the chance to point that creature at us again.
Devonye had the table covered in maps before I even sat down. Aretia and the surrounding territories, the Isle of the Lost marked with old ink that had faded, the stone circle where the egg had been kept circled twice in red like she didn't trust herself to mark it just once.

"Walk me through what we know." I said, taking a seat across from her.

"She's not stupid." Devonye said. "Whatever she is, whoever she actually is underneath Isma's face, she's been running a long plan with a lot of patience behind it. That tells us things."

"Like what." Twilight asked, sitting beside me, close enough that our knees almost touched under the table, neither of us making a point of moving away from it the way we used to.

"Like she doesn't waste resources." Devonye said. 

"She didn't lead us anywhere that didn't matter to the plan. Every step we took toward that egg was a step she wanted us taking. Which means everywhere we've been since meeting her is data. None of it was random."

I leaned over the map. "So where would she go now."

"Somewhere that still matters to the plan."Devonye said.

"She got the creature out. That part's done. But releasing it isn't the same as controlling it, and we saw today it doesn't fully listen to her, it listens to itself. So either she has a way to direct it that we haven't seen yet, or she's working on getting one."

"Which means she needs something else." Twilight said slowly, working through it the way she worked through everything, out loud, piece by piece. "Something that gives her actual control instead of just having let the thing loose."

"That's my guess." Devonye said.

"What would that be." I asked.

Devonye was quiet for a moment, looking at the map like the answer might be hiding somewhere in the old ink.

"The same kind of thing that sealed it in the first place." She said finally. "Twelve dragons and three riders bound that creature into the egg. If there's a way to control something that powerful instead of just contain it, it's probably tied to whatever ritual they used. And rituals like that leave traces. Records. Places."

"The druid settlement." Twilight said.

I looked at her. "You think Ivy and the others would have something."

"I think if anyone in this part of the world kept records of how something that old got sealed, it's people who specialize in exactly that kind of old magic." She said. "Ivy didn't tell us everything when we visited the Isle. I felt that the whole time we were there. She was careful about what she shared."

"Careful like she was protecting something, or careful like she didn't trust us yet." I asked.

"Maybe both." Twilight said.

Devonye tapped the map near the marking for the Isle. "If the false Isma is looking for the same records, that's where she'd go. Or somewhere connected to it. The druids have always kept their archives scattered, never in one place, precisely so nobody could walk in and take everything at once."

"Then we go to Ivy first." I said. "Before she gets there, if she hasn't already."

"There's a problem with that." Devonye said.

"There's always a problem." I said, not quite managing to keep the tiredness out of my voice.

"The Isle isn't friendly territory for us right now." 
She said. "Last time we were there it was under specific circumstances and specific trust that took time to build. Walking back in cold, with a kingdom-sized crisis behind us and a creature loose because of choices we made there, that's not the same welcome."

Twilight rubbed at her eyes. "So we need someone they already trust to go first."

"I can go." I said.

Both of them looked at me.

"Ivy spoke to me directly more than she spoke to either of you when we were there." I said. "I don't think that was random either. I think she was testing something, the way she tests everyone, and I think whatever she was testing, I passed it in some way that mattered to her."

"You never told me that." Twilight said, and there wasn't accusation in it, just genuine surprise, the look of someone realizing there was a piece of the picture she hadn't had.

"It didn't seem important at the time." I said. "It felt private. The kind of conversation that wasn't mine to repeat."

"What did she say." Devonye asked.

I hesitated, because some of it still felt like it belonged only to that conversation, but this wasn't a moment for holding things back.

"She asked about my sister." I said. "Not Isma like everyone else asks, careful and sympathetic. She asked specific things. Whether Isma had ever shown interest in old magic. Whether she'd ever disappeared for stretches of time that I couldn't account for. Whether I'd ever felt like the sister I grew up with and the sister I lost were entirely the same person."

The room went quiet.

"You think Ivy knows something." Twilight said slowly. "About what actually happened to Isma."
"I think Ivy's known more than she's said since the day we met her." I said. "And I think if I go back alone, without the weight of everything Aretia's carrying right now walking in with me, she might finally tell me."

Twilight was quiet for a long moment, and I could see her working through the part of this she didn't like, which was the part where I went somewhere without her.

"I don't love this plan." She said finally.

"I know." I said.

"The creature's still out there. If something happens while you're on the Isle and I'm here—"

"Then you'll handle it the way you handle everything." I said, reaching over and taking her hand under the table, away from anyone else's eyes even though it was just the three of us in the room.

"And I'll come back as fast as I can. This isn't about leaving you. It's about getting the one piece of this we can't get any other way."

She looked at our hands for a moment, then back at my face.

"Take Nixon." She said.

I blinked. "Nixon."

"He's been trying to earn something back." She said. "Give him a real chance to do it. Somewhere that matters. And he's good in unfamiliar territory, you know that as well as I do."

I thought about it. There was a version of me from a few weeks ago that would have refused outright, that would have said no, not him, not after what he did. But something had shifted since then, slow and quiet, the kind of shift that happens through a hundred small honest moments instead of one big dramatic one.

"Alright." I said. "Nixon."

Devonye was already rolling up the relevant section of the map. "I'll get you both supplies by morning. Fast travel, light packs, nothing that slows you down."

"How long." Twilight asked.

"However long it takes to get Ivy talking." I said. 

"I'm hoping not long. She doesn't strike me as someone who needed much convincing once she decided something mattered enough."

Twilight nodded slowly, accepting it the way she'd had to accept so many hard things lately, and squeezed my hand once before letting go, the careful boundary of public space settling back over us even here in a room with only people who already knew.

"Be careful." She said. "Whatever Ivy knows about Isma, it's probably not simple. Nothing about any of this has been simple."

"I know." I said. "I'll be careful."

“No, be really careful.” She said, holding my shoulders and looking deep into my eyes.

I left the war room a few hours later with Nixon already waiting near the stables, a pack slung over one shoulder, looking more alert and purposeful than I'd seen him look since this whole mess started. He fell into step beside me without a word and we walked toward the gate together, toward the Isle, toward whatever Ivy had been carrying since the day we first met her.

Somewhere behind us Twilight was still standing in the war room with Devonye, and somewhere above the kingdom the creature was still circling, patient as ever, waiting for whatever came next.

I didn't look back. I couldn't afford to. There was a sister out there, somewhere, real or gone or something in between, and I was finally going to find out which.