Page 57 of To Fight and To Fold

Behind her, Runa stiffened, sliding around Aaryn to stand in front of her.

"Oh, yeah, sic your stupid guard on me!" Carissa barked, and Aaryn winced, peering out from behind Runa's imposing figure to meet Carissa's eyes.

"About what? What happened?" Aaryn asked, stomach lurching. Had another dragon been taken?

"Rolim is gone. Where is he?"

Oh. Not a dragon, but Carissa's paramour.

Aaryn studied her. Her eyes were red, presumably from crying, and her hands were fisted in her skirts. Her hair was down and long—silly that for even a moment Aaryn had mistaken her for Thea—and it was windswept, in peach chaos.

"Would you like to come inside?" Aaryn asked, motioning to the door of her quarters before any other Tethered returned to their rooms and overheard them. The question seemed to deflate Carissa, and she nodded, though her lips were in a tight line.

"Runa, it's okay," Aaryn said, and stepped around her. The guard seemed resistant, narrowing her gaze at the other Tethered.

"I'll be listening," she said. "I won't hesitate to barge in the moment I think something is amiss."

"Thank you for your diligence," Aaryn told her, and meant it.

She didn't think Carissa wanted to harm her; she was just upset about… Rolim.

Once inside, Carissa halted in the center of the room, breath puffing out, her chest heaving. Tears were welling in the corner of her eyes, but she held them back.

"So, start from the beginning. What happened?" Aaryn asked, keeping her voice low.

Carissa threw her hands up, not caring to do the same. "Wouldn't you know, with your hands all in the prince's pot? You told them a bunch of gossip and now they've gone and taken him!"

"The Guard took Rolim?" The prince told her they hadn't found anything of note in their investigation.

He could've been lying.

It felt forbidden for the thought to cross her mind, and she glanced guiltily toward the door before focusing on Carissa.

"Well, I assume it was the Guard! He returned from a mission just two days ago, did their stupid interview, and now he's been gone since this morning. Just… gone!"

"So you didn't see them take him?" she pressed, motioning with her hands to keep their voices down. Because if the Guard hadn’t taken him… had someone else? Or maybe he'd left of his own accord—like Thea had.

Carissa's eyes narrowed, but she took a deep breath and finally whispered, "No! We were supposed to eat breakfast together, start the morning with one another, but he never showed, and he's not at the barracks, and no one has seen him!"

Aaryn frowned, beginning to pace. "So you told the other guards that he's gone? How did they react?"

Carissa bit down on her lip as her eyes finally grew too full and a tear spilled down her cheek. "They didn't seem concerned. That's why I think they're the ones who took him—why else would they not be worried? Unless they're the ones that know where he is."

Aaryn’s brow furrowed, following her logic. "And they already interrogated him for Starspark's disappearance? How long ago?"

Carissa nodded. "Right after he got back from his patrol with Stormstrike. They did that before he was even able to come see me."

Aaryn's heart began to pound. If the crown thought he knew something, they wouldn't have released him back on duty.

What if the druids took him? Or… what if he was like Thea, and decided to leave before he'd been caught?

"Did you check his rooms?"

She shook her head, raising her hand to bite at her nail. "No. They wouldn't let me in."

Aaryn hummed, deep in thought. Either he had left Carissa behind, returning to the druid's circle—a term she'd learned during her research—and the soldiers were trying to cover it up, or…

Or the crown really had taken him.