Page 17 of The Mage and His Stolen Prince
I stared at him. “You told me.”
“No,” he said slowly. “Your dad and I planned to discuss it with you after breakfast.”
“But we already—”Haven’t we?
Dad squeezed Father’s hand and said, “This isn’t the most private location for this conversation. Why don’t we move to—”
Your office.Because that’s where this conversation was supposed to happen.
My fathers rushed through their meal and stood up, then waited for me in the doorway.
I stared down at my untouched plate. In my idle fidgeting, I’d shaped the eggs into a face: two eyes, a line for the nose, closed lips, long strands that might have been hair. Perhaps my subconscious mind was trying to tell me something.
Unfortunately, I was a shit artist, and itlookedlike an egg face. No one would ever recognize the subject, even if they were standing right next to it.
I abandoned the egg portrait and followed my fathers to the office. They sat on one side so that they could hold each other’s hands without having to reach over the desk, and I sat on the other side. I grabbed the chair’s arms, running my fingers along the wood. Feeling the slick varnish and the crevices of the grain.
Father called my name, voice soft and concerned.
“Just making surethisisn’t the dream,” I explained.
My fathers exchanged another worried look.
Anticipating their questions, I said, “No, I’m not feverish, and you don’t need to call the Good Wizard.”
“The Good Wizard?” Father asked. “Why would we need to call him? Is the problem magical?”
I threw my hands up in the air. “At this point, I have no idea. Everything feels wrong, like a play I’ve rehearsed for, but the director handed me a new script right before curtain call.”
“Fuck,” Dad muttered. Then he cleared his throat and refrained from cursing as he continued. “Tell us what you know.”
“I don’t even know what I know! When I try to focus, there’s nothing, but then you’ll say something, and my brain helpfully supplies my next line, but then you tell me I’mwrong. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Father raised a hand and said, “Deep breath, Trey. We’ll figure this out.” Then he inhaled deeply, his chest visibly rising, and held his breath.
I mimicked him, and we exhaled together. “Can we pretend I know nothing and start from the beginning?”
“If that would make this conversation easier,” he conceded. “But I am concerned about the cause of this memory fog.”
“Me too,” I muttered.
“We’ll consult the Good Wizard later.”
Dad’s face scrunched in silent complaint.
Father launched into his explanation about the conditions of the Kingdom Defense Spell. As he spoke, my thoughts seemed two seconds ahead of him, giving his words a strange echo in my mind. “The Kingdom Defense Spell that protects the Desolated Lands only holds together if all five kingdoms are united. There are two ways to do this: the first is through marriage—”
“Which is why the royal family trees are all tangled together,” Dad and I said at the same time.
Dad cringed. “Trey, I’m begging you—don’t predict what I’m going to say. It’s creepy.”
I hunched my shoulders and said, “Sorry, I just …” Nothing I said would make this situation easier to understand.
“We aredefinitelyconsulting the Good Wizard.”
Father waited until we’d settled down to continue his point. “The second option is for the kingdoms to send a royal champion on a quest to defeat a great and terrible evil.”
“Well, I’m not marrying Angelica.” I shuddered at the mere thought. “So a quest seems like the better option.”
