Even as Bordan held out the glowing sending stone for him to take, Asher hesitated for a moment. Up until now, first with his letter and then with his unexpected call, Donvath had managed to surprise him both times he wanted to convey information. This was the first time Asher was the one reaching out to the High Prince.

  The man in charge of an entire kingdom filled with hundreds of thousands of citizens, if not more.

  Steeling his nerves, Asher nodded as he took the sending stone from Bordan. “Uh… You wouldn’t happen to have a private room I could use or anything, would you?”

  “Seriously?” Bordan asked, raising an eyebrow. “You do realize the High Prince can just tell us anything you ask him, right?”

  “You know what, forget I asked,” he said, before activating Spatial Lock and forming a tiny bubble around himself that blocked all sound from exiting. Bordan blinked at the familiar barrier that popped into existence between them, but Clare jerked up in her seat, her eyes going wide at the sudden bubble.

  “Oh, come on! How many weird skills do you have?!” she exclaimed, hopping up and beginning to poke the bubble with her fingers. By default, these days Asher always made it so his Spatial Lock prevented pretty much everything solid or dangerous from getting in or out of the bubble, which meant Clare’s fingers remained on the other side of his skill.

  Though he could still hear her complaints about how many fun skills he had.

  Rolling his eyes, he adjusted the barrier so that sound couldn’t get inside his Spatial Lock either, and Clare immediately turned into a mime as her mouth continued to move without any noise coming out. After a quick glance at Bordan, who was simply staring intently at him, Asher decided to try something new as well.

  With a thought, he prevented light from exiting the barrier as well, and he grinned as Bordan took a half step back in surprise and Clare began laughing. To their perspective, the interior of his bubble should have just turned jet black. No light meant no vision, so even if Bordan could read lips, he should be safe now.

  From a physics standpoint, Asher was pretty certain he should also be blind right about now, despite the fact that he very much wasn't. Admittedly, he'd never taken any actual physics class back in school beyond an introductory course, but if light could get into his barrier and not out, he felt like it made the most sense for it to simply bounce around within his barrier indefinitely, illuminating everything like it was under the world's most powerful floodlight. Luckily for him, his Spatial skills had already proven time and time again that the laws of physics were more of a suggestion to them than any sort of hard rule, so he decided to put the matter out of his mind.

  After all, he had a call to take.

  Taking a deep breath, Asher raised the sending stone to his ear.

  “Hello? High Prince Donvath?”

  “You can just call me Donvath, Asher, the two of us are pretty close in the future from what I can tell.”

  Asher blinked at the casual tone that the High Prince used with him. When he’d called over the stone earlier to warn him, he’d been a bit more panicked. Now, he sounded like he was lounging in a sitting room somewhere, eating chocolate covered grapes or whatever it was rich people did.

  “I don’t think that’s how it works,” Asher said slowly, choosing his words carefully. “Even if we’re close in the future, which I’ll admit I find hard to believe, we’re not close now.”

  “When you sail the streams of time, the future and the present are often one and the same,” Donvath said, sounding more than a little tired. “Sorry, sometimes I get annoying when I’m exhausted. Anyway, I doubt you went through all this effort to reach me just to chat about names. For starters, let me say I’m glad you and Samantha managed to get out of that particular situation alive. Apologies for the last-minute warning.”

  “Why was it so last minute,” he asked, struggling to wrap his brain around the concept of actual time travel. “Couldn’t you have warned Audrey like an hour before you did? If you knew what was going to happen, why wait until the last possible moment?”

  “I doubt this comes as a shock to you with the knowledge you have from your world, but it’s not that simple,” Donvath sighed. “And I know you’re not going to like this answer, but I can’t risk telling you more over the sending stone, as these connections aren’t infallible. You’ll have to swing by the capital if you want a more thorough explanation.”

  “You’re not willing to go into detail, but you have no worries about other people learning you have a Time element?” Asher asked, confused by where the High Prince chose to draw the line.

  “The people capable of cracking my sending line already know about my element,” Donvath said, and Asher could easily picture him lazily waving a hand through the air as he lounged about in his seat and ate another gold-plated strawberry. “You don’t really know much about the other kingdoms of this world, do you? No, we’re getting off topic again. Sorry, I’ve been pushing my brain so hard these past few weeks that unless I’m actively concentrating my mind tends to go in all sorts of directions. What is it you want to know?”

  “Well for starters, the greater demon’s presence ended up cutting into your last message. What were you trying to tell me, something about what I should do if I wanted to save Brian’s life?”

  “Oh, yeah, good question,” Donvath said. “I was trying to tell you that if you want to save Brian’s life, you need to keep him out of the royal guard academy.”

  “Keep him out of it?” Asher repeated, shocked at the revelation. “With all the demons and assassins Samantha and I are fighting, not to mention your own deadly truthseekers, wouldn’t that be the safest place for him?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Donvath said. “The royal guard academy is probably the third most secure location in the entire kingdom, but it’s not enough. If you end up enrolling Brian, the Head of the Assassin’s Guild will steal him out from under the academy’s nose and use him as a bargaining chip to force you to become one of their Fingers. From what I heard, in the end, you put together a desperate plan to save him, and it fails. Brian ends up dying in the middle of everything.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Asher stood there, staring at the sending stone in shock. It was one thing to receive a quick warning about the future, or to be given some vague advice… but to be told that their entire plan to get Brian somewhere safe wasn’t just going to fail, but end in Brian’s untimely death?

  That hit rather hard.

  “There’s no way your skill is that concrete,” Asher argued. “What if when we enroll Brian in the academy, we inform the guards already there that the Head is planning to attack and go after him? That has to change things, doesn’t it?”

  “Please, don’t try running through different iterations of the future, it’s a real pain on my end,” Donvath all but begged, which caught him off guard. “Trust me, critical points are critical points for a reason. Nothing is ever truly set in stone, but it takes a tremendous amount of effort to forcibly change one. Far easier to simply divert the flow of time away from the critical point, preventing it from ever occurring in the first place.”

  “So you’re saying there’s a better option?” Asher asked, frowning at the sending stone. “You just said it yourself that the royal guard academy was one of the more secure locations in the entire kingdom.”

  “I said it was the third more secure location in the entire kingdom,” Donvath repeated, sounding mildly annoyed. “Meaning there are two different places even safer for Brian to be.”

  “What, should we ship him directly to the capital and have him bunk with you?” Asher snorted. Though the thought of Brian running through the palace and practicing his archery in the massive hallways did make him smile.

  “No, the royal palace is only the second most secure place in the kingdom, and it wouldn’t be a very good fit for him. I highly doubt a twelve-year-old would enjoy the cloak and dagger of noble society.”

  “Wait, the palace is only the second?” Asher asked, more than a little confused. He would have assumed Donvath ensured his own house was the toughest place to infiltrate in the entire kingdom. “If it’s not the palace, then what’s the first?”

  “The truthseeker program.”

  Asher nearly dropped the sending stone, barely managing to catch it with Distortion before it hit the ground. Yanking it back up to his ear, he shouted into it. “You have got to be kidding me! Do you honestly think there is any chance in hell that I’d be willing to toss Brian in with those other kids to be indoctrinated and brainwashed? And forget what I want, you think Samantha would let him be whisked away like that? I heard the truthseeker program was for orphans of the state! I’m willing to bet we wouldn’t be able to visit him all that frequently, now would we?”

  “Would you calm down a moment and let me finish!” Donvath snapped right back at him, sounding surprised by his own annoyance. “By the realms, I forgot what it was like to actually argue with someone… We can put him in the auxiliary portion of the truthseeker program, it’s different from what most of them go through. I know you’ve already met Clare, she’s another member of the auxiliary portion of the program. It’s normally saved exclusively for teenagers who reveal incredibly useful and unique skills, but I’ll personally make an exception for Brian, because it’s the safest possible place for him to be. Not even the Head has managed to infiltrate the truthseeker program in all the time they’ve been active, and for obvious reasons. Slipping past one or two truthseekers might be doable, but a dozen? Two? There’s literally no place more secure in the entire kingdom.”

  Asher was silent for a moment as he actually thought it over. It was true Clare clearly hadn’t been indoctrinated like Bordan and Audrey had been, a simple conversation with her was all the evidence he needed of that. Donvath also hadn’t been wrong with his predictions so far, which meant he was most likely right about what would happen to Brian if they moved forward with their plan to enroll him in the royal guard academy. He didn’t like it, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized Brian’s safety was more important than his own dislike of the truthseekers.

  “What would he even be doing during his time there? He wants to practice archery and learn how to help people.”

  “You do realize my truthseekers literally help more people than anyone else in the entire kingdom, right?” Donvath drawled. “As to what he’d do, I’d personally order some of the instructors to create a training regimen for him. We have the means of helping people achieve just about any origin element they want, provided they are compatible and willing to work for it. And to your other point about visiting, I’d be making another exception regarding that as well. Usually, even our auxiliary members in the program go in alone, though that’s normally because they don’t have anyone left to call family anyway. But I am well aware of your skills, meaning I know regardless of what we want, you’d still pop in to visit him from time to time. Instead of trying to prevent that, we’ll set up a reasonable time table for when you can stop by to check up on him, in a specific location separate from all the wards within the program. I’m making quite a number of concessions here, Asher, the least you can do is meet me halfway.”

  “Why are you making so many concessions in the first place?” Asher finally asked. “Not that I’m complaining, as I want Brian and Samantha to stay safe more than anything. But why am I so important to you?”

  Donvath was silent for a few seconds as he collected his thoughts before deigning to answer. “Again, I can’t go into specifics over sending stone… But your skills are crucial to the survival of our kingdom. And most likely others as well. I know I told you in the letter I had Bordan deliver that you couldn’t come to the capital just yet, but that was then, and now is now. Rather than dropping Brian off at the royal guard academy in Abingdon and heading off to hunt down The Council of Death, you should continue with Brant all the way to the capital. From there, you can drop Brian off into the truthseeker auxiliary program, and the two of us can finally have a chat face-to-face.”

  “The three of us,” Asher corrected. “Samantha’s just as involved in this as I am at this point.”

  “Yes, yes, the three of us,” Donvath corrected himself, coughing slightly. Asher could have sworn he heard the word whipped hidden under that cough, but he couldn’t imagine the High Prince of the entire kingdom would be so obnoxious.

  “If this is so important, why not just order Bordan to fly us all to the capital on his griffin, or secure a pegasus carriage for us? There are plenty of methods faster than Brant’s caravan, right?”

  “Mainly because there’s something rather important that’s going to eat up my next few days, and I don’t like the idea of you three lounging around in the capital for a week where the Head could possibly try and get to you first,” Donvath admitted. “I’ve only just altered the stream of time by persuading you to come see me, which means I’ll need some time to see what new critical points form from this and how the bad ones can be avoided. Once we have our face-to-face chat, you’ll come to realize why few other rulers envy my element.”

  “I’m not making any promises until I can run this past Samantha and Brian, but we’ll continue toward Abingdon at the very least,” Asher said. “I’d say we’ll let you know what decision we end up making, but I suppose you might very well know before we do.”

  “Yep,” Donvath sighed, sounding like he had the weight of multiple worlds on his shoulders. “Truer words have never been spoken.”

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