It was...sometime...when I woke gasping from that Sobeck pulling my face toward his.

Baemardis...we were in Baemardis. Nightly nightmare, it seemed. I felt my head. The wounds were healing, and no bandage now. We had survived the Golden Scroll statue and needed to go back. I glanced toward the open balcony door and headed that way.

"Ellie," I called lightly, then again.

"I'll wake her, Uncle Kevin," came Oana's reply. Not sure we needed her tagging along, but since she was awake, I was sure Ellie would bring her along. If that was the case, Oana should also send her message since that seemed like what we were doing...maybe. At least they knew we were here, or at least one of us was. Like so much, we weren't sure yet.

I went back inside and slipped on my baggy shirt and pants. I didn't bother with shoes or a vest. It'd be a short trip down the granite stairs and to the main hall. I supposed that if it were guarded at night for some reason, we could order them away, at least from the scroll, until we were done.

I slipped quietly out the doors to the hallway, none of the boys stirring, and Ellie and Oana came out a moment later holding a lamp, Ellie holding a finger to her lips as she shut the door.

"Sorina woke as we came through," Ellie whispered when she got to me. "I told her to be quiet and that we'd be back in a few minutes. I think she'll stay quiet."

I nodded, and we went down the stairs and out to the statue, feeling that electrical current as I touched it. The outer doors we closed, and there were no guards.

Uncle John's voice came into our heads. "I'm glad you two made it, and it looks like you picked up a hitchhiker along the way." There was humor in his statement. "I don't recognize your third, so if you can introduce her, I'd appreciate it. I didn't expect you to find anyone from the Realm there, so you have a lot of people curious. We don't have any specific ETA for showing up there, but it will probably be within the next month. Don't plan on coming home anytime soon—when you do, it won't be in Austin. As you might expect, home is destroyed. Unless the attackers had a second wave to clean things up, the local police found bodies in the wreckage. Let me know your current status." Then there was silence.

"She is Oana," Ellie replied before I could start. "She was born common here and was abandoned to us our first night here. Long story, but we've survived two different attacks by Sobecks, and Kevin was attacked by bandits trying to steal away one of my ladies-in-waiting. I'm up to five of them, by the way, and it's driving me crazy, though I've had one of them killed and two wounded...Kevin's the same with losing his knight cavalier valet, and his page and squire were both wounded. Nothing here makes sense. We're in some pre-Rennaisance Texas that doesn't exist with Norse nobility wearing medieval clothing and using Mongol saddles or something like that. They're ruling people who look maybe more like Orientals than Native Indians. No internet. No cell service. And we're the de facto rulers here now that we've survived touching this statue of a gold scroll. Is there some way to contact you without having to sneak down to the main meeting room in the middle of the night? I got the impression you didn't want the locals to know that this was a communication device. Kevin, what do you have?"

I cleared my voice. Ellie had spoken out loud, though I got a strange stereo effect from my ears and inside my head. Still, speaking out quietly would probably be easiest. "Oana is nine years old and seems to be locally born and not to nobility, but she handled my weapons, and I'm told that was supposed to kill her. The same with this scroll. Is all this myth and legend, or is she truly one of us?"

I took a breath before continuing. "I get the impression that we've been trained in many ways in preparation to come here or some other place like this and that your travels have been to someplace or places like here, or maybe more high-tech than at home, considering our armor and weapons, or are they magical like we've explained? We were also trained in firearms, which they don't have here, nor any magic that I've seen, though it's spoken of as though it's real, and why Enchanted Rock? My head hurts from thinking about this, and I will say that if there's any place you failed in the training, it was in the social and leadership roles. I assume you didn't plan on us being the Big Kahunas here, but we are and hope not to fuck things up too badly. However, we are this world's most eligible single people, and that isn't fun, either. I got nothing to add right now, though I'm sure I'll come up with more in a couple of minutes. We're going back to bed and maybe to sleep."

I turned away and saw movement at the doorway to the Realm. I sprinted that way, hoping my sword and armor weren't needed since I hadn't bothered with them.

I could hear a light patter of feet on the steps as I took them three at a time and caught sight of Sorina rounding the next landing as I swung around the second-floor stairs. She froze as she saw me and crumpled to the ground when I caught up to her.

"I wanted to make sure Maid Elexus was safe," she said, looking away. "I didn't know you were doing something secret. I'm sorry."

"You heard everything?"

She nodded, then flinched when I grabbed her arm.

"Down here," I ordered, and she stumbled down to the second floor and into the hallway there. Ellie and Oana followed us into the antechambers of the nearest living quarters, and I closed the door. She'd fallen back to the ground, quietly saying "I'm sorry" over and over.

"She said she wanted to make sure you were okay," I said to Ellie, ignoring Sorina for the moment.

"I'm sure that's true," she replied. "I haven't been the most stable lately."

I didn't care much that she knew this was our way of communicating with Uncle John. She already knew a lot about us. I just didn't want her to pass the information on to anyone else. I wanted to crouch next to her and tell her that, but it would be more authoritative if I stood while she lay at my feet. I drew myself up and took a deep breath, and—

"Sorina," Ellie began, kneeling beside her and rubbing her back. "You need to keep this quiet. Nobody needs to know besides us. We didn't know until we got here and touched it and got a message from Uncle John, so we don't want others to know. We hope he can give us some other way to pass messages so we don't have to do this, but until then, we'll need to do this middle-of-the-night method. Do you understand?" Ellie punctuated the question by stroking Sorina's hair.

Sorina nodded and let Ellie pull her up to a standing position and hug her for several seconds.

I slowly released my breath. Not how I was going to do it. Hopefully, this would work well enough. Once Ellie released Sorina, I took her hand and kissed it. Her hand began to shake as I didn't release it.

"I know she'll be quiet," I said to Ellie. "I trust her." Then I smiled and kissed her hand again before releasing it.

Sorina blushed brightly in the lantern light as she gave me a deep curtsy. I offered my arm and escorted her back to Ellie's rooms, Ellie and Oana following us. As I stopped, Ellie gestured for them to go into the room. "I'd like to talk with my brother for a moment."

I looked at her as she smiled while they slipped inside the door. I knew that smile meant she was upset with me for something.

She grabbed my arm and pulled me to the next set of rooms, pushing the door mostly closed before rounding on me.

"What are you playing at?"

"What?"

"You already have you. She's liked you from Day One, even without you being the all-mighty Lord of the Realm. She'd do anything for you after you saved her from the Sobeck, and no, I haven't been able to convince her otherwise. She'd be happy to be your wife, your mistress, or even some side piece you bone whenever you're bored. If you'd walked her down here, she would've been happy to serve you however you wanted, even if it pulled stitches, and now you're treating her like a princess?"

"I'm just trying to be nice so she won't say anything."

"If she's going to say anything, she's earned her Oscar for acting. She's not an actress. She wasn't going to tell anyone anything, even before we said anything. You're not dumb. You know that. She was checking to make sure I didn't run away with Oana. I've threatened that a time or two, and if I knew where, I might do it, but no place around here is like home except the terrain, minus the lakes."

"And your point? If you figure things out, take me with you."

That got a momentary smile out of her. "You're a little too nice at times. When Sam dumped you, she said you didn't do anything. I saw you when you picked me up from school and the rest of the summer. You were devastated. I ranted and raved at her when she dumped me, even though I knew it was coming. She went weird like she did with you, so I expected it. I was so pissed about what she did to you. Sorina's such a step up, and once her stitches are out, you need to make good on these promises you've been giving."

"And what should I do?" I had let her know, tonight and before, that I wanted her, but with her injuries, whatever I'd do was some time away, even if some of my dreams showed me exactly what I wanted to do with her.

"For her, the ultimate would be for her to bear you a boy child, and there's only one way to do that. At the same time, condoms were in our first aid kits, so rhythm and condoms should let both of you have fun for a while before the condoms run out, so you don't get that baby too quickly."

I'm going back to sleep on the balcony. Maybe I should grab Sorina and seduce her before you have your way with her. The way she's feeling, it'd probably be easy."

"Ellie!"

She snorted. "We're all so messed up. I want someone to hold me and tell me everything will be okay. Don't tell me you don't feel that way. You're handling all this better than me, but not that much better."