The Sage's Vow

18.2 || A Risky Advantage

Josh waited for her to crack a smile, to laugh and claim it was all a joke. When her face remained all hard edges, his stomach plummeted. Boomer was right. He really did attract trouble.

He ran a hand through his hair and muttered a word that earned him a side-eye from the Sage girl.

"I'll take that as you know I'm right," she said.

Was that what he knew? Did they really need to do anything with the key and the portal now that they knew about it? There was the option to just ignore it all, and if he was honest with himself, part of him really wanted to do that. Bury all of this to ensure Hannah's and Eytia's safety.

But the idea made his gut twist. This was too big. If he would just be keeping it from the Sages, that would be one thing. Keeping it from the Paladins, though? From Cale and Mara? No. Even if they did nothing with the information except store it away for now, he had to tell them.

His shoulders sagged. "You'll keep out my friend's involvement?"

Her eyes clouded. "You still doubt me about that?"

"Sorry, I just—" He winced. There was no good way to finish that sentence. He just what? Honestly, he didn't even know why he kept asking at this point. She'd stuck to her word. His gut instinct to distrust Sages, especially one's closely tied to Joel, continued to run strong.

He finally settled for repeating, "Sorry."

Kaitlyn considered him for a moment, as if weighing the genuineness behind the apology. "Alright. Then, before we head to the others, I need you to do one other thing."

Whatever this was, she was more wary about it than the stuff before. "Which is?"

She took a deep, bracing breath before saying, "I need Boomer to have Jodas summon my father and Xander. We'll need them present for this discussion."

"Okay," he said, holding out the last syllable as he tried to piece things together. "I mean, I think they should know, but is there a reason we aren't telling them when we get back?"

Again, she took her lower lip between her teeth. One of these times, he was sure he'd see it come back out bleeding. "Just continue to trust me a little longer, okay? I'll explain it all when we reach the others. They're already starting to stare."

Sure enough, when Josh glanced over his shoulder, he found a couple of Sages eying their stilled progress, as well as Mateo. Now that he saw that his teammate was watching him, he realized some of the prickles on his skin may not have just been from nerves.

"Fine, okay, I'll get them," he said aloud, and then inwardly, Boomer?

Was already on my way there, Boomer replied. She gets you to agree with her a lot, you know.

Josh scowled. That's not true. But even as he tried to argue the statement, he only found one time that his dragon was wrong, and even then, it had ended as a compromise. Hannah, Eytia, and the dagger.

Boomer's smugness radiated through the bond.

Wait, I also got my ice cream! When he didn't sense Boomer's attitude shift, Josh huffed and turned his attention back to Kaitlyn. "Boomer is on his way to get them. Should we go ahead and...?" He waved toward the group of Soul-Bound.

"Yeah, but not too quickly. Let's give them time to show up," Kaitlyn said after a moment of deliberation.

As they approached, Josh kept half his attention on the bond. They were half-way to the others when Boomer reached Jodas. The Elder Dragon didn't take much convincing to reach out to the two leaders. With their circumstances, Xander and Joel almost seemed to expect a call at any moment.