Page 62 of Earth Dragon
His gaze was on Shannon before he knew it and she appeared to have had the same thought as he had, her eyes still lingering on Malcolm and Ionna before they drifted to meet his. His stomach swooped, and he cleared his throat. “Please,” he said to Sir Patrick. “Tell us of your plan.”
“We need to get that crystal onto Lord Taggart’s person before he casts the spell on Ewan,” Sir Patrick said.
“I thought I was meant to… hold it? Cast the refractor spell?” Shannon asked.
“No, you need to enchant the crystal with the refractor spell before it’s meant to intervene. And then the crystal needs to be touching your father’s skin in order to get activated by the entrapment spell.”
“His skin?” Shannon asked. “How am I meant to do that?”
“With this,” Sir Patrick said, retrieving something on a chain from a pocket.
“A locket?” she asked. “You suggest I put this crystal inside that locket and present it to my father so that he, what? Wears it to dinner?”
The others couldn’t quite keep their chuckles down since all of them knew men like Lord Taggart, and there was simply no way in hell that any of them would agree to it.
“Tell him it’s a good luck charm,” Sir Patrick said.
“I’m telling you it will not work. He’s much too suspicious. And what’s to say he won’t sense the magic of the crystal? He’s uncanny with such things.”
“I will cloak it,” Lady Marigold reassured. “He will not see it coming. But I agree that getting it on his person is the very best way to ensure the refractor spell is most effective. It does posit a conundrum.”
“What if it was in a wreath?” Ewan asked, eyes on Shannon.
“A wreath?”
“I can tell him I had it made specially, because the father of the future queen of Rogoros should be the guest of honor at the Bell of the Ball,” Ewan suggested.
There was a pause as everyone let those words sink in, including Shannon.
“The what?” Maize asked.
“We had an arrangement,” Shannon murmured, unsure of what to say.
“A what?” Malcolm demanded sharply, but Ewan held a hand up.
They had more important things to focus on. Surely, they could all agree on that.
She seemed to hesitate, but then gave a small nod that yes, if he wanted to use the agreement as an excuse he could.
“Does this mean you’re to be bonded?” Blair inquired.
“No,” Ewan replied, watching as Shannon’s face fell, though she put on a very brave front.
“Of course not,” she agreed. “The arrangement was a matter of convenience and now it would be more inconvenient than anything else.”
She glanced at him but looked so severely self-conscious that he took pity on her and said mildly, “I wouldn’t go that far.”
Her eyes met his. He gave her a trying smile, and she returned it. He thought how nice it would be to be able to do that, exactly that, for the rest of his life. Look over at her and have her gaze on him, have her smiling back at him.
“A wreath,” Sir Patrick said, getting Ewan back to the moment. “What do you think, Shannon?”
“It will work,” she said. “My father might not crave a crown, but if he was to be given anything that marks him out and makes him stand out in a crowd is an easy sell with him.”
Her eyes were on him again, and he nodded at the fact that they clearly had a plan of attack. The show they would have to put on would need to be an elaborate one, but if they all played their parts then they should be able to pull it off. Shannon was their trump card after all. With the history between her and her father he would never see her coming.
“I’ll carve a wreath out of pine and imbed the crystal so that it touches his forehead,” Ewan said.
“You will carve it?” Greer asked.
