I was halfway through a piece of toast — honestly the best piece of toast I’d made in weeks, perfectly golden, not even slightly on fire — when the Crown buzzed against my head like a very small, very insistent bee. It had been doing that more since the Ender Earl’s tournament, pulsing with this warm amber light that reminded me of three candles on a birthday cake. Three villains down. Two to go before it reached full legend glow.
“It’s pointing southwest,” Biscuit said without looking up from her notebook. She had seven lists open simultaneously, which I know because she’d numbered them. “Specifically toward the Desert Sea. Specifically urgently.”
“How do you know it’s urgent?”
“It’s buzzing.” She finally looked up. “Also your hair is standing up even more than usual, and that only happens when something important is about to occur.”
I touched my head. She wasn’t wrong.
We packed up camp quickly. Biscuit had the Sunstone Map spread on a flat boulder, and even I could see the problem — the golden lines that traced the path across the Desert Sea were going faint at the edges, like ink left out in the rain. The Crystal Oasis glimmered at the map’s center, still bright, but the route to reach it was disappearing one sand dune at a time.
“How long do we have?” I asked.
Biscuit sniffed the map. “Smells like warm sandstone and something slightly panicked,” she said. “Maybe half a day before the path markings fade completely.”
I picked up my pack. Then I looked at Biscuit. Then — and this was the part that would have surprised the old me, the Chapter One me who fell into fountains and charged forward without a single thought in my head — I said, “What’s the plan?”
Biscuit stared at me for a full three seconds. Her mouth did something complicated.
“Did you just ask me for a plan before running toward something?”
“I might have.”
“Before falling into anything?”
“Nothing has come up to fall into yet.”
She pressed her lips together very firmly, but I could see her trying not to look absolutely delighted. She cleared her throat. “Right. Yes. I have four plans. Plan One involves the shade crystals shown on the map — we collect them along the route to stay cool and also to mark our path as we go. Plan Two involves—”
“Plan One sounds excellent,” I said. “Let’s do Plan One.”
Biscuit wrote Ollie asked for plan. Personal triumph. Note for records in her notebook and snapped it shut.
