A slight smile pulled at Nysid’s lips at the quick answer and he covered by taking another bite of the field ration he’d been given. Anders had been right, the stuff wasn’t much on flavor but it was filling, and in this sort of situation, that was what mattered. He knew he should probably apologize for his reaction the day before, but the inclination wasn’t strong enough to make him actually follow through; not yet. Instead, he asked, “Do you know where we are?”

Anders grimaced and settled back a little so his weight rested on his hands, appearing totally at ease next to the prince in spite of the blows they’d come to the day before. “Not a clue,” he admitted with a sigh. “There’s something deeply wrong here, though. You’ve felt it too, right?” he continued with a serious frown, brow furrowed as he looked at Nysid, who nodded and took one last sip of water before passing the skin back to Anders. The man accepted it and took a swig himself, then capped and set it aside. “I’ll be totally honest here, my magic’s not working and Ghain, I don’t know— forgot how to fly. Seeing as you’re still here I’m guessing it’s the same for you?”

Anders rubbed one hand absently along his stubbled jaw, frowning thoughtfully. “And did you see Ephinea leave or did she give you the slip sometime last night?”

A little surprised the other rider had remembered his partner’s name after hearing it only the once, Nysid had to give himself a mental shake to return his attention to the conversation at hand. “No, I woke up just after dawn and she was already gone.” He scowled and scrubbed his face with his palms, feeling a mess but also too tired to care. Well, almost too tired to care. He’d be lying if he said some vain little part of him wasn’t irked that he’d met his mate of all people out in the middle of nowhere looking like he’d been rode hard and put up wet. He shook that thought off and continued, “Though I have no idea how she managed it. I’m always a light sleeper in the field and Ephi may be light on her feet, but not that light.”

Anders nodded and flashed Nysid and sympathetic smile. “Don’t feel bad, Ghain’s got almost twenty feet on her and I somehow missed him disappearing before I woke at dawn.” He glanced back the way he’d come and said, “Luckily, doesn’t seem like he’s remembered how to fly, wherever he’s going, and he leaves a trail a mile wide in these woods— I was following that before I heard you.”

His smile warmed, lighting up his soft brown eyes in a way Nysid found entirely too endearing for his liking, so he dragged his attention from the other man’s face and explained, “I lost Ephinea’s trail a couple of hours back when I reached a gorge. I’m not sure if she crossed it, but there was no way I could, regardless, so I decided to keep heading towards the mountain.”

“That was our plan too, originally, and Ghain’s path appears to be leading in that direction,” Anders remarked, seeming amused by their similar lines of thinking. He got to his feet then brushed himself off before offering Nysid a hand up. “Shall we go together?”

The prince looked at his mate, all charming and hopeful as he smiled down at him and wondered at how he could be so open after the way they had first met. On the other hand, Nysid felt none of the enmity he had the day before either; not really. Mostly he was just irrationally annoyed at how easily Anders was worming his way into his good graces.

Nysid sighed and accepted Anders’ hand then allowed the man to haul him to his feet, feeling more ready to face the task ahead with a full belly and admittedly pleasant company. “Alright. No point stumbling around the unknown and dying alone, I suppose.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Anders would be lying if he said he hadn’t been hoping against hope that the voice he’d heard call to him was his mate’s, considering it certainly hadn’t been Ghain’s. Granted, after waking in a panic to find his partner had somehow disappeared in the night, his dragon was who he wanted to hear from the most, but his fellow rider was a very close second, and certainly more welcome than a stranger. Even if he had been trying to kill him yesterday.

Nysid.

The captain wanted to speak the name again, but he could tell his mate was still on edge, even if those edges had softened fractionally after Anders had shared his supply of food and water with him. It was obvious he’d had a hard time of it since landing, and considering how he had landed, as well as the fact that he was undoubtedly in enemy territory, the captain couldn’t blame him for being snappish.

Still, it was a nice name; it made Anders want to smile just thinking it, though he refrained, not wanting to put the other man off.

They picked up Ghain’s trail again easily enough and followed it through the forest, more-or-less heading in the direction of the nearby mountain. The closer they got the more they could see of its peak, which seemed flattish, and the sides not impossibly steep. It gave Anders hope that they might reach it and be able to see for a long distance around, maybe even enough for him to recognize some other point of geography that would tell him where they were.

“Well, at least his trail is easy to follow,” Nysid remarked as they stepped over another flattened bit of underbrush. “I was getting tired of wading through on my own.”

Unaccountably pleased by this small attempt at casual conversation, Anders smiled at the prince and said, “There is that. Normally he’s more careful about that kind of thing, but…” his good mood faltered and he grit his teeth reflexively. It didn’t speak well to Ghain’s mental state if he had just been trampling over all and sundry by light of day, which it would have been by the time the dragon passed this way.

The ghost of a touch against his shoulder made Anders look around in time to see Nysid quickly withdrawing his hand. “We’ll find them,” the prince said, though he moved on quickly, almost as if he’d been embarrassed by the gesture.

It managed to return the smile to Anders’ face all the same. “Yeah,” he said, “Ghain’s pretty difficult to miss, at least. Shouldn’t be all that hard.”

“I never thought I would say this, but I’m really starting to hate the quiet,” Nysid admitted reluctantly sometime later as the sun started to dip towards the horizon.

Ghain’s path had mostly remained easy to follow, though they’d had to back track and search a bit the few times they’d passed over rockier ground. Their talk had mostly covered navigating the terrain and little else, so Anders latched onto this second foray into proper conversation with alacrity in hopes of learning more about the man. “Prefer spending your time alone back home?”

Nysid cut him a sidelong look that said he knew what Anders was up to, but seemed inclined to indulge him as he eventually continued, “Mostly. I’ve been known to make exceptions for a select few in the past, however.”

“Oh? Ephinea’s a given, but who else would the Black Prince of Sunderland be willing to share his quiet time with, I wonder?” Anders mused lightly.

“Rodshyom,” the prince correct him, gray eyes sharp as he turned his head to regard the man more directly. “Sunderland is the name your people gave to something that isn’t theirs.”

Anders’ brows shot up in surprise, caught off guard, though he quickly apologized. “Sorry, you’re right. I did know that, now that you bring it up,” he admitted with a grimace, certain that he’d heard the proper name for the country Marilderland shared a border with at least a few times back during his schooling as a tyro. Casually, however, and even on the majority of maps he consulted, the captain had always seen the place referred to as Sunderland.

“Why do you people call it that?” Nysid asked, expression softening somewhat when Anders proved quick to apologize, curiosity overtaking him.

A huff of laughter escaped Anders. “Honestly? Not a clue. Now I’m curious, though; I’ll have to find a scholar to pester about it when I get home,” the man mused. His expression sobered some as his thoughts strayed back to what had brought the topic up in the first place. “Did you see the bones on the beach?”

Nysid nodded, frowning somberly as they worked their way over a rough patch of ground, clambering up a steep, rocky incline to flatter terrain beyond. He made it over first, pausing to look back the way they’d come just in time for Anders to slip, scree shifting traitorously under his boot and pitching him forward. The captain swore and threw out a hand to catch himself, only for Nysid to reach out and grab him unexpectedly, steadying the man before he could slip.

The prince only released his grip and started walking again, seeming embarrassed by his own reflex to help Anders. “The whale bones were certainly an accurately ill omen for this place,” Nysid said a moment later, as if nothing at all had happened. “Besides you and Ghain, I haven’t seen a living creature since we arrived.”

“Yeah,” Anders said as he took a few quick strides to catch up to the prince, falling into step with him once more. “I was thinking maybe someone put a curse on this place.”

“A curse?” Nysid repeated thoughtfully. “Not precisely a common breed of magic in this day and age,” he remarked, though seemed to give the idea genuine consideration as he mulled it over. “But not impossible, I suppose, even if covering so much area would take an incredible amount of power. This… emptiness certainly isn’t natural.”

“Yeah, I don’t know how you’d manage it without killing yourself in the working, but-” Anders shrugged.

“To what end,” the prince finished for him. Neither could begin to guess, however, and as it began to grow darker down among the trees, more and more of their attention was required to navigate until Nysid brought them up short with a sigh and proclaimed, “We might as well stop here for the night; we won’t do anyone any good if we break our necks stumbling around in the dark.”

Anders glanced upward at the sky, streaked in shades of pink and gold where he could see it through the tree canopy, then glanced off to their left. Ghain’s trail had been loosely following another of the forest’s plentiful streams for awhile now, and by the sound of it, still was. “Alright,” he agreed, “This is as good a place as any. Help me gather some wood and we’ll get a fire going before it gets too much darker,” the captain continued as he slid the saddle bag off his shoulder and put it down.

Nysid shot him a skeptical look. “And how are you going to manage that?”