The Prince of Starlight

Chapter Forty-Three

It was early the next morning when Cricket finally hammered the arrow gently back into place on Yoshi's compass. Ignacia had wandered off at some point to go to bed, her bed, for she'd said that she wasn't sleeping in Cricket's again. And Yoshi sat watching with rapt attention as Cricket drank his tenth cup of tea, and tapped the compass lightly. It made a soft sloshing sound in response.

"Is it working?" Yoshi asked, his tone hedging on eager, or as eager as he ever got.

"Hmm," Cricket hummed, ignoring the tickle in his throat from the previous night's coughing fits. He reached over to dump the brooch into the protection array Yoshi had scrawled for him. The compass arrow twitched, pointing to the gaudy bit of jewelry, and its tip glowed faintly. "Looks like."

Yoshi nodded. Cricket almost thought he saw a look of impressed happiness tug at his lips, but that may have been the lack of sleep talking.

"Now we just need to get as many people down to the lake as we can to help us drag everything up." Cricket leaned back onto his hands, looking down at the compass. It should have taken him much longer to siphon magic into the device. Especially with how sick, and tired he felt. But there it sat, humming faintly with his power and identifying cursed objects with ease. "The question remains, how will I get people to help us?"

He'd thought about it the night before. He'd thought about the list from Jovienne, and the parents of children who felt helpless and useless in the wake of their children's illness. He'd thought about how the whole city was to blame, but he couldn't sit there and point fingers. No. It would all have to be handled differently. So much differently than he'd like. He'd have to be political, and tactful, two things he generally didn't see himself as.

"This would all be much easier if Annie were with us. She'd have the whole city lining up to dive headfirst into the water." Cricket sighed, rubbing at his nose self-consciously. He needed his advisor. That's what she was supposed to do for him, provide him counsel, and guidance.

"Can you not simply order them to help?"

"I could." Cricket frowned. He flopped all the way onto his back, closing his eyes against the crusty feeling lingering at the corners. "But that's not really the kind of king I want to be."

"What kind of king do you want to be?"

"The kind of king that people want to work with to make Lunette better. The kind that doesn't strong arm, or order people to do things they don't want to. The kind of king Father is." Cricket's voice caught on the word 'father'. He missed Father. He hadn't realized exactly how much until that very moment. How long had he been on the road? Almost two months now. Too long.

"The kind of king," Yoshi began, voice soft, dragging Cricket from his thoughts back into the stiflingly warm inn room. "Who leads by example?"

"What?" Cricket's eyes burst open, and he stared up at the beams in the ceiling with his brows drawn together in confusion.

"You want to be the kind of king who leads by example."

Cricket sat up quickly, a sharp gasp catching in his throat and making him cough roughly. Yoshi reached for him, patting his back lightly to dislodge some of the water from his lungs. Yoshi had said the words as if they were the most true thing he'd ever known. Simple. Direct. A fact. As if he'd been watching Cricket all this time to cut to the heart of him. And this was it. This was the heart of Yue Cricket Akio. He wanted to be a king who people would look up to and strive to be more like, and in doing so become better for it.

"I'm all right. I'm all right." Cricket waved away the care as he got his coughing under control.

Yoshi eyed him skeptically, his hand still outstretched to pat Cricket's back again if he needed it. But Cricket didn't pay it any mind, he was on to other things now. More important things.