“I appreciate your confidence, but my talents are very limited,” Tori countered.
“What are you thinking, my snowdrop blossom?” Sasha inquired.
Cassie clapped her hands together. “We continue this road trip. We’re obviously gonna have to rent something bigger than that cute little car you’ve got if we’re gonna fit all the dragons inside. I’d be happy to sit on Sasha’s lap the entire time, but my sweetie would be uncomfortable after eight hours like that.”
Tori pressed his fingers into his brow and rubbed. Maybe the translation spell was messing up, but he was having a devil of a time following her words. “Eight hours in a car? I thought the plan was to board a train here in Kaunas and take it to Munich.”
“It is,” Baldewin confirmed.
“No fun.” Cassie leaned forward, her wide, dark eyes pinning Tori. “This is your first trip across Europe, right? Mine, too. Let’s do this road trip up right. You didn’t really get to see Tallin and had only one night in Riga? Next stop has got to be Wroclaw, Poland, and it’s on the way.” By the time she finished speaking, her voice was several octaves higher, and she was bouncing where she sat.
“Wroclaw?” Tori repeated. He didn’t know much about Poland, and the only city he even knew a little about was Warsaw. Wroclaw escaped him completely.
“Yep. It’s eight hours away from Kaunas by car. That’s eight hours to see if the Jaeggi can track us down. From Wroclaw, we can snag a train that leaves in the evening. After one quick transfer, we’ll arrive in Sonthofen by early morning the next day. Easy as pie.”
“Why Wroclaw?” Warin asked. He was typing on his phone and frowning at it. “Eight hours seems too long to put ourselves out there for bait. The route you’re suggesting would take us right through Warsaw, and that’s only five hours away. We could board a train in Warsaw, and it would actually only take us an extra hour by train.”
Cassie made a little growling noise at Warin and narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re missing the point. This is a road trip. We gotta have some fun on a road trip. We need to see some sights. Tori has never been out of Finland before. I’ve never been to Europe. We’ve gotta go to Wroclaw.”
Tori chuckled. Her enthusiasm was infectious. “Okay. I give up. What’s so awesome in Wroclaw that we’ve got to see it?”
“Dwarves!” she squealed.
Now he knew the translation spell was breaking down. There was no way he heard that correctly. He looked over at Warin and Sasha, who were wearing the same confused expression. Tori even sat up and twisted around to look at Baldewin behind him. “Did she say dwarves?”
Baldewin nodded. “She did.”
He looked back at Cassie, and she was bouncing again. “Wroclaw is this old town with beautifully preserved architecture, but back in the eighties when communism was still a problem in the region, they had an anti-communism movement called the Orange Alternative. Their symbol”—squeak—“was a dwarf. Fast forward a bunch of years, and the city is now full of these little dwarf statues. Over three hundred of them!” Cassie held up her phone, and there was a picture of an adorable dwarf cast in what looked like bronze.
“Okay, that’s really cute,” Tori admitted.
Cassie placed her phone on the table and waved both her hands excitedly at Tori. “See! We drive from Kaunas to Wroclaw and arrive in the evening. Get a hotel. The next day we can do a walking tour and have a contest to see who can find the most dwarves. Then we catch an early morning train from Wroclaw to Sonthofen. Just three days away from home and we get to have a little fun along the way and see if we found a way to thwart the Jaeggi. I call that a win.”
She did actually make a pretty compelling case. While Tori did want to get to Burkhard Castle and meet other mages and dragons, his anxiety was rising the closer they got. Why rush it? A little side trip to Wroclaw sounded nice, and a walking tour with Baldewin could be a lot of fun, particularly if it was a place he hadn’t seen before. They’d both be experiencing it for the first time together. Just like Riga.
Of course, they did still have the Jaeggi to contend with.
Baldewin placed his hand on the back of Tori’s head, and Tori twisted around to look at him. “What do you think?” Baldewin inquired lightly. “Would you like to make a stopover in Wroclaw? It means taking an extra day to reach the castle.”
Tori shrugged, not sure what to tell Baldewin. He didn’t know what the right answer was. Would Baldewin be happier to drop him off at the castle faster?
“I don’t know. The longer we’re on the road, the more danger there is for you, Warin, and Sasha. I don’t want you to be hurt trying to keep me safe.”
Fingertips brushed gently across his jaw as Baldewin shook his head. “Don’t worry about the Jaeggi. That’s my job. Do you think you could tolerate being in a car with Cassie for eight hours just to see some dwarves?”
“Hey!” Cassie shouted in outrage. “They’re really cute dwarves!”
Tori couldn’t stop the smile that formed on his lips. “Are you sure?”
“If I had any doubts about our ability to protect you and Cassie, this wouldn’t even be a discussion,” Baldewin said firmly. The gold ring around his irises seemed to widen for a moment, as if the dragon inside of Baldewin was agreeing. “It would be good to test this masking spell. We need to know what will and won’t work against the Jaeggi.”
Turning his head a little to the side, Tori brushed his lips across Baldewin’s fingertips. “Then yes, I would very much like to take a walking tour of Wroclaw to see these dwarves.”
Cassie thrust both her fists into the air. “Whoo-hoo! We’re going to Wroclaw!”
Cassie Burkhard might be utterly insane, but Tori had to admit that she was right about one thing—Wroclaw was a very cool town.
The drive from Kaunas was completely uneventful, which was taken as a sign that the amulets might actually be deterring the Jaeggi. Baldewin and Warin rotated driving duties in the new vehicle they’d picked up to accommodate them, while Tori sat in the backseat with Sasha and Cassie, who told stories pretty much nonstop about growing up with a twin brother, college, their very interesting grandmother, and finally her time at Burkhard Castle. It was clear that nothing slowed the woman down when she set her mind to something.
He and Cassie also took the time to research Wroclaw and determine what sights they were going to try to sneak in during their dwarf hunt.
When they finally reached Wroclaw in the early evening, they checked into the hotel. Baldewin had arranged for another suite that allowed the dragons to remain close to the two mages at all times.
After breakfast, they set out for Swidnicka Street. The sky was bright blue and clear overhead, promising to be a positively gorgeous day for a walking tour of the old Polish town. They had little trouble locating the first dwarf that had been put in place to commemorate the anti-communist movement so many decades ago.
They picked up a couple of dwarf maps and broke up into two groups, Warin heading off in one direction with Cassie and Sasha, while Baldewin and Tori went in the opposite direction. The excuse was that Tori was the more experienced mage and could handle any confrontation with the Jaeggi with only Baldewin. Cassie would need more help, hence the second dragon.