Scat! Vermin!
Maybe that was what I was now. All I had ever been. An animal.
For hours, I leapt. I ran. I backtracked. I circled. I scuttled beneath bushes, and thorny branches scraped at my skin. My bones throbbed and my breaths were ragged, but like a hunted animal, the urgency of the moment was paramount, and my racing heart masked the pain. At least for now.
You are nothing!
Or maybe I was less than vermin. A shadow.
That was what I needed to be. Something they couldn’t catch.
They were in fast pursuit, which both terrified and comforted me. Yes, follow me. Come away from the graveyard.
At one point I was surrounded, trapped, and hiding in a shadow. They didn’t know I was there. For long minutes I didn’t move. My throat ached with dryness, but I didn’t swallow. And as the sun moved, I willed the shadow into place.
They crawled over the mountain, circling, searching. I heard their calls and taunts. And then one voice rose above the others. Zane’s. He had joined the hunt. Come out, girl! I pressed myself tighter against the mountain, becoming part of the stony wall. I felt his hot breath on my skin again, his hands on my throat. I felt his hunger invade every part of me, and I trembled beneath my cloak. What would get me first? The plummeting temperatures, the wrath of the king, or maybe a Candok bear who wanted his shallow cave back?
But not Zane. Anything but Zane.
I held my hands up to my face, trying to breathe warmth into them. One more night, Kazi. Make it one more night.
Their voices faded. They were moving on. Zane was moving on with them. He can’t hurt you anymore. My head knew that. My pounding chest didn’t. And now he had a greater incentive to kill me. I was no longer working for the king, and I knew his dangerous secret.
I reached up, sliding my fingers into another sharp crack.
You need a backup plan!
But they didn’t play by the rules! And neither will your enemy!
I remembered watching smugly as Kaden chewed out an opposing team that Wren, Synové, and I had beaten in a training exercise. Cheating had been our backup plan. We went outside the stated boundaries. Whatever it took to win. Kaden understood that.
I didn’t feel so smug now.
I’d had two backup plans for today, but neither had included a traitor, and both had included a horse. Not to mention I had made the dire mistake of tucking my gloves in my saddlebag. I thought I would be going back for them.
My fingertips bled as I scrambled up the steep face of the mountain, roots and rocks scraping my freezing skin raw. Dusk was closing in, the sun already gone behind the mountains, and temperatures were rapidly dropping. The wind cut through me like icy knives.
I told myself the pain, the pain everywhere, from my shoulder to my head to my leg, was good, like hunger in a belly. It would make me more determined, sharp. I told myself a lot of lies to keep me going. Because every step I took made Lydia and Nash safer.
It had always been part of our plan to lead soldiers in the opposite direction, far away from the graveyard so Binter and Cheu could arrive after dark to quietly retrieve the children from the tomb and take them to the settlement. Paxton would circle back late that night to make sure they were gone. That part of the plan was still intact. I’d had soldiers hunting me all day long, spotting me and then losing me again. They were like wolves salivating with my scent, the graveyard long forgotten.
Bleeding fingers meant nothing. Cracked ribs and a swollen shoulder meant nothing. Leading the soldiers away meant everything.
At least now I was in the mountains behind Tor’s Watch, far from the graveyard. When I got to the top of the ridge, I began searching for someplace to hide for the night—a deep cave where I could light a fire—but there was none. I wouldn’t make it through the night without some sort of protection. I hollowed out a place between the roots of a tree, wrapped myself tightly in my cloak, then pulled the rotting mulch of the forest floor on top of me for insulation. My bones creaked. They ached like a crumbling house settling into the earth. I felt things squirm beneath my clothes and crawl over my scalp. I prayed none of them were poisonous.
My eyes were already heavy, closing.
Sleep, my chiadrah. Sleep.
I felt my mother’s hand, cold on my cheek. Heard the rustle of a leafy blanket covering me.
“Am I dying?” I asked.
No, my beloved. Not yet. Not today.
In the morning when I woke, I couldn’t move. It was as if every bone in me had been sewn to the earth. They refused to be punished any more. I lay there wondering if this was how I would die, that a soldier would find me and all I could do was watch as he plunged a spear into my chest.
But it was morning. The first rays of dawn shimmered through the trees. Morning. The thought sent a different kind of heat streaming through me— Lydia and Nash were safe.
By now they were with Jase. It didn’t matter if they were all stuffed down in a dark root cellar. They were together, and out of the king’s clutches. That was all that mattered.
Paxton had assured me that Binter and Cheu, who were his straza, had done far harder things than whisking away children in the middle of the night. And they were both partial to Lydia and Nash, and more stubborn than winter frost. They would do this as long as we did our part.
We had done our part. I felt a weight lifting, a silver stitch pulling tight.
Today my goal would change. Keep moving. Stay alive. Truly evade the soldiers. And find the other entrance to the Ballenger vault. His family needed to know Jase was alive—and that they had a weapon hidden right beneath their noses.
I rubbed my muscles with my good arm, forcing warmth back into them, and finally struggled to my feet.
There! Something over there is moving!
I ran. As much as I could run.
The king would not give up until he had me—and his magic—back in his grip.
I had made it to the far side of Tor’s Watch when I heard a noise. I hid behind a tree. Horses. A jingle. Creaking. I silently slid to the ground, then peeked past the forest at the road that Jase and I had once ridden down together. It was the back road that connected Tor’s Watch to the arena.
The noise grew louder and then, between the trees, a wagon came into view. It was piled high with hay—and Zane was driving it. I sank closer to the ground. Jase had told me he was the one who had made all the supply deliveries to Cave’s End for Beaufort and his crew. But he was an esteemed lieutenant of the king’s army now, and still making deliveries to Tor’s Watch? Deliveries of hay for horses? Zane and the wagon disappeared through the trees, but then four heavily armed soldiers came into view riding right behind him. He had an escort? Or did they just happen to be riding in the same direction?
A jay screeched over my head, and the soldiers’ heads turned. I pressed my chin into the dirt. Blood pounded in my ears. The jay continued to squawk like it was trying to point me out. Shut up, you stupid bird! Shut up! It seemed like the soldiers were looking straight at me, but then their eyes scanned the treetops and they moved on—and I ran.
I shivered on the floor of the rocky alcove, pulling my cloak tighter. I had heated stones at dusk, but they had long since cooled, and it was too dangerous to light another fire. I had covered so little distance today, and here I was, my third night on the run. I tried not to be disheartened, but I wasn’t sure I could make it through one more night. I rewrapped my fingers with my chemise I had torn into strips.
The hidden vault entrance couldn’t be far from Tor’s Watch, but with soldiers thick around me, I had to go many directions I didn’t want to go.
I managed to make it to the place where Paxton and I had planned to meet up, but there was no sign that he had been there. It didn’t surprise me. He was dealing with an unexpected scenario too. As soon as he had heard the loud booms of the launcher, he would have known something had gone wrong, that the plan had changed, but I worried he had suffered a worse fate than me. He was the one who had suggested taking me to Tor’s Watch. He mentioned my injured ankle and my premonition. And the next morning, once Binter and Cheu were discovered missing, the king would know he was part of the setup. If Paxton hadn’t slipped away by then, he would have no chance. Had he been able to get away? Or was he dead? Already hanging from the tembris?
I rubbed my eyes, trying to block out the image.
The wind howled outside, scooping its freezing fingers into the cave.
Imagine the possibilities, controlling the wind, the seasons.
The cold.
What if the stardust had been near his heart for so long, it knew his desires even from afar? What if—My mind was spinning in directions it shouldn’t.
I curled into a ball and prayed morning would come soon. Tomorrow I would find the hidden door. I would find the family. I would put an end to this hellish nightmare.
I closed my eyes and searched for dreams that would warm me. Dreams that would get me through the night.
Jase’s back looms in my vision. His hair ruffles in the breeze. We are just beginning our journey. I stare at him as he rummages through my saddlebag.
“Hey, what are you doing over there, Patrei? Stealing something? Do I need to arrest you?”
“I hope so,” he answers eagerly. He turns. Synové’s gift is in his hand.
I shoot him a disapproving frown. “It’s only the first day,” I say. “She said to wait until mid-journey.”
“But I’m curious now … aren’t you?”
He pouts in that maddening way that makes my stomach squeeze. That makes me want to kiss the pout right off his face.
“Yes,” I answer. “I’m curious.”
The package unravels in our hands as if it wants to be found out. Look inside, it seems to whisper.
We are easily seduced. Its magic lures us, and we are its willing victims.
And then I look up and all I can see are Jase’s deep brown eyes and the question in them.
I rolled over, pulling my cloak tighter around me.
That’s all I wanted to see, Jase’s eyes and the magic they held—a different kind of magic—as I drifted deeper into sleep.
They’ll listen, Kazi, and they will love you. It will all work out. I promise.
Love is not something you can force, Jase. It will happen or it won’t. It will.
He was so certain, but he understood families better than I did.
One thing I did know was I loved Lydia and Nash more than I loved my own life, and knowing they were safe made it possible for me to do everything I could now to save Hell’s Mouth. But there was more than Hell’s Mouth that needed saving.
Montegue’s sights were set on everything. He wanted it all.
The papers, Kazi. Get the documents. I had orders from my queen. Papers didn’t just disappear. Someone had taken them, and I had to get to them before Montegue did.
The remaining spires of Tor’s Watch were hidden from view now, but earlier I had used them to help me navigate my path. They were my initial marker. I remembered where the spiraling ribbon of bats in the sky had been in relation to them. Thank the gods the sun was shining today, because once surrounded by tall trees that all looked alike, it was easy to get turned around in the forest.
I stepped lightly as I went, always watchful, but the silence was hopeful. The soldiers were concentrating their efforts elsewhere—at least for now. A skinny meadow, a toppled tree, a large blue bear rock, a waterfall, and a cave with bats. Lots of bats.
If I could find even one of those, I was certain I could find the others, and then I stopped, taking in my surroundings again. I looked behind me and forward again. I was walking in what could be a long, skinny meadow
—or what might be a green meadow in spring. Now with winter, it was just a brown leaf-littered indentation surrounded by trees.
My pace picked up, and I turned, searching in all directions for anything else, and then, in the distance, just past the meadow, I spotted a rock. An enormous rock, the color of a cornflower, that looked like a standing bear.
I ran, and somewhere in the distance, I thought I heard the roar of a waterfall—or maybe that was just the roar of blood in my ears. I was almost there. I knew it.
But then, out of nowhere it seemed, several yards ahead of me, someone was standing in my path, a spear poised over one shoulder and a knife in the other.
I froze, staring at the painted face that was striped to blend into the forest. Rags were wrapped around his head, camouflaged with leaves and small branches. His clothes were the same. Whoever it was, he looked like he was part of the forest come alive. And then I noticed it was a her. The person in front of me had a full chest and the curves of a woman.
And then another one stepped out not far from her, and I whirled at the sound of a third one behind me, all dressed the same.
And then it finally sank in who they were.
