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“Your Highness!” Immediately his free hand flew to try to smooth out the more wild bits of his wavy brown hair. “Hello Sett, is everything well in Gilamorst?”

We had to bend over the mirror lying flat on the short table in front of us, close enough to catch both our faces in the frame. “Overall, we are well, but Prince Irin was hoping for an update regarding Haron’s location.”

Luckily, he was the one taking the lead on this conversation. My emotions were still tumultuous at best, even though I’d managed to change most of my appearance back to normal.I could still feel the pointed fangs in my mouth, my tongue running over their tips in agitation. Just sitting here was about to break me.

Dayer sighed heavily, his head tilting to where I assumed Beolf was. It looked like they were slowed to a trot on their kisterals, but with only the clear sky and a hint of tree line in the background, it was hard to determine where exactly they were riding. They had to be somewhere in Respar, though; in the Chilled season, it was the only part of Erewen that wasn’t covered in snow.

“Our search has been…” he began but seemed to be struggling with how to word his response. “Fruitful in some ways, but barren in others.”

“Just tell me if you found her!” I finally snapped, that low growl coming back into my voice in an instant.

“Oh, we found her alright,” Beolf called over from his own mount. Dayer tilted his mirror to show Beolf’s exceedingly pissed off scowl. He wasn’t wearing his helmet or fur-lined hood, so it was easy to see his brow drawn low. “The problem is, we lost her again. And then we found the body of who wethoughtwas Haron Val Toric, with a rather bitchy message for you, Irin.”

That was… a lot to take in one sentence. “Pardon, can you explain what the hell you mean by ‘you lost her?’”

Beolf sighed heavily and reached a gloved hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose tightly. From the sliver of Dayer’s face that was still visible in the mirror, he looked extremely worried about Beolf’s response. “We caught up to her on the way to Covenant Crossing just over two days ago. It seems like she had camped out in Ber’s Forest until she thought she wouldn’t get caught on the road, but we found her trying to take the main road early in the morning. Then she convinced us to stay the night there and managed to escape.”

My vision began to wobble and darken at the edges. I was about to either burst from my human skin entirely or pass out, neither of which was a desirable option. “But you found her again, right? Surely you wouldn’t let her escape twice, Beolf.”

He looked rightfully admonished, refusing to look at Dayer’s mirror directly. “As I said,” he rubbed his beard in agitation. “We found the body of Haron Val Toric, but… she was dead. Even beyond that, the body looked like it had been rotting for months instead of hours, even though there was no way she had more than a day's lead on us. It was… not what we expected.”

“She’s a necromancer, Beolf. I’m sure she has ways of manipulating a dead body’s deterioration. What was the message you said she left?”

Everyone in the conversation looked confused. Sett, Dayer and Beolf wore matching looks of confusion over my driving questions. “Prince Irin,” Sett began gently. “If they found Haron’s dead body, that likely means—”

“She’s not fucking dead!Just tell me what the message was!” I didn’t have the time or interest to explain that she may be more powerful than any of us could expect. Haron could very well have learned to jump bodies, if Morrette had taught her from beyond the grave. And I didn’t have the time to go through all the theories of how exactly she was able to accomplish that.

Stiffly, Beolf reached into one of the bags strapped on the side of his saddle and pulled out a rolled-up letter. Pulling the letter open and clearing his throat, he read it aloud. “It says, ‘If you want to hide your dirty secrets, shove them up your ass next to your head. They will never see the light of day there.’”

The tension of the silence that followed was wound so tightly, it would likely take someone out when it broke. What no one was expecting, however, was the howling laughter that sprung from my mouth. The force of it had me rocking back in the seat and tilting my face to the ceiling. I laughed until I cried, both out ofrelief and some kind of unhinged challenge to the beast’s instinct to hunt Haron down myself. Sett watched with sincere concern as I came completely apart at the seams.

“Prince Irin.” Beolf was the first to break the awkward silence after delivering that kind of message. His rough voice was hesitant. I'm sure they all thought I'd lost my mind by now. “I’m not very knowledgeable on necromancy, so I’m throwing this out as speculation, but… can a skilled enough necromancer use dead bodies for their own? As in, is it possible we are looking for someone else who Haron is possessing?”

The discovery was too fresh in my own mind to offer up as a rational explanation, but of everyone here, I felt like I owed Beolf some kind of answer. “I don’t have definitive proof… but I have reason to believe Haron is able to transfer bodies in this way. Or rather, transfer from one corpse to another.”

I couldn’t tell him Haron possibly had a connection to the known creator of necromancy. She could have access to all sorts of knowledge on necromancy we couldn't comprehend, if she were able to contact Morrette from beyond the grave. Sett would likely detain me under the assumption of insanity if I voiced my theory aloud. Even without that snippet of information, all three men stared as if I’d started speaking in tongues.

Of course, Beolf was the first to speak again. “Gods damn it, I knew that woman was a pain in the ass!” He urged his kisteral ahead of Dayer, obviously trying to get some space to throw his own tirade out of earshot. He wasn’t doing a very good job of moving far enough away. We could still hear him bite out some rather creative curses on Haron's whole lineage from a ways up the road.

“Um… Your Highness?” Dayer’s voice was small and timid from the short table. “What would you like us to do? We have been scouting along the eastern and western roads fromCovenant Crossing but have not been able to pick up Haron’s location again.”

Finally recovering from my manic episode of laughter, I sighed and wiped the tears wetting my cheeks as I sat back up on the couch. “Oh, I know exactly where she’s going. Plan to meet us on the eastern side of Covenant Crossing this evening. I’m meeting you with a brigade, and we will ride to the Clifftombs.”

Energized with newfound purpose, I rose from the couch and stalked from the sitting room ahead of Sett’s rushed dismissal to Beolf and Dayer. I was almost to the main entrance to go to the barracks myself when he finally caught up, pulling lightly on my elbow to slow me down from a near-sprint.

“Your Highness, let me organize the troops. I will fetch you in two hours’ time, I swear it.”

He wasn’t expecting me to spin on him so fast. I gripped the top of his tunic with both hands to yank him close to my face. Sett’s brown eyes widened in shock as I growled, “You better have the troops assembled at the northern gate within two hours, or you will be missing your head and your prince.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Haron

More refugees have left the City of Scholars to travel south. Word has spread about this new settlement, Gilamorst,

and the ruling family named Gailish who have created a system of sorts to organize and govern the

spellcasters there. It’s clever, really, and a remnant of the old Julra system of guilds. A small group of Scholars