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Just as her body turned of its own volition in the direction her thoughts suggested, Grace’s training kicked in.

“Acknowledge the desire to turn away,” Father had taught her the first time she’d entered the fortress, “but name it. It cannot control you if you know where the compulsion comes from.”

Ward of diversion.

Grace’s mind and body calmed as she thought the name of the enchantment. Her vision and sense of weight normalized until all distortion and misdirection had faded away, replaced by a hesitant relief.

The first line of defense was still in place.

It used to take minutes for her mind to clear after identifying the enchantment. Her parents experienced the faster recoveryalso, or Grace might have thought it a sign of her own increase in skill.

At least the weakened enchantment made parting the ward of resistance and traversing the path to the center of the fortress easier. While she was growing up, her parents never let her wait for the fogginess to disappear before urging her onward.

Grace took tentative steps forward, anticipating the gentle rebound when she bumped into the invisible barrier manifested by the ward of resistance. Before speaking the words of yielding, Grace attempted a slow step into the barrier, a subconscious habit meant to assess the strength of the ward. She managed to shove her foot forward a few inches.

Expected. During tests over the last couple months she’d been able to get in one lurching step. Grace strained the muscles of her other leg. Another slide.

She grimaced and forced herself to try again. She took two more jerky steps until, finally, the building pressure of the barrier sent her stumbling backward.

No sense of relief came this time. Three more steps than last time—that meant substantial deterioration.

If Jonathan had returned, Grace needed to find him now. If the wards continued to weaken at this rate, how long would it be until they were completely dispelled? Patrols through the forest could be detrimental, not only to Jonathan, but to the safety of the Zerudorn gold, and by extension, all of Fidara. All of the Leiloan continent, really.

That was why she was here. Jonathan had spent years of evenings training in the forest fortress alongside her. With the wards, it was the one place under Mayor Nautin’s power that he could not actually control. Where else would Jonathan, the Rogue returned, hide?

“Ildio Amser Byr.” Grace spoke the words of yielding and crossed the parted barrier, counting seconds in her head. Whenshe reached fifteen, she paused, ran her foot along where the barrier should be, and met resistance. Confident the ward was back in place, she proceeded into the inner fortress.

A great sense of belonging buoyed Grace the farther she went.

The forest paths of the inner fortress had been smoothed into depressions by generations of Protectors walking the same route—an echo of the past, evidence that the earth remembered her ancestors if nothing else did.

And the trees, enormous sentinels with branches shaped into a beautiful interlocking canopy a hundred feet above, and with rooms for study, storage, and sleep carved into their trunks at various heights. The tree rooms held weapons, tools, and trinkets passed through hundreds of hands. At the center of it all towered the major oak, largest tree in the forest, within which destructive magic had been researched. Inside were stored hundreds of pages filled with words and pictures that revealed the character, emotions, and thoughts of people she’d never met.

Here, it was easy to imagine herself surrounded by hordes of allies.

Here, she wasn’t alone, even when she was.

As she walked, Grace scanned for signs of human presence. The paths were empty of debris. There was no smell of food or other necessities of living, and no sound of movement.

“It doesn’t mean he isn’t here,” she muttered to herself. Protectors rarely cooked meat in the fortress since smoke from the fire might draw attention to their location.

In the heart of the fortress, Grace called out timidly. “Jonathan?” The hope planted the night before had sprouted, small and fragile, within her. Verbalizing that hope felt dangerous, as if the silence that met her call might snap the seedling. Had she imagined the Rogue after all?

But hope can be shored up by necessity. She needed Jonathan to be here, needed a chance to prove herself, needed to believe she wouldn’t be alone.

“Jonathan.” Her voice came stronger.

No reply again.

Grace gritted her teeth. She wasn’t just going to stand here chirping like a fledgling. She marched to the nearest tree room.

During her years of training, Grace had explored some of the highest rooms with Jonathan. She’d always told him that if she ever needed to hide out in the fortress, she’d choose the highest room she could find that didn’t have rotting, cracked floors.

“And have to climb the tree to get any weapons you had stored away?” he’d scoffed. “ I’d take a room at the base of the trees. The higher rooms were built when the trees were younger and the trunks were too narrow. I need a place for my swords and bows, and at least a cot. I don’t want to sleep on the oak floor.”

Grace smirked at the memory. “You can’t hide from me,” she muttered.

But ten floor-level trunk rooms later, she’d found no sign of Jonathan. A layer of dust coated everything. No one had used these rooms in at least two years. Grace did a quick search of the rooms one level up but only found only more of the same.