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Leif nodded. “And I a sister.”

They shared a warm look before Wren glanced down the lane.

“You said you knew somewhere on the docks,” Wren said, offering Leif a small smile. She tightened her hood as much as she could. “Take me there, please. I don’t think we’re getting out through the gates.”

As swiftly and as silently as possible, the two of them made their way to the docks. With a furtive glance all around them, Leif pulled Wren off a jetty—she braced herself to hit water—and they landed on a very narrow stretch of sand even narrower than the street they’d just been hiding in.

Wren raised an eyebrow. That was unexpected. “Thisis the place you know on the docks?”

“I never said it was agoodplace.”

She couldn’t argue with that.

At least nobody can see us down here. They’d have to be swimming right by us to notice us.

With a heavy sigh, Wren leaned against the stone wall beneath the jetty and sagged down until she was sitting on the damp sand. Her legs dangled into the sea, and her cloak and trousers were quickly taking up water, but she didn’t care. She was exhausted and the sound of the water made some of the tension in her muscles leak away. Even thousands of miles from her homeland, she felt at home. The ocean connected her to her roots.

“That was some test Gunn put you through,” Leif said, plonking himself down beside her, cross-legged. He looked as bright and alert as ever. He scratched his ear. “He could have done me a favor and skipped this whole part just this once, though.”

“Wait,what!?” Wren demanded, glaring at the bard. What in the blazes was he going on about? She waved a hand around her. “This was all a bloody test? A test of what?”

“Gunn won’t work with someone who gets captured easily. They have to be as good at escaping an angry mob as he is.”

Wren thought of how the pirate had slipped out of the tavern, using her as a diversion. A fire began burning in her stomach. “Does Bran know?”

“He does not.”

She wrinkled her nose as she thought of Gunn, but then smiled. The pirate had made a mistake playing with her. “He’s going to regret messing with me. I’ll get him back.”

“Of course you will.” Leif’s expression was feral. “He doesn’t know what he’s gotten into. So what’s the plan, Dragon Princess? We going to cause some chaos?”

“Do you know which ship is Gunn’s?” Wren asked, scanning what she could see of the docks from their tiny hiding place. The sea gently lapped at her knees, informing her that the tide was coming in. They had perhaps another fifteen minutes before the strip of sand they were sitting on would disappear beneath the water.

A little shiver ran down her spine. It reminded her of the Verlantian dungeons.

Leif nodded, then pointed over to their right. “It’s the one farthest out on the dock. The most respectable-looking ship out of them all, if you can believe that.”

“Gunndidmake that comment about being a merchant who only sometimes acts like a pirate,” Wren commented as she eyed the ship. “Does that mean heisa merchant?”

The bard shrugged. “Around these parts, the titles are almost always interchangeable. But I can get you to the ship.”

“Good. Then let’s go before the tide comes—comes…”

She blinked slowly as a ripple of water moved in their direction. The tide? Not likely. She pursed her lips.

“…Wren?”

She was no longer listening. The disturbance in the water had nothing to do with the tide. At first, she thought it was a shoal of small, glittering fish, but then several narrow-tipped spines protruded from the sea, and she felt something nudge her boot. Her breath caught.

It can’t be.

Wren scrambled onto her knees until she was waist-deep in the water, chest heaving as she held out a shaking hand toward the face that hovered just beneath the surface.

An inky blue dragon snout nuzzled against her palm and her heart skipped a beat.

Behind her, Leif sucked in a breath and scrambled closer to the stone wall. “That…how does that bloody creature keep finding us?”

“What do you mean, ‘keep finding us?’ This is the first time I’ve seen him since we escaped.” She ran her fingers over the dragon’s slick scales and hummed a soft note of welcome, which the beast reciprocated, pressing farther into her palm.