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I reach a hand out behind me. “Hide us from sight,” I incant. Orange smoke unfurls from my palm, stretching out over the three of us. I’m not sure the hasty enchantment will do much to hinder Memnon, not when he was the one who taught me this trick, but I figure it’s worth trying as we charge forward onto the steppe.

Better ride faster, little witch.

I glance behind me. Far in the distance, I make out a group of mounted riders. They’re no longer galloping around the settlement. Instead, they wait on the edge of camp, near where I exited, their attention cast roughly in my direction. I don’t see Memnon among them.

In fact, he’s nowhere to be seen at all among the vast, flat expanse of summer grass that stretches as far as the eye can see.

But then I notice a faint blue line of magic no thicker than a cord extending away from me. I follow it with my eyes until it seems to vanish into thin air.

He’s tracking me!

I am.I can hear the laughter in Memnon’s words.

And you’ve hidden yourself, I add.

Should I not have?

Before I can answer him, his form comes into hazy focus—first, his gleaming armor and crown, which glint in the sunlight, then the rest of his body and the steed he rides on, a steed that is alarmingly near to me.

Are you not going to reveal yourself to me?he asks.

Rather than answer, I face forward and urge my horse onward. A moment later, Memnon’s deep blue power slithers up alongside me, then thickens, encircling me and my steed as though there is no enchantment hiding our forms. It sinks into my horse’s fur, and the beast begins to slow.

Memnon is closing in quickly, and though I know he cannot see me, it doesn’t seem to matter, not when that blue line of magic stretches between us. It takes nothing but a twist of my wrist and a slight tug on my power to cut through the weave of my enchantment.

As soon as it comes down, Memnon’s gaze sharpens, then heats.

You look radiant, my bride, he says, and through our connection, I feel the thrill of his excitement.Sarmatian clothing suits you.

You look good too, I say.Good enough for me to consider giving up right now…

You should, he replies.I promise I will make your surrender memorable.He slows his horse as he approaches.

Going to snatch her from her saddle…Memnon’s idle thought passes through my mind like it’s my own.

He’s no more than three arm spans from me when, out loud, he says, “It was a good effort?—”

I swing my leg over my horse and hop off, dashing into the knee-high grass, Ferox bounding to my side.

I can feel Memnon’s amusement behind me.

You’re still thinking of running from me?

Not just running.

I whisper an incantation beneath my breath and send my power out between us. I rotate around in time to see my orange magic spread and thin into a wall that encircles me.

Memnon hops off his horse, his armor clinking together as he moves.

He strides up to the magical wall, and I can’t help the way my breath catches at the sight of him. He’s dressed almost identically to what he wore yesterday and the first day we met. In the full light of summer, with his dagger strapped to his side and that scar edging his face, his shortened hair shifting in the breeze, he looks beautiful and deadly.

When he gets to my ward, he stops, staring at me through the orange-tinted surface of it, the darker threads of my spell’s signature still visible.

As I back away from the magical wall, it leaches of color.

“You think this will keep me out?” Memnon says.

Ihad, but the confidence in his voice has me questioning my assumptions.