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The general would, but she might only now be discovering that Ava was missing.

The wagon driver had hours and hours on anyone who might come after her.

This was up to her.

She leaned against the tree, pushing through the fog in her head to think. If she was going to escape, she would have to do it when she was like this. Tied but not magically weighed down.

She had no needle and thread. No workings to help her.

She would have to get innovative.

* * *

“She’s gone.”General Erdene Ru could see Ava had not slept the night in her room.

The guard was nervous. She had not done anything wrong, though, and she was used to fair treatment, General Ru noted with approval. She didn’t tremble or try to make excuses.

Luc of the Cervantes was a good commander.

Erdene would have never entered into an alliance with him if it had been otherwise.

Since the first night he’d come creeping into her camp, on the eve of battle with the Kassian army, to propose a plan so audacious, so delightfully underhanded that she had had difficulty keeping her delight and agreement in check, she had been very partial to Luc.

“She asked after you, General Ru. She was looking for you.” The guard rubbed her palms down the sides of her thighs in agitation. She was about seven or eight years younger than Erdene herself, and Erdene wondered what her story was. Why she was fighting in the Rising Wave.

“And she said something about a box?” General Ru stepped into Luc and Ava’s room with interest. She hadn’t been in here yet, her own rooms were in another wing.

“She showed us the box and said we were not to even touch it, that it was dangerous, that it had a very dangerous item inside.” The second guard stood stiffly to attention.

“I don’t see a box.” Erdene walked to the large chest of drawers to one side of the door.

“Do you think—” The first guard swallowed what she was going to say as Erdene began to open the drawers, her eyes wide in shock at the invasion of Ava’s privacy.

“The queen of Kassia has disappeared, and she warned you about a dangerous box before she did. I think it’s worth finding it, don’t you?”

They said nothing as she opened another drawer and then stood back.

“Is that the box?”

They peered closer. Nodded.

“Don’t open it.”

Erdene turned to find one of the Cervantes captains at the door. She recognized him as the soldier in charge of decommissioning the Kassian soldiers.

He had always reminded her of a happy puppy, golden brown curls and friendly eyes, but he didn’t look his usual eager, accommodating self this morning.

“You know what’s inside it, Eckhart?”

Eckhart nodded. “A magic fork.”

The guards didn’t react, except with mild amusement and disbelief, so Erdene guessed Raun-Tu had managed to keep most of what had happened in the throne room a secret, but she went very still.

The spoon had killed in an instant. No wonder Ava had warned her guards to not even touch the box.

“I think you and I need a word.” Erdene nodded to the guards, dismissing them, and waited until they were outside to wave her hand at the door.

The captain closed it.