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“Rangar’s told them we’ve decimated the Jatan border units and taken the hills and the flares. They may have decided it was too dangerous to trust we hadn’t taken Bartolo, or maybe they’d heard we had, and that lent veracity to his story.”

“They’ve taken Ava, and they’ve destroyed everything that would slow them down.” Oscar slid off his horse and led her to the river bank to let her drink.

Luc looked over the river, but there was no obvious route that he could see. They’d split up, breaking into groups to make themselves a more difficult target, and Ava could be in any one of those units.

Finding her would be impossible.

Except he knew where they would be taking her, and he had long been planning to go there himself.

“Where is she, do you think?” Oscar came to stand beside him.

“Not sure where she is now, but I know where she’ll be by tonight, or tomorrow morning.”

“Fernwell?”

He nodded. “Fernwell.”

“So what do we do?” Oscar eyed the river as if expecting Luc to say they needed to cross and give chase.

“We go down to Bartolo, make sure we have actually taken it, and wait for the general. She won’t be far behind.”

And then they would march on Fernwell, and get his lover back.

Chapter 37

There was a delay in her getting brought to the palace.

Ava gathered it was because Rangar wasn’t initially believed.

She didn’t blame whoever had dismissed his story as farfetched, because it was—a mixture of half-truths and outright lies that somehow pointed most of the blame at the murdered Captain Farr.

She clung to the idea it was lies layered on lies, because he had also told her that he had burned Luc and the others with flare fire, and she refused to believe it.

Refused.

Someone eventually believed him, though. And now they were scrambling.

She could hear the panic in the voices of those around him.

They were in trouble, and she wondered how Herron had heard she was here.

The Queen’s Herald would not react well to the idea that his prize possession had been under his nose for two days and he hadn’t known it.

“You’re sure it’s the princess?” Whoever was in charge sounded like he didn’t want to produce her, only to find she wasn’t the one all the fuss was about, but didn’t want to refuse to bring her to the palace, either.

He walked to the cell and stared at her.

She stared back.

“All right, she looks very like the drawing.” There was relief in his voice. “Although she looks like she’s been mistreated. What did you do to her?”

It was what they hadn’t done that was the problem. They hadn’t given her access to her needle and thread, or the squares of fabric in her cloak pocket.

She had been tied over a horse for the first part of her journey, then in metal cuffs since the river, her hands tied above her head in the little cart they had transported her in.

When they’d entered Fernwell, Rangar had been directed to one of the military barracks, and they had taken her cloak away when they’d thrown her into the cell.

Standard practice, it seemed, not an indication that they knew her secrets.