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‘I don’t need to do that,’ Wren snapped, dropping to her knees in the brush, rummaging through her satchel and retrieving a knife.

‘What in the realmsareyou doing, then?’ Torj asked, stopping his own horse right by where the alchemist was sawing at something in the undergrowth, her cheeks turning pink with the effort.

Wren shot him a look of annoyance. ‘If you’d give me a minute, I’d tell you.’

‘We really can’t afford to delay —’ Wilder started, but Thea cut him off.

‘We’ll be glad for this at some point down the line,’ she said quietly, watching her sister work.

The four men and Thea waited until at last, Wren got to her feet, dusting herself off, her eyes bright with passion. ‘Do you know how rare it is to find these?’ she said, holding up a handful of ugly weeds for them to see.

Kipp’s nose wrinkled. ‘I hope you don’t expect us to eat them.’

Thea shook her head. ‘Not everything is for eating, you prat.’

Wren laughed. ‘Especially not this. Unless you want to explode into a million messy Kipp pieces…’

Wilder’s stomach lurched at that. ‘What is it?’

‘Bitter hellebore,’ Wren answered. ‘When used correctly, they’re explosive florets that can be —’

‘Used in battle,’ Kipp finished for her, suddenly eager. ‘I’ve read about that plant. Apparently it was used in another realm to murder an entire council of people, or cyrens – I can’t remember —’

‘Exactly,’ Wren said, wrapping the florets carefully in a scrap of fabric and placing them in her satchel. ‘Might come in handy where we’re going?’ She gave Wilder a pointed look.

He held his hands up in surrender. ‘My apologies.’

Everyone glanced at him in surprise at that. Wilder tried not to think about what it meant.

The company continued on across the valleys of Tver, with Wren calling to stop every so often when she spotted something useful amid the foliage around them. Elwren was a master alchemist in training, that was for sure. She wielded her secateurs and gloves with the same confidence and precision with which he and Thea wielded their swords. Over the course of their ride, she managed to harvest not only bitter hellebore, but wild draketail and silver boxweed as well – a dangerous assortment of plants.

‘I’ve heard that wild draketail can be taken for… fun,’ Cal ventured as their horses crested another ridge.

Wren and Thea looked at each other and burst out laughing.

‘Go on then, Cal… Wren will give you a leaf,’ Thea said, shaking her head at her sister, the pair clearly enjoying some private joke.

‘I was just saying,’ Cal replied defensively.

‘Not sure a journey on the way to battle is the ideal time to be experimenting with plants that make you think the sky is melting,’ Wilder offered.

‘What?’

‘That stuff can make you hallucinate something fierce,’ Torj joined in, nodding knowingly.

‘Gods, what I’d pay to see a bunch of Warswords out of their minds on draketail,’ Thea muttered to Wren, loud enough for Wilder to hear.

‘Malik and Talemir would have had no problem granting that wish,’ Wilder replied. ‘You might have regretted it, though…’

Thea’s brows shot up and she twisted in her saddle. ‘Malik? And Talemir?’ She gaped, her anger at him suddenly forgotten.

Wilder chuckled. ‘They were the worst.’

Torj made a noise of agreement. ‘Malik liked to think he was the toughest of our kind, the Shieldbreaker… But a few leaves of draketail and he’d be giggling till he cried.’

Wilder huffed a laugh. ‘That was the least of it.’

The three Guardians and the alchemist were staring at them in disbelief.