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A ric’s hooves struck the earth in musical cadence as we bolted along the road. The way was steep, the thoroughfare twining away from the coast and towards the southern mountains. Trees closed their ranks around us, making it feel like we were already in a different world entirely. Snowy peaks reared above their crowns, sheer and cold and beautiful as they glowed in the roseate light preceding dusk.

The sunset colors cast the scenery as something magical, fleshing the world with color like an artist painting over a sketch. My first impression of Gildenheim had been grey and grim, but I realized now that I had seen only an unfinished portrait. The palette of this land wasn’t ugly, merely different. It was a place of contrasts and sharp edges, a land pared down to stark essentials. After a lifetime of wearing a golden mask, I found it as shocking and refreshing as the early springtime air.

The vault overhead was deepest blue now, the western skyline red as flames. I glanced over my shoulder in time to see a final sliver of sun, molten gold and every bit as burning, slip below the horizon.

Suddenly I was falling.

Momentum carried me forwards. Training saved me from serious injury. I hit the ground and rolled, head and limbs tucked in close. Pain burst bright as scattered embers across my shoulder as I struck the packed earth of the road. I somersaulted once and came to a stop just before the ditch.

The breath had been knocked out of me. I lay half stunned while I caught it again, my mind as dazed as my body. The shoulder that had struck the ground was a hot map of future bruises. Nothing felt broken, but the shallow cuts on my legs from the shattered window had opened up again—

The window. The assassin. Aric.

I rolled over and pushed myself upright, wincing as grit bit into my palms.

What I saw made no sense. The saddle, now cinched around empty air instead of a horse’s ribs, lay overturned with saddlebags askew. A few yards down the road was Aric. No longer a horse—a man, grimacing as he dragged himself to hands and knees. A completely naked man.

“What in the Virtues’ names—” I started.

At the sound of my voice, Aric flinched and drew in on himself. He turned away, leaving me facing the sharp ridge of his spine.

Of all the things to be concerned about. Virtue of Patience, we were married. Still, I grabbed the corner of the quilted saddle pad crumpled in the road. I limped over to Aric and draped it around his shoulders.

He stiffened with surprise. Then his shoulders relaxed infinitesimally. He turned his head to look at me. His eyes were wide, their blue matching the darkening sky.

“Are you hurt?” He spoke in Damarian. His voice was graveled with exhaustion and confusion, harsher than I remembered it, but human. Definitely human. And, thank the seas, he wasn’t in my head.

“Bruised, but fine. Are you ? What happened? Is the curse broken?” Seas have mercy, let it be broken. I hadn’t exactly missed the man, but being married to a horse was awkward at best. If Aric was human again, we could return to the castle. Clear my name. Find the assassin, and consequently who had sent them. Our journey would be over before it had properly begun, all of this nothing more than a story to laugh over some future evening when we were thoroughly drunk.

“I’m not sure.” Aric’s tone was cautious. I wasn’t sure which of my questions he was answering. I’d asked too many at once.

I tried again. “Are you all right?”

Aric hesitated. “I’m not injured.”

Still not a proper answer, but at least more precise.

Aric held up his hand, rotating it for inspection. I swallowed hard as the saddle pad shifted, revealing a swath of lean and muscled thigh. The saddle pad was generous, but not in relation to a full-grown man; it almost called more attention to what it didn’t cover.

Aric caught the saddle pad, pulling it back into place, and I hastily shifted my gaze to his face. I’d expected him to be elated by the transformation, but his brow was creased into a frown.

“You don’t look particularly pleased about being human again,” I noted. “Or convinced.”

He lowered his hand and looked at me again. “It seems too easy. A few hours and suddenly gone… that’s not how magic like this works.”

I raised one brow. “No? What would you know about magic?” I’d observed his eyes more closely than I cared to admit—I wouldn’t have missed it if they contained any golden flecks.

“Quite a lot, actually,” Aric said, his tone shifting towards annoyance. “I’m not a greenwitch or an Adept, but I’ve made a study of the theory of magic. It’s highly relevant to the crown of Gildenheim.”

I held up my hands, open-palmed. I didn’t need to argue with Aric over this, too—not while he was sitting naked in the middle of the road. I took no pleasure in an unfair advantage. “Fine. Tell me how it works, then.”

Aric eyed me suspiciously, as if he expected me to try to curse him again.

“Perhaps we could get out of the road first,” he suggested after a moment. “I would rather not explain our situation to any passersby.”

He had a point. The naked heir to the Gilden throne, the foreign wife wanted for his murder, and a saddle with no horse—the sight of us would raise a lot of questions.

Without thinking, I held my hand out to Aric to help him up. His eyes narrowed in suspicion. I flushed with both annoyance and embarrassment.

“Virtue of Patience. I’m not trying to kill you. We’re married. ”

“That didn’t stop you from wearing a dagger to our first dance.”

“By the oceans’ hundred names, would you let that go? I had good reasons. And we’ve agreed on a truce now, remember? But if you’d rather I didn’t help you up, go ahead and do it on your own.”

I started to draw my hand back. Unexpectedly, Aric reached out and clasped it. The lengths of our forearms pressed together. His skin was warm, his muscles more pronounced than I’d expected. He met my eyes, and one brow lifted challengingly. My stomach curled—not the symptoms of my condition this time, but an unexpected heat.

I pulled. Aric pushed off—too hard, perhaps unbalanced by the change back from horse to man. He came to his feet in a rush, faster than either of us anticipated, nearly crashing into me. Both of us froze, eye to eye. We were close enough to kiss—or, as Aric seemed to think, to kill. My heart pounded in my ears. I was suddenly all too aware of how near our bodies were and how little he was wearing. I hadn’t noticed his scent before—ink and paper, with a hint of something headier I couldn’t name.

Abruptly, his hand dropped away from mine, reminding me that he found me repellent.

It was a welcome reminder, for all its sour taste, jolting me back to my senses. I was standing in the middle of the open road with the man I’d supposedly murdered—the mostly naked man—thinking about the way he smelled like an utter fool. I cleared my throat and stepped back.

“We should get into the trees.”

“Exactly what I just suggested,” Aric said, and stalked past me. I swung back to get the saddle.

Across the ditch, the forested land sloped upwards, dotted with boulders that pushed through the earth like fists. Despite the steep climb, by the time we were out of sight of the road Aric was shivering. I was wearing sturdy shoes and a woolen jacket fit for a Gilden winter—warm clothes were one thing this country apparently got right. But Aric had only the saddle pad, which was meager at best. He stood clutching it around his waist, huddled into himself and looking utterly miserable.

I dug through one of the fallen saddlebags, taking advantage of the fading light before it vanished entirely. My three bottles of tonic were unbroken, cushioned in a spare set of clothes. I breathed a sigh of relief. My condition wasn’t flaring now, but it was only a matter of time before the symptoms returned. At home, I might go over a week with only mild symptoms if I was lucky, but with how disastrously events had unfolded since my arrival in Gildenheim I wasn’t about to count on luck.

I set the bottles carefully aside and drew out the clothes they’d been padded in. Trousers, a linen undergarment, a green woolen shirt cut long in the Gilden style, a thick pair of socks. No shoes, but there was nothing I could do about that now. I folded the clothes into a bundle and held them out to Aric.

“Here. If you’re going to be human, you should probably get dressed.”

“I don’t think it’s going to last.” But he took the clothes and turned his back to me. I looked away to give him some privacy, studying the trees. These ones, fortunately, didn’t seem inclined to stare back.

“So you implied. You were going to explain why.” I wasn’t certain he had actually intended to do so, but I deserved answers.

A soft thud of cloth against the earth, followed by the rustle of thinner fabric. He’d dropped the saddle pad. My face heated as, involuntarily, I pictured what was underneath. I’d seen enough in the bedchamber to know his face was not the only part of him that was pleasant to look at, despite its resident expression of disdain.

“In its simplest terms, magic is an exchange,” Aric said. His voice was slightly muffled; he was pulling the shirt over his head. “Power for something else—change, light, growth. The stronger the spell, the harder to reverse it. A transformation like this shouldn’t just vanish after a few hours. It should take an equal act of power to make it undone.”

“But you’re human again.”

“Yes. For now. You can turn around.”

I turned to face him. He was fully dressed; the clothes fit him better than me, although the trousers were a touch short. Green suited him much better than mourning grey, bringing out the flush in his cheeks and the color of his hair, minimizing the dark circles under his eyes.

Stop it, Bianca. He was in mourning. He hated me. He was also a horse. Or had been, until a few minutes ago.

I wrestled my distraction into submission. “You think you’ll turn back?”

Aric grimaced. “Or worse.”

“What could be worse than transforming into a horse?”

Aric gave me a long look. I managed to hold it, but my face heated. There were a thousand things worse than being turned into a horse. “Right. Well. How long do you think we have?”

“I transformed back at sunset,” Aric said. “It’s possible the spell has a cyclical link. Horse by day, man by night, or something of that nature.”

I glanced at the horizon, deep purple and darkening fast. A few brazen stars were peeking out overhead. “That’s not how magic works.”

“Maybe not in Damaria,” Aric said. “Though I believe that’s more a result of how your country has chosen to use it than anything inherent to magic itself.”

“What do you mean?”

He ran a hand through his hair. The motion drew my eyes to his face, weary but no less beautiful. “Your Adepts are fond of channeling magic into physical constraints—lamps and clockwork and such. But magic tends to run a bit wilder here in the north. And our spells are most powerful when linked to the world’s natural cycles.” He was warming to the topic, despite his fatigue, and it was unexpectedly riveting. Passion brought color and life to Aric’s face. “The coronation, for instance. That’s why it must take place at the spring equinox. Balance of day and night. Balance of power. Otherwise, the magic here grows… difficult.”

He made an open-palmed gesture, like a set of scales, that showed a scattering of gilt marks on his fingertips.

“Wait,” I said, my thoughts reeling. “The coronation is a spell ?” So his insistence that we had to return by the equinox wasn’t a matter of bureaucracy, but of magic?

“Of course. Just like the marriage ceremony. Isn’t yours?”

“Perhaps it used to be.” I turned over the thought, considering the implications. Did the Council of Nine know about this? Did the Adept Guild? “But we haven’t had monarchs since the noble Houses united and formed the Council. Ergo, no coronations.” Now the Council’s transfers of power were by appointment, largely lacking ceremony. If magic had any role in my country’s inheritance, this was the first I’d heard of it.

My mind caught on something else he’d said. “Wait. What do you mean by magic growing difficult ?”

“The woods walking. New creatures forming. Spells going unpredictably awry,” Aric said. “It hasn’t happened in centuries, so I’m not entirely certain what’s exaggeration and what is myth. But the Wildwood Crown—the crown of Gildenheim—is more than just a fable; it’s a precaution. The coronation ensures the realm’s stability.”

Wonderful. So not only did we risk our countries dissolving into war—perhaps civil war, on Gildenheim’s part; I wasn’t even certain who stood to inherit in the case of Aric’s death—if we didn’t return by the equinox, but we would also be dealing with a magical catastrophe if we failed to resolve this in time. Walking forests—Virtues, even more of the legends about Gildenheim had a grain of truth to them than I’d realized.

I drew my thoughts back to the relevant point. “In that case, we should return to the castle while you’re still recognizably a man. We can’t miss the coronation if we don’t leave Arnhelm.” And I would have an opportunity to obtain more of my tonic before it became critical.

Aric shifted his weight uncomfortably. The ground was frigid; I realized with a surge of guilt that it must be burning his feet, even through the socks. “Much as I would like to get out of the mud and cold, I don’t think that’s the best idea.”

“Why not? We should take the chance to assure the castle you’re alive and clear my name while we can. I don’t need the entire court of Gildenheim believing I murdered my husband.”

“Actually,” Aric said, “that belief could work to our advantage.”

I stared at him, not trying to hide my incredulity. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Someone sent that assassin. If it wasn’t either of us—”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t me —”

“—then someone else must be responsible. And what happens next will reveal who it is.”

I closed my mouth on my half-formed protests. As much as I wished to be exonerated, this… actually wasn’t a bad idea. Someone wanted Aric dead badly enough to try to kill him once; if he returned, there was nothing preventing that person from trying again—and perhaps taking me out along with him. Allowing our enemies to reveal themselves helped us both.

“If we wait, Marya can find proof of who’s behind this,” Aric continued. “I trust her to get to the root of it. If we stay clear, she’s free to work without the assassin having another opportunity to strike.”

I didn’t know the captain of the guard well enough to share his confidence, but I had no desire to step in front of an assassin’s blade again. And I wasn’t without my own resources. “Ambassador Dapaz could keep us updated of her findings.”

Aric nodded, a curt gesture. “Exactly.”

“Who do you think sent the assassin?” I asked. Aric must know his own court far better than me; we had struck a truce, so I might as well take advantage of his insight.

His gaze darkened. “I don’t know. Damaria would have been my first guess.”

I had to admit—at least to myself—that in other circumstances, it would have been a fair assumption. Tensions between our countries were long-standing, and with Aric dead… “Would the crown have gone to me, if they had succeeded?”

Aric nodded, taut.

“And if I were also killed?”

A shadow passed behind his eyes. “It would be contested,” he said shortly. “There are at least half a dozen relatives who all believe they have a claim. But there’s an old law that in the absence of a legitimate successor, the crown may pass to a bastard with the approval of the court.”

Lord Varin. I remembered the rage that had passed across his face when I danced with him—it had been brief, but I was certain I hadn’t imagined it. Was his resentment deep enough to want Aric dead? “Would your half brother have the approval he needs?”

Aric hugged his arms around himself, a gesture that didn’t seem to be entirely due to the cold.

“It’s likely.” His voice stung like nettles. “Varin has generally been considered the better of the two of us in all but blood.”

If only their positions were reversed. Had the courtiers been whispering not about me, but Aric and Varin?

“We need to go back, then.” I looked in the direction of the castle, although of course the distance and the darkness rendered Arnhelm long invisible. “We can confront him while you’re still a man, force him to confess that—”

“No,” Aric said, more forcefully than I’d heard him speak yet. I turned back to him, my brows raising. He hugged himself tighter, shook his head firmly. “No. I—I don’t believe Varin’s behind this. We’ve never been close, but I don’t believe he would try to have me killed. Besides, he wouldn’t dare anything that would risk his reputation. He would need the court’s support to have a chance of inheriting. Anyone who thought they had a strong claim to the throne might be responsible—Countess Signa, for example.”

The blond-haired noblewoman who’d greeted us after the wedding had been calculating, but that didn’t mean she was plotting murder. The Council’s spies had reported discussions among Aric’s more distant relatives about seizing the throne, but no actual plans that I knew of. “Varin has the most to gain from your death.”

“Less than Damaria,” Aric countered. “And only if the court determines he has the strongest claim.”

“Damaria gains nothing if I’m blamed for your murder.” Anger heated my core—how many times would I have to convince him I’d had nothing to do with the attack?

“Without proof, we’re merely throwing accusations at each other,” Aric pointed out, interrupting my swirling doubt. “This gets us nowhere.”

I sighed, unsettled, and reluctantly checked my irritation. As loath as I was to admit it, he was right. Varin, any other nobles whose veins carried royal blood, perhaps even one of Gildenheim’s other neighbors who would benefit from seeing the country thrown into disarray… There were too many possibilities to deduce the perpetrator from our private suspicions without more evidence. I wanted the answers to be simple, but that was exhaustion speaking, not logic.

“Fine,” I conceded. “We’ll wait to hear from Marya and Ambassador Dapaz. But what do you expect us to do in the meantime? We can’t skulk about in the woods waiting for messages.”

“I think we should continue to Damaria and meet your sister.”

My brows lifted. He’d argued against this plan before I visited Evito for so long I’d thought I would never get him out the castle gates. “Even though you’re no longer a horse?”

“I gave this some thought while you were off with Marya,” Aric said. “The court is already in chaos. It won’t make much difference if I allow them to believe I’m dead for a few more days. If we want answers, I can’t show up in person or whoever sent the assassin will only go back into hiding and wait for their next chance. It’s two days’ ride to the border on the main road. The coronation is at dawn on the fifth day from now. We have time to get there and back again.” He shrugged. “And besides… if this isn’t going to last… it makes sense to be closer to the person who has the best chance of reversing the spell for good.”

I sifted through his points and couldn’t find a good reason to refute them. The timing was tight, but we could hire a carriage and drive through the night if we must. Besides, a treacherous part of me wanted to continue to Damaria, despite the journey’s dangers. I missed Tatiana—I yearned to talk to someone I could trust absolutely, even if she would tease me mercilessly about turning my husband into a horse. And Damaria was still my home.

It was dangerous, but this could work to both our advantages. Provided we survived the journey.

“To Damaria,” I agreed. “But if we’re going to the border, we should start by finding you some shoes.”