Page 13

The next time the door opens, it does so with a crash instead of a creak. Jac’s broad shoulders fill the frame, silhouetted by the light of the candles flickering in the hallway sconces.

“Reavers,” he clips, urgency bursting from the word’s every syllable.

“Fuck!” is Penn’s only reply.

He rolls me off his chest and unwinds my arm from where it is wrapped around his waist—for, to my utter horror, in sleep I have pressed my body tight along the length of his side, seeking out warmth like a cat curled up before a winter hearth. There’s no time to be properly mortified by my unconscious actions. Penn is already out of bed, pulling on his boots before I’ve even worked my way out from beneath the blankets.

Cheeks aflame, I vault from the mattress, stumbling over the long fabric of the nightgown in my haste. I’d have cracked my head open on the dressing table had Penn not materialized from the shadows in front of me. He steadies me with one hand while his other snatches my gown from the wall hook where Marta left it earlier.

“Get dressed. You have two minutes until your ass is in a saddle.”

“But—”

“ Two minutes. ”

The door slams and he is gone. With no other choice, I blink away the film of sleep, slip off my nightgown, and struggle into my shift and red muslin. I’ve barely gotten the sash belted at my hips when the door swings inward again. I tense, expecting Penn, but it is Edwynna. Her hair is a bit wild, the gray-streaked mane frizzing beneath a sleep bonnet, but her eyes are focused as she bustles into the chamber.

“Here,” she says, shoving a pair of thin calfskin boots into my hands. “Put these on.”

I don’t question her. I bend and jerk the boots on over my thick-knitted stockings, grateful to find them a far closer fit than Farley’s. The laces are scarcely tied when Edwynna tugs me up and whips a white cloak over my shoulders. It is lined with arctic fox fur at the collar and cuffs.

“This was my niece’s,” she tells me, her hands working at the brass neck clasps. “She left it behind when she moved to Ll?r last spring. No need for fur in Hylios, that’s for sure.”

“I couldn’t possibly—”

“You can and you will.” She grips my shoulders. “Now, go. Your men will already have their horses saddled. You make them wait much longer, they’ll shout my whole inn awake.”

“Thank you, Edwynna,” I say, popping up onto my toes to press a quick kiss to her cheek. “For everything.”

She blinks rapidly, looking a bit stunned by my unexpected affection, but says nary a word as she starts herding me toward the door. I manage to snag my dagger off the nightstand before I step into the hallway and am half shoved down the stairs into the dim, empty tavern.

There are no pockets in the red dress, but my new cloak has several to choose from. I’m dreaming about all the potential weaponry I can stash on my person when I step out into the cold predawn morning. Jac, Mabon, and Uther are already there waiting astride long-coated draft horses.

“ Finally , she deigns to appear.” Jac’s eyes narrow on me, stripped of their normal playful light. “Any longer, we’d have left you behind.”

I pause, brows lifting along with my hopes. Perhaps escaping from Penn is merely a matter of dawdling in my dressing chamber until he is so annoyed, he goes on without me…

“Of course, without our protection, you’d be killed within the hour,” Jac adds lightly.

Of course.

My stomach clenches. “What’s happening?”

“Reavers,” Mabon mutters bluntly, as though that single word is explanation enough.

“The same ones your unit has been clashing with?”

Jac nods distractedly. “A few of their associates were in the tavern last night while we ate. Spotted us—spotted Penn—and sent out word. Luckily Uther overheard some of their chatter, otherwise we’d have all been dead in our beds before daybreak.”

My breath catches in my throat. I take two steps across the porch, suddenly wanting as little distance as possible between me and my heavily armed traveling companions. “Where are we going?”

“We’d planned to escort you to the Apex Portal and send you through to Caeldera, but there’s no chance you can use it now. They’ll be watching it. Expecting it. We’ll have to take the long way around and hope they don’t follow.” Jac scowls, as though this is a grave inconvenience. “My unit is two days’ ride from here. Three, if we take the Widow’s Notch to avoid detection.”

“Your unit…” I echo, struggling to follow.

“An armed escort to the border will send a message, loud and clear. A show of force. You understand?”

I don’t—not remotely. But a far more important thought occurs to me. One that makes my breath catch. “What about Farley?”

“He stays here.” Jac’s eyes scan the abandoned square, as though on high alert. “Can’t ride with that leg. We’ll send a wagon in a few days.”

“Oh, he’ll love that.” Mabon chuckles. “Jolting back to Caeldera like an expectant mother.”

“But we can’t just leave him,” I cry. “He’ll be a sitting duck!”

“Relax, Ace. He wasn’t with us in the tavern last night. They don’t even know to look for him.”

That is a slight relief. “Still, he shouldn’t be alone. Not in his condition. If the bones shift or he spikes a fever, I need to be here to treat him.”

“No, you don’t.”

My head jerks around at the sound of Penn’s voice. He appears from the shadows, helm on his head, bridle in hand, Onyx in tow. A pelt-lined cloak drapes his shoulders. His eyes are on me but he, like the other men, looks as though half his focus is monitoring our surroundings for an invisible threat.

“But—”

“The healer will be back by tomorrow.” Penn plows over my objections. “And Edwynna has run this outpost for longer than you’ve been breathing. She’s seen her fair share of battle wounds and bar scrapes. I think she can handle one cantankerous redhead for a few days on her own.” He pauses, extends a hand toward me, and flicks his fingers impatiently. “Come.”

Swallowing down any further objections, I hurry to his side. As soon as I’m within reach, he practically tosses me up into the saddle. I have less than a single breath to settle before he vaults up behind me. One arm snakes around my waist, hauling me back against his body. The other gathers the reins and, as he spurs Onyx into motion, steers us across the empty, snow-packed square, around the low-burning firepits, and beyond the limits of Vintare.

We ride like there are a hundred hungry cyntroedi on our heels, stopping only when the sun is high in the sky to give the horses a brief respite from our punishing pace. Unlike Onyx, the borrowed mounts do not have a ceaseless reserve of energy and require regular watering from crisp mountain streams.

I’m grateful to be out of the saddle, even if it is only for a few moments. My aching muscles need relief. The instant my boots hit the frozen ground, I race for the line of scraggly pines, in dire need of a different sort of relief altogether. There had been no time to use the chamber pot before our hasty departure, and I’d spent the past two hours in increasing discomfort. I pray Penn hadn’t felt my thighs clenching against his as I squirmed and shifted around the saddle, battling my full bladder with each jolting hoofbeat.

My headlong rush for the woods is thwarted when a large form steps into my path. I swallow an infuriated scream as I pull up short.

“Where the hell are you going?” Penn is scowling.

“To spill secrets to your enemies, of course,” I retort, scowling right back at him. I latch on to my anger to cover the deep fissure of humiliation cracking wide open within my chest. I cannot— will not —beg permission to relieve myself like a morose hound scratching at the door, waiting for its owner to take notice.

“It’s not safe,” Penn informs me flatly. “You’re not to go anywhere unattended until we’re well within Dyved’s borders.”

“Then however will I tell the Reavers where best to ambush you?”

He stares at me, unamused.

“I need…” I shift on my feet. The pressing urge in my abdomen has passed discomfort and reached desperate. “I need a moment of privacy.” My voice goes so cold, I’m surprised the air between us doesn’t frost. “If you don’t mind, Your Highness .”

His jaw tightens, but he does not otherwise indulge my goading remark with a reply. He steps out of my path—but, before he does, he reaches into his cloak pocket and extracts a hollow shaft of wood dangling from a thin leather cord. It is no longer than my middle finger, with several small holes carved on one side to let the air escape. A rudimentary reed whistle. He presses it into the palm of my hand and closes my fingers around it.

“For emergencies.” His grip tightens. “You find yourself in trouble…three sharp blasts, and we’ll come running.”

“Okay,” I whisper, still staring down at my hand holding the whistle, his hand holding mine.

“You take longer than five minutes, we’ll come running anyway.”

“Okay,” I repeat.

“Don’t go far.”

His hand vanishes. I practically bolt into the woods. I wait until I am a good distance away, far out of sight, before I stop to slip the leather cord over my head, lifting my hair so it can lie flat against my neck. Beneath my cloak, the whistle falls down to rest directly over my Remnant mark.

Four and a half minutes later, I walk back to the waiting men. I avoid Penn’s eyes as he boosts me back into the saddle. We do not speak again—not as his arm wraps around my middle, not as my back fits itself against his chest in what has become a familiar position, not as we continue our journey northward through the endless range of frosted peaks. But every so often, I reach up to hold the whistle at my neck and wonder why it feels so soothing tucked in the palm of my hand.

We make camp at dusk in a narrow glen where natural hot springs bubble from beneath the mountains. The air that wafts off the pools’ steaming surfaces smells faintly of sulfur, but it keeps the worst of the evening chill at bay. I cast a silent call of thanks to Edwynna when I find a pair of lightweight leather gloves in one of my cloak’s many pockets and pull them on, grateful for another layer of insulation.

I don’t mind sleeping under the stars. Especially if the alternative is another cave. After the cyntroedi incident, I am not eager to head back into the bowels of the earth. I doubt the men are, either.

Mabon and Uther deal with the horses as Jac and I set up the camp. There isn’t much to do. We retrieve the bedrolls and blankets from the saddlebags, then build a fire—low and smokeless, so as not to draw any unwanted attention.

“Never use more than two or three logs out here in the wild, Ace. Your fire gets higher than that…Well, you might as well send up a smoke signal to everyone within striking distance saying, ‘Come murder us in our sleep,’?” Jac tells me, poking at the embers with a slim branch. “We wouldn’t want to make things too easy for the Reaver trash on our trail.”

“Do you think they’re close by?”

He shrugs. “They’re not trackers so much as opportunists. They take what comes across their path. That said, this isn’t their typical play. It’s personal for them.”

“Personal how?”

“Reavers hate the fae. Always have. As their closest neighbor, Dyved bears the brunt of that prejudice. They don’t just want us to yield our borderlands. They want us to yield in general—some deranged declaration of mortal supremacy.”

There are similar factions in the Midlands. I’ve seen them in the port cities—the culling priests, clad in their bone-white robes, preaching on the foul sins of maegic to anyone who’ll listen. They make it their life’s mission to report halflings to be hunted down and hanged. Once they brought their poisonous hatred to Seahaven’s shores, Eli stopped letting me tag along on his trips to Bellmere.

When I mention the priests to Jac, he merely shakes his head. “Reavers aren’t unique in their hatred of us, but they are unique in the brutal way they demonstrate it. You remember what we told you last night? Our unit”—he jerks his chin toward Mabon and Uther—“has skirmished with this particular clan a few times now. They’ve been encroaching on Dyved’s borders. Testing our resolve, seeing how far they can push us before we retaliate.”

I nod as I tidy our pile of kindling.

“They pushed a bit too far about a fortnight ago and lost a handful of their men to our best archers as a result of that miscalculation. We sent back their bodies for burial—but also as a warning.”

I glance up, paling at his casual admittance to killing.

He notices. His shrug is light, unbothered. “Cost of war, Ace. They knew when they started playing with fire, there was a chance they’d get burned. They’re lucky we didn’t do worse. Could’ve taken their actions as provocation for a full invasion. Snatched up that gods-awful ice shelf they call home like that ”—he snaps his thumb sharply—“and slaughtered every last one of them.”

If he’s trying to comfort me, he is not succeeding.

“Needless to say,” Jac carries on, “they were none too pleased to have their plans foiled and their top fighters eliminated. They still want a chunk of our land, but they can’t afford to lose any more men. So, they’re stuck.” He pauses. His eyes are solemn as they hold mine. “That all changes if they find something to negotiate with. Something Dyved wants badly enough to yield. Say…the sole heir to their throne, for instance.”

My heart skips a beat.

They are coming for Penn.

“The way they see it, if Queen Vanora starts getting pieces of her little brother shipped back to her encased in blocks of ice, she might just surrender that chunk of territory. You understand now?”

“I understand,” I murmur.

“Good.”

He rises to his feet and begins unfurling the bedrolls, arranging them in a circle around the fire. I help him in silence, trying to keep my expression blank. But my thoughts are far beyond the reach of the fire’s soft glow, caught up in the ice-crusted woods Penn stalked into shortly after our arrival, a hunting bow slung over one shoulder.

If anyone should not be permitted to leave the group unattended, it’s him. Yet, he’s received no lecture. He’s not been chased down and given an emergency whistle in case enemies come upon him unexpectedly,

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about Penn,” Jac says, catching my eyes across the flames. “If the Reavers do find him, it’ll be their funeral pyres burning. Not his.”

“ Worry? ” A strangled laugh bursts from my lips. “I’m not worried. Don’t be absurd.”

“You look worried. Or you did a second ago.”

I ignore that. “Why on earth would I worry about him, Jac? He’s my enemy.”

“Ace—”

“The sooner he gets taken by Reavers or eaten by monsters, the sooner I can get off this blasted mountain and back where I belong!”

“And where’s that, huh? The Midlands?” He shakes his head. “Doesn’t seem like there’s much worth going back to in that miserable place. Or have you forgotten they almost hanged you?”

“It doesn’t matter where I go, just so long as I’m not here !” I hiss, heart thundering with fury and something that might be fear. “I don’t want anything to do with whatever is waiting for me in Dyved. I don’t want anything to do with any of this . All I want—all I have ever wanted—is a simple life. No more talk of Remnants. No more running from Reavers. No more sleepless nights.” I’m breathing hard, practically panting. “But I’ll never get what I want so long as your precious princeling is getting what he wants. The specifics of which, I might add, he hasn’t bothered to share with me.”

“He’s been a bit busy keeping you alive.”

I narrow my eyes. “And why is that, Jac? What’s his endgame here? Why does he need me in the first place?”

“I don’t know, Ace. That’s above my pay grade. All I know is, you’re mighty worked up for someone who claims to be indifferent to his existence.”

“For the last bloody time, I am not bloody worried about bloody Prince Pendefyre!” I seethe, holding tight to my anger. “As far as I’m concerned, if he dies, I’m free .”

Jac’s expression flashes with disappointment. I don’t like seeing that look in his eyes as they behold me. I like even less that seeing it bothers me so much; that the thought of him holding me in poor regard is enough to shake my resolve.

I care what he thinks of me , I realize, aghast.

Even worse…

He’s right: I am concerned about Penn. And my sudden surge of hostility has as much to do with my own conflicted feelings as it does with Jac’s pointed insight. No matter how my mind insists that it is absurd to worry about the well-being of the man who hauled me, kicking and screaming, into the Northlands…my heart stubbornly rebuffs every bit of sound logic I present to it.

Horrifying as it might be, my gruff, monosyllabic, borderline savage captor…

Matters to me.

I would care if he were killed.

I would care a great deal.

Jac is still looking at me like I’ve let him down. I open my mouth to smooth things over just as a dull thud sounds in the night. A dead doe hits the snow not two paces away. My gaze moves from her white-tufted chest to her sightless eyes to a set of black boots planted on the ground beside her.

The instant I look up into Penn’s carefully blank expression, I know he’s heard every word I said. All the blood drains from my face in one great whoosh. My throat works to swallow the knot of emotion lodged in it, but it is no use. The tangle of regret and shame is firmly stuck, blocking my airway.

If he dies, I’m free.

“Trust me,” Penn says, his voice completely devoid of feeling. He stares at me like I am a clump of dung clinging to the bottom of his horse’s shoe. “The feeling is entirely mutual.”

The following day is, in a word, frigid. Not only the temperatures, but the attitudes of the men.

Penn is outright ignoring me. Jac is avoiding my eyes. Even Mabon and Uther seem to go out of their way to dodge my presence on the one occasion we stop to rest the horses and eat strips of roasted venison on slices of the thick, crusty bread Edwynna packed into our saddlebags.

Their silence speaks volumes.

My harsh words last night will not pass over the bow unchallenged. My lack of loyalty is a direct affront to their own.

To pass the time, I study the barren landscape. There isn’t much in the way of variation. No vegetation sprouts from the icy ground, no birds circle in the thin air. Mist-shrouded peaks jut into the clouds. The valleys between them are blinding-white stretches of snow, without a lick of color to break up the monotony.

I wonder if the main passes are any less dull. We’ve taken what the men refer to as the Widow’s Notch—a seldom-used route that snakes through the peaks at a higher elevation than most travelers dare venture, where the snows are thick and the trees are sparse. We follow no road that I can discern and see no more settlements like Vintare. My questions concerning when we might reach our destination are firmly rebuffed. I am given only the vaguest details—that we are going to rejoin Jac’s men, who will provide escort to Dyved, and taking the long way to get there thanks to the Reavers.

“Not much farther now,” Uther tells me when I corner him during our midday break. His gray eyes evade mine. “Another day, if the weather holds.”

By the time the sun begins to drop in the sky, I am bone weary and bored out of my mind with nothing to watch except the occasional swishing of a horse tail. I’ve all but memorized the back of Jac’s head. I consider counting the individual strands of his hair, just to give myself a task.

My eyes are glazed over, unfocused on anything in particular, when it happens. The air around Jac’s dark blond mane seems to ripple, shimmering opaquely in the waning sunlight, like a mirage dancing across the horizon’s edge on a hot summer day. Certain my eyes are playing tricks on me, I blink—hard—to clear the haze.

Yet, when I do, instead of returning to normal, my vision somehow… sharpens . As though my eyes have sprung blades. Blades that tear straight through an invisible blindfold—one I had not even realized I was wearing.

Another blink, and the shimmers are torn to filmy tatters. One more, and they are gone completely. I suddenly find myself staring at a pair of pointed fae ears instead of the rounded human ones I’ve come to know these past few days.

His glamour.

I’ve seen through his glamour.

Just like Penn said I could.

I flinch back into his chest with a sharp inhale. He grunts softly at the impact. I’m so startled by the sudden clarity I am experiencing, I shift around, craning my neck to catch his eyes. Whatever expression I’m wearing makes his brows arch in question.

“What is it?”

My mouth opens, then shuts again at the cold look on his face. “Nothing,” I murmur. “Never mind.”

I twist back around, my heart racing at double time. Jac’s glamour is back in place, his ears benignly mortal once more. I’ve no sooner narrowed my eyes when I feel a faint pulse of power from my Remnant mark. The enchantment vanishes instantly, its telltale shimmer dissolving between one blink and the next.

Dazed by my own success, I look past Jac to Uther and Mabon, riding at the front of our party. Both of them have similar shimmers in the space around their heads. Now that I’ve seen them, I can’t believe I never noticed them before.

My eyes narrow. The Remnant prickles. I manage to pierce both shimmers at the same time—so easily, I nearly cheer aloud.

I can see through glamours.

It’s unbelievable. A rush like I’ve never felt before. Along with that rush, however, comes a flurry of questions.

Have I always possessed this ability?

Have I simply repressed it?

And, if so…what other abilities are lying in wait beneath the dark whorls of ink embedded in my chest?