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W hile Hellebore was a princess, as an alchemist, she was not squeamish or priggish, but having her hands bound behind her and being thrown over the shoulder of the elf who had caught her was the most undignified situation she’d been in.

She faced his back, his arm wrapped around her legs, holding her in place as his shoulder dug into her stomach. She would have preferred being dragged through the dirt to this. Honestly, for all they knew she was a random alchemist, so why not give her a few bumps and bruises while transporting her?

While the heat flooding her whole body at the humiliating position refused to ebb, she instead tried to focus on what she did remember about Iubian Elvish. Unfortunately, they’d mostly fallen silent as she hung over his back, blood rushing to her head.

She glanced at her alchemist’s belt in the other hand of the elf carrying her. Her hands were bound, but if she could twist just enough, the pouch closest to her—

She let out a sharp yelp when she was jostled and the hand gripping her legs tightened. And then the elf spoke in her language, “Stop it. You’ve been enough trouble, alchemist.”

He spat the word alchemist like it was an insult and not a badge of honor. Reluctantly, she understood why she was the monster in his eyes.

Finally, she was no longer upside down but was being thrown into a carriage and went rear over front until she came to a stop in a jumbled heap on the floor of it, hands still bound. She rolled over onto her front to see her captor moving to shut the door, back to speaking Iubian Elvish as he directed the elf carrying the Sunrise Iris and another approached him with reins to a horse.

“You speak Chymesian?” Hellebore called out.

He turned back and raised an eyebrow. “Enough. The way you speak enough Iubian Elvish.”

Hellebore wouldn’t personally qualify what she spoke as enough, given she’d been unable to translate most of what she’d heard. Why he thought she could was beyond her, but before she could respond, he shut the door.

Within seconds, the carriage was rolling forward, taking out the legs Hellebore had managed to get under her and sending her to the floor again with a loud thud. She heard a laugh on the other side.

Her cheeks burned furiously as she got back up, awkwardly with her hands behind her, to take a more dignified seat on the bench.

Alright. She was a captive, in a carriage, and—she peered out the window—heading deeper into Iubian territory. Now she needed to decide if she was going to let them think she was a random, rogue alchemist to try to escape, or accept whatever trial and punishment that awaited her for trying to take a Sunrise Iris and using a Sun Elf’s blood in her attempted escape, or tell them exactly who she was and hope that afforded her protection without costing Chymes too much.

Her racing heart refused to slow, and Hellebore had to close her eyes and take long, deep breaths. She could not panic. She would not lose her head. If she was going to get through this with the least amount of damage possible, she needed to remove all distracting emotions and feel absolutely nothing. It was the only way to think clearly.

She kept watching out the window, observing the patrol that captured her.

Why had a border patrol had a carriage to throw her into in the first place? Right, their king was still in Chymes. Maybe they’d been assigned to wait for his party at the border to swap out for a fresh carriage? But then why would they use it for her?

Unless of course the king had already passed through and taken the fresh carriage, leaving behind the tired horses, which would then be her carriage. Callahan and Emerson would only have been able to arrive if the talks were over and everything settled.

Hellebore wrestled with her twisting heart; this wasn’t the time to miss her brother. She needed to think of him with only cold reason attached.

So if everything had been settled between Chymes and Iubar, that was a point in favor of revealing her identity. They couldn’t change any terms in order to negotiate her safety without having to reenter negotiations entirely, and if she apologized to the king and explained she was a great admirer of plants—she wasn’t, only in the way they died—maybe he’d be forgiving.

She looked at the elf she’d cut open, who was brushing a hand over the bandage wrapped around her arm. Maybe not, since she’d cut open one of his border guards and used her blood for an alchemic attack against them.

If trying to steal the plant was a crime punishable by death, stealing their blood ensured an agonizing execution. Even if they didn’t kill her, they would want Chymes to pay dearly.

No. After trying to fight her way out, her best chance was still a brilliant escape, if she could manage one. She couldn’t trust a Sun Elf to have mercy on her even if he knew she was a princess.

The voice in her head saying that sounded exactly like Aunt Palladia.

Nightfall would be her best chance. It was when the Sun Elves were the weakest. During the Great Abductions, the alchemists had always succeeded because they’d raided the elves at night.

The Great Abductions were an atrocity of her people’s from over five hundred years ago where they’d stolen Sun Elves and used their blood to access their magic in their alchemy, creating weapons, tools, and anything their imaginations and formulas could transmute the magic into. Her people had paid dearly for it. The Sun Elves had spilled her people’s blood above and beyond what the alchemists had spilled in their studies. The conflicts leading to the raids and the ensuing war of that age had been deep and complicated, and none of it changed the fact that Hellebore was going to use the elves’ biological and magical disadvantage under the moon to her advantage.

She certainly wasn’t going to try and abscond with an elf to experiment on. She wasn’t even going to try and take the iris—unless, of course an opportunity presented itself.

In the meantime, she acted like she was watching the scenery, but instead strained her ears for any conversation around her so that she could brush the rust off her Iubian Elvish and understand what was going on. Callahan had always been the one better at foreign languages and politics; he had no choice in the matter. Hellebore had protested at the lessons since she was destined to go to the Royal Alchemist’s Academy and become the King’s Alchemist. She regretted that flippant attitude now but was grateful that despite her flippant attitude, she had gotten good marks on her assignments, so there had to be some knowledge of Iubian still in her head.

The elf who had captured her rode toward the front, occasionally looking back at her with narrowed eyes. He didn’t speak much to anyone. However, he had an air about him and from the way the other elves treated him, she assumed he had to be the captain of the patrol.

The two closest to her had a quiet conversation, giving Hellebore the opportunity to brush off her translation skills. The male elf nodded at the female’s bandaged arm and asked, “Are you alright?”

The female nodded. “I will be.”

He said something Hellebore couldn’t quite make out except for the end. “—alchemist. Any opportunity to take our blood, they take. Savages.”

The female clucked her tongue and fixed him with a stern look, but her tone betrayed her frustration with herself. “I should have been more careful not to let—wishful thinking on his part—cold feet—not come willingly.”

It was like dusting off an old shelf. Hellebore’s Iubian Elvish was coming back to her and as long as she could hear clearly and they didn’t speak too quickly, she could understand the gist.

The male shot a glare at Hellebore, who was staring up at the clouds with a perfectly practiced bored expression, and muttered, “—not natural.”

“She’s a human alchemist. She’s not concerned with natural.”

They fell into silence, and Hellebore watched the sun travel through the sky. She shifted her shoulders, focusing on the feeling of the rope against her wrists. The elves had good reason to fear the alchemists. There was little they couldn’t do as long as they had the right material and the right formula. A skilled alchemist could create a formula to accomplish their means on the fly. Hellebore’s current problem was she had no way to write the formula she needed to transmute the rope from its solid, bound form to a thinner, more fragile form she could escape from.

So when the sun finished setting and the carriage came to a stop, Hellebore had made no progress in getting the ropes off. But the door to the carriage opened and it was the captain from before. He held open the door and gestured for her to come out with one hand, holding her belt in the other.

He said in Chymesian, “Come here, alchemist.”

She bristled at being given so clear an order, but she did as he said. It wasn’t ideal, but even formulas written in dirt still worked.

They were deep in the forest now, and the elves around her were quickly setting up camp for the night. As soon as she reached the edge, the captain took her arm and helped her down, not letting go as he led her over to one of the fires. She couldn’t see him quite as well in the darkening night, but as they reached the fire, it bathed his cool, amber-hued skin in a warm golden light. He let go, and she stumbled to the ground. He stood above her and raised an eyebrow. “Will you cooperate?”

She replied in Iubian, a thick accent over her words, “Will you give chance?”

His cold, hard expression shifted. He stepped back and nodded.

She spoke slowly, stumbling over the foreign language, “You cannot—Crossing the border is not crime. Iris did not leave Iubar.”

She had to at least try the defense.

He stared at her. Then he laughed. He wrapped an arm around his stomach as he stepped back. The other elves stared at them for a moment, like he was growing a second head instead of laughing at her argument.

He lowered himself to the ground, chuckling even as she glared at him. “Princess Hellebore, you are brave, like they said. However, you are foolish if you think you are getting out of this.”

So they knew who she was. Which meant she needed to escape. She watched the other elves out of the corner of her eye. Most of them were eating their rations or going to their tents, yawning and visibly ragged now that the sun had vanished. She lifted her chin. “This is a mis—misunderstanding.”

“I caught you stealing a Sunrise Iris.” His voice turned icy cold, cutting through the heat of the fire beside them. “You knew exactly what you were doing. Do not lie to me.”

“So…” Hellebore paused, searching for the words, her thick accent slowing her down. “The treaty talk… not well?”

Was she a valuable hostage? Were they at war? Or was she just an impetuous princess who took a flower she was suspecting meant more to the Sun Elves than anyone in Chymes knew?

If the former, that could have been what Callahan and Emerson had been riding to the academy for.

And like a fool she’d just given herself over. Even if her father would be reluctant to compromise for her return, Callahan and Aunt Palladia would never let him leave her with the elves.

The captain snorted. “Do not test me, alchemist.”

There was something Hellebore was missing. But if playing along would be better for her escape, she’d take the confusion then.

She bowed her head for a moment and then said, “Apologies.”

He blinked, and then he shifted, taking her by the shoulder and turning her around and releasing her hands from the rope. What a fool.

She kept her face impassive as he returned to her front and offered her a waterskin. She rubbed her red, raw wrists and eyed it. He sighed, uncorked it, and took a sip. He held it out again and said, “What would I accomplish by poisoning you?”

A fair assertion if she was his hostage; she would have no value to him if she was dead. She slowly took it, placing her other hand on the ground behind her, in her shadow. The captain’s eyes never left her face as she lifted it to her lips. She took a sip as her fingers started drawing in her formula in the dirt. She held it back out to him as she finished her formula and pushed her power into it.

He took it, but didn’t drink. He just recorked it and set it on the ground next to her belt, fixing her with a stern look. “What did you hope to—”

His last few words she couldn't quite make out. She blinked at him for a moment. He sighed and switched to Chymesian. “What did you hope to accomplish with your reckless actions?”

“I'm just a simple human princess utterly enamored with pretty flowers.” She looked up at him through her eyelashes, trying to look as empty-headed and harmless as the most famous damsels in legend. “Please don't hold my nature against me.”

He scowled. “Your false innocence is as sheer as gauze.”

“I have no idea what you're referring to.”

He sighed. “If you will cooperate and accept this, everything will be much easier for you. I wish you no ill. That's not why you're here.”

Had they come looking for her specifically to take her as a hostage and not simply gotten lucky because of her foolishness? Had they been coming to kidnap her from the academy, and Callahan and Emerson had been hurrying to come protect her? But…

“Why? As in, why me? What are you hoping to get out of this?”

His eyes widened and then he shifted back. “What more would I need than to secure peace between our people?”

He was hiding something. But then he picked up the waterskin and she no longer cared about his secrets. He took a sip before setting it to the side and picking up her belt. It took all of Hellebore’s willpower to maintain her facade and bury the grin trying to crawl onto her face. She couldn’t give it away. She just had to be patient. He started fiddling with the pouches despite her glaring at him. “You carry quite a... an arsenal, you might call it?”

“I am an alchemist. Does that surprise you?”

“But no supplies? How far did you expect to get?”

His Chymesian was about as good as her Iubian was, given she had no clue what he was trying to get at.

“Look, all I wanted was the iris. If I'd known it would be this big of a deal, I wouldn't have gone after it. I thought it was just a flower that you all have plenty of. I wasn't trying to run off with an elf.”

“Yet, I am running off with you.” His lips twitched up, but his eyes were starting to flutter as her sedative kicked in. He blinked, trying to focus his gaze on her. “What concerns me is how you used my injured guard to steal our magic even though such practices are long forgotten by your people in the name of peace. If any alchemist can cut an elf and use us—”

“I'm not just any alchemist, and I was simply trying to get away. I made an educated guess about the required modifications to a formula already on my glove that would assist me in escaping, and I was correct. I wasn't trying to turn her into an experiment.”

“You are Palladia's...” His voice dropped to a murmur, trailing off into a cough.

Did he know her aunt personally? Or just by reputation?

He tried to clear his throat and then opened one of the pouches to reveal nothing inside. His brow furrowed, and he started to look at her. She couldn’t hold back her grin anymore as he slumped over while the sedative took control.

She whispered, “Sweet dreams.”

A shout went up from one of the elves on guard duty, but Hellebore had already ripped her belt out of his hands. “I'll be taking this with me, thank you!”

She slung it on as she reached into another pouch when a hand encircled her ankle. She looked down to see the captain's face screwed up. He was choking on his breath while trying to keep her in place.

She froze.

What she'd transmuted into the water from her belt was meant to put him to a peaceful sleep. It wasn't supposed to cause any damage. He was choking and gasping, and it was clear as his face turned red this was not something he would likely survive.

She could easily rip her ankle out of his weakening grip, but…

She might not want to be a hostage, but killing a Sun Elf in her escape wasn't going to do her people any favors. The elves were shouting, but she dropped to the ground and quickly wrote a new formula in the dirt and pushed her power into it. She put her other hand over the captain and began separating the sedative in him from the water in his stomach. Once she had the sedative completely separated, she pushed it up and drew it out.

He jolted, turning on his side and with a wretched noise, he emptied himself of the apparently fatal sedative.

His breathing cleared right as two elves grabbed her by her arms and hauled her up, ripping her through the air and away from the captain.

The captain lay on the ground as another elf rushed up to his side, possibly a healer, but the captain’s gaze was on Hellebore as she was dragged away until his eyes fluttered shut. Her arms were bound behind her again, her chance of escape gone, and she was thrown back into the carriage.

As she lay on her back, bruises forming on her shoulders and legs from the way she'd been thrown in, and from one of the guards being extremely rough with her, she stared at the ceiling.

She should have let him die.