Azura couldn’t help the thrill she felt as she strode through the city night. Free of the citadel, free of obligations, free to save Takeo and live the life she wanted. Her heart soared in her chest, but she tried to keep it grounded, trying to force it back to earth. She still had to get through the city undetected. There would be time enough to celebrate.

She headed for the city’s northwest gate. Master Vita had promised to leave a mount near the gate, which would get her to the koumori farm where she would start the last leg of her journey. No one paid her much mind. In fact, the city seemed unusually deserted, even for this time of night. She frowned. Where was everyone?

She rounded a corner and came to a stop behind a crowd of people. The people held candles in their hands, and stood in relative silence, waiting. She looked up at a nearby building and saw Lyra’s silver shape flicker by, staying out of sight. Maybe she could see what was going on from her perch.

Azura pushed her way through the crowd, leaving muttered “excuse me’s” and “pardon me’s” in her wake. After a few minutes, she emerged at the front of the crowd, pressing against a father whose son sat on his shoulders for a better view. She looked to her right and left and realized she had intersected with another street. The crowd lined the street as if waiting for a silent parade. What was going on?

“What is everyone waiting for?” she finally asked the man next to her.

He turned to her with a look that was one part annoyance and one part incredulity. “It’s a walk of mourning for the princess.”

“The princess?” she asked.

“Azura,” he said, as if speaking to a child. “She died. The royal family and the moonburners are doing a walk of mourning in her honor.”

Azura paled. She had faint memories of the walk of mourning her family had done when her aunt, her mother’s sister, had passed away years ago. She remembered being forced into a white dress that itched at the collar, and crying when she was forced to leave her stuffed koumori doll in her room. Of course they would conduct a walk of mourning for her.

It was then that Azura noticed the banners, standing tall along the walk route and flapping slightly in the breeze. The banners were painted with huge images of her.

Azura drew her hood up further over her head as figures appeared down the road to her left. The walkers were approaching her spot. Her mother, Airi, everyone she knew would be passing by inches from her. She needed to get out of here.

As soon as the thought flickered into consciousness, someone in the crowd behind jostled her, throwing her forward to the ground. As she looked up, her hood fell back, revealing her silver hair and face.

The little boy on the man’s shoulders pointed at her. “It’s the lady in the picture!” he said.

Heart hammering in her chest, Azura pulled in moonlight and burned quickly, casting a net of shadows and illusions over herself. Darkness to hide her hair, shadows to add to the planes and lines of her face.

The father and others around her muttered, shaking their heads as if confused by the glimpse they had seen.

She scrambled to her feet and pushed past the father and son, past people and faces and hard shoulders, through the back of the crowd, until finally she was free. She fled through the streets of Kyuden away from her face and the candles lighting the faces of the mourners.

Azura didn’t stop running until her breath was ragged in her throat and her legs were heavy and leaden with exhaustion. Her shoulders ached where the pack straps cut into them and her lower back was raw where the weight of it had bounced against her.

It didn’t matter. She needed to get out of the city. Her run-in with the crowd had been far too close. She had almost ruined everything. Fool! She cursed herself for her curiosity. From now on, she would head straight to the gate. Which was…

Azura slowed to a stop and looked around, realizing she didn’t have the faintest notion where she was. The streets here were made of packed dirt marked by wagon ruts in criss-crossed patterns, the buildings worn and neglected. A dirty woman clutching the arm of a small boy glanced at her sidelong as she hurried by, averting her gaze when Azura’s eyes met hers.

Azura’s heart began to pound with another kind of fear. She slipped sideways into an alley, to stay out of sight and catch her bearings. She needed to locate the citadel walls in the distance to orient herself.

“Wrong alley, girlie,” a rasping voice said behind her.

She whirled around and found a man standing in the shadow of the alley wall, a few paces from her. His silhouette was tall and thin, and in the half-light flickering into the alley, the planes of his face looked garish.

“I don’t want any trouble,” she said, pulling in moonlight in case the man tried anything. She would use burning only as a last resort, as it would draw too much attention if word of a rogue moonburner in the city reached her mother.

“But I do,” he said with a giggle. He took two rapid steps towards her and she pulled out her knife, holding it before her.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.

He laughed outright then, a cold laugh that held no humor. “You, hurt me? You flatter yourself, girlie.”

“I know how to defend myself,” she said.

“There’s one thing you forgot,” he said.

“What’s that?” she said, taking a slow step back. Her back bumped against something hard and she risked a glance over her shoulder.

“Me,” the mountain of a man behind her said.

And then he knocked her over the head with the flat of his blade and her world went black.