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Neev helps me finish packing before we sneak out of my room, passing a couple of Dette’s ladies-in-waiting in the corridor. Henbane is huddled in an alcove, sobbing onto the shoulder of a scullery maid, and doesn’t see us. A wounded guard stretched across our path is being tended by a healer. I pull my hood over my face and we skirt around them quickly.
In the stables, the same hungover groom who greeted me this morning comes out looking grouchy and rumpled. Neev whispers, “You get the horses. I’ll see to him.”
A change comes over her demeanor as she approaches him. She looks taller and there’s a sensuality in the way she moves. I glance at her over my shoulder as I slip into the stables. Her face is completely different. She has full, pouting lips, smoldering eyes, and high cheekbones. Her delicate, ethereal beauty has been replaced by a glamour. She looks like some adolescent boy’s fantasy of the perfect woman, but her real self is still underneath, the way you can see the youth in a grown person you’ve known since childhood. It’s one of the most unsettling things I’ve ever seen.
I quickly saddle Zmaj and find an old, placid horse for Neev since she’s an inexperienced rider. I guess at the proper height for her stirrups. I can fix them later if I’m wrong.
She joins me in the courtyard, giving the horse I chose for her a slightly wary glance.
I hold the reins and tilt my head toward the horse, indicating that she should climb on. I want to see what she meant by being able to ride “a bit.”
She makes an admirable attempt to swing into the saddle, but her lack of height throws her off and she slithers down the horse’s flank. I put my hand on her hip before she can hit the ground in a heap, and she gulps down a soft yelp as I shove her into the saddle.
Not going back on my word, I urge my horse toward the open gate leading out of the courtyard without waiting for her. If she wants to come with me, she’ll have to keep up.
The stable hand still looks dazed as I ride past him. In a few moments I’m surprised to hear the clatter of horseshoes on the cobblestones, and when I’ve made it down the path that winds up to the castle from the lower city and understreets, Neev’s managing to keep up with me, albeit a few paces behind. I don’t fully relax until we’ve made our way past the gaggles of kerchiefed housewives gossiping beside dirty puddles and the sellers hawking braised apples and stones with magical properties.
I watch the way Neev sits in the saddle when we reach the trade road. She has a short torso but long legs, and I realize I misjudged the height for her stirrups.
“I’ll fix those for you at the first watering hole,” I say, gesturing to the stirrups. “I made them too short.”
She nods. “Thanks for letting me come along.”
I don’t say anything to this. “How’d you do that?” I ask. “Changing hair color is one thing. But I’ve never seen a glamour that good.”
“My grandmother taught me. She was said to be part fae.”
“Oh?” I glance at her.
Many claim to have fae blood, especially those with elemental power, but I’m more willing to believe it of Neev. She has a preternatural look.
Once we’ve left the town that surrounds the palace, our route is the trade road to the south, toward lush Zelen, and then east, across the moor toward Thornewood. Dendronia lies north across the Fallow Dunes. It’s a land of white-capped peaks and lethal cold, of year-round snow and permafrost; a ground that never thaws. The wind from the north is what brings our harsh winters. I’m glad our way doesn’t take us there, but it would be far simpler if it did. That road is less traveled, and now I have a pretty servant girl in tow. She looks as out of place on the back of the old mare I stole for her as I do in a ballroom.
We don’t make it any farther than the first watering place outside the city before she attracts attention. It’s nothing but a well with a wall of stones built around it, a few troughs, and a small stable for sheltering horses. But a couple of grizzled men are leaning against the stable wall, and I keep the hood of my cloak up.
The mare I chose for Neev is placid but stubborn, and it refuses to walk to the trough. Neev grunts in frustration and tugs at its harness, and the hood of my borrowed cloak slips off her brilliant hair. One of the two men leaning against the wall of the stable nudges his companion, nodding at her. He only has one eye. His companion is younger and looks cunning, in a cruel sort of way.
I mentally kick myself for not telling Neev to remove the glamour that turned her hair purple. Brightly colored hair makes her recognizable as a noble lady’s maid.
The younger man eyes us with open curiosity. “You two headed down the trade road alone?”
Clad in my worn traveling clothes, we don’t look anything like a noble and her serving girl, so I try to appear casual, but I can hear how curt my voice sounds when I speak. “We’re going on a journey. Where and why is none of your business.”
He gives me a doubtful look and pushes away from the wall. “What about you, lovely?” he asks Neev. “What do you call that color? Plum? You run off from your mistress?”
She ignores him, keeping her eyes down, so he reaches for her. His hand gropes in the loose folds of the cloak she wears before his fingers close around her arm.
“Don’t touch her.”
He ignores me, pulling Neev against him and pinning her arms to her sides. Her eyes grow large with fear as he swings her around.
“Serving girls from the palace,” he sneers to his companion. “Run off before their bonds are up, is my guess. Those are palace harnesses on those horses. No bells, but polished and gleaming. Fine silver.”
“I warn you,” I say. “I’m an elemental, and the newly confirmed Priestess of the Dead. If you don’t let her go, I’ll decide your fate for you.”
He bursts into mocking laughter and nods to his companion. “Hey Flint, grab the Priestess of the Dead.”
The one-eyed man pushes away from the stable wall, and I sweep my cloak back with my left hand, reaching toward my hip with my right. As my fingers touch the vial and crackle with energy, there’s a flash of blinding light and the man holding Neev lets go of her with a scream. He flails his hands as if he picked up something too hot to touch.
My fingers close around the diamond vial and I pop the cork, snapping my fingers. My lightning strikes the stone lip of the well, sending up a spray of pebbles and silt. One of the rock fragments hits the man headed toward me in the forehead, leaving a cut that oozes blood.
He falls to his knees, stunned. The malice drains from his face, replaced by terror, but the one who grabbed Neev is staring at his hands in enraged horror. Ugly bubbled blisters cover his fingers and palms. Before I have time to process what this means, he rushes Neev again and I swing my arm toward him.
Lightning follows the track of my arm in a sizzling line that strikes him in the chest, knocking him flat. He lies on his back beside the well, his handsome but wicked face frozen in open-mouthed disbelief. The one-eyed man scrambles off his knees and backs away with his hands out.
When I turn to him, he pleads, “Please, priestess, show Zori’s mercy!”
I lower my arm. “Go then, quickly. And leave the horse.”
He turns and runs down the path toward the trade road without a second glance, leaving his horse tethered to a ring in the stable wall.
Neev is staring at me. Her chest heaves. “You killed him.”
I’m shocked at what I’ve done, but I don’t want her to see it. “He would’ve done the same to either of us. And I doubt it would’ve been the first time.”
She swallows. “Thank you, Your Highness.”
“Don’t thank me. Stay out of trouble so I won’t have to do it again. Change your hair, keep your hood on, and don’t talk to anyone.”
Her eyes are on the stones set in the well and I study her. The magic she used to burn the man who attacked her wasn’t simple magic, like changing her hair color or taking the apple from my saddlebag. It was complex. Defensive. Now I understand the gloves she wears, and the heat in her touch when she did my hair.
Magic like hers is rare among the daughters of commoners in the Triumvir, because the nobles have spent so long hoarding it for themselves. When it does appear in commoner children, they’re taken from their families to be trained and given government, court, or military positions. I wonder why Neev kept her magic hidden.
We check the dead man’s clothing and take a small thin knife, waybread, and a few coins. Then I slowly approach the horse left behind by our other attacker, clucking my tongue. He jerks his head away from my touch, unnerved by the static still emanating from my body.
Neev says, “Let me.”
To my surprise, the horse whickers when she speaks to it, letting her stroke its velvet nose with the back of her gloved hand.
“It’s your voice,” I say, reaching to remove the saddle as she continues to pet it. It won’t be as easy for someone to steal without the saddle. “Soft and soothing.”
She looks at me sidelong. “Oh, is that it?”
I snort. “It can’t possibly be the fact that it just saw me kill a man with lightning.”
I untie the horse’s halter from the iron ring set in the stable wall and smack its flank. It trots off with a whinny, back down the trade road. I’m confident it will return to the public stables. Horses and mules might be stubborn, but they know how to find their way back to food and shelter.
When we stop to camp at sunset, Neev watches me conjure a crackling blue fire with peat and dry sticks. We eat the bread and apples I brought in silence.
Once we’ve finished, I study her across the campfire. Her hood has slipped down again, and she lets the glamour she put on her hair fade as I told her to, turning it back to plain brown. “How’d you do that?”
“Do what?”
“When you burned the man’s hands.”
“Oh, that. I didn’t do it on purpose. It just happened.”
“You mean you’re an untrained elemental? Why weren’t you selected for training?”
She looks at her hands. “My mother didn’t report it. I was her only child, and she didn’t want to lose me.”
Wielders of fire and heat are particularly powerful and therefore dangerous elementals. Failing to report a child with magical capabilities is a crime punishable by imprisonment in the Triumvir. They’re considered far too valuable and dangerous to be kept a secret. My history tutor told me there was an uprising when the laws were passed several hundred years ago, but it was eventually quelled. The truth is, I’ve always been on the commoners’ side. If someone tried to take my child from me, I’d resist too, no matter the reason.
“And where is your mother now?”
“She died."
I'm hit with compassion for her, the unwelcome kinship of having lost a parent, and I frown. “I’m sorry. No one should have to go through that. It’s awful.”
She merely nods, not meeting my gaze. “After, I turned to begging and doing simple magic tricks for payment.” Her voice is low. “That was how Dette found me.”
I nod. This sounds too much like Dette to be a lie. She was forever taking in needy, wounded things when we were children.
“Can you control it?”
“Sort of. I mean, I keep it contained, usually. But sometimes it just...leaps out. Especially when I’m in danger. Like today.”
“Containment isn’t the same as control. If you bottle it up and don’t use it, it’s bound to injure someone.”
“I had to keep it a secret. I couldn’t have the royal family finding out one of their servants was an unreported elemental.”
“Does Dette know?”
“Yes. But she’d never tell on me.”
Dette has never held any qualms about flouting her mother’s rules. Usually, when we got into trouble together, it was her idea. The memory of this gives me a pang, and I hope against hope that she’s all right.
“Maybe I can teach you to control it,” I say. “You’ve seen my power. Light, fire, heat, lightning—they’re all connected.”
She hesitates, looking uncertain. She has barely touched the toasted bread, apples, and jerky I set out for us, and I wonder if she’s upset about the men attacking us, and the one I killed to protect her. I’ve never killed anyone before, and I keep thinking of his open mouth and staring eyes. Thoughts flutter through my mind like moths around a torch. I am High Priestess. It was my divine right. He was going to hurt her, or worse. Dead men can’t murder. This last line was a favorite of my old teacher. She always said it when she taught me to cast a defensive branch of lightning. I consider saying it to Neev, but I doubt it would make her feel any better. It’s easy to see she has a tender heart.
“I don’t know if you know this,” I say, “but my mother was Priestess of the Dead before me. It’s normal to be shaken by death. But taking a life is even more traumatic.”
Neev doesn’t say anything, and I stare into the fire. I always knew I’d find myself in my mother’s position one day, taking life instead of giving it. Long before I became an elemental, I knew the path I’d walk, because I saw my mother walk it first. I knew one day I’d be Priestess of the Dead, take the black veil, and wear it under my crown at each Death Day Eve feast to light the candles for Zori. I knew I’d be viewed with awe and dread.
My mother’s power was what earned her the coveted place at my father’s side, but in the years after I was born, her role as High Priestess and the expectation to provide a powered heir conflicted with one another. She wasn’t allowed to transfigure when she was pregnant because of what it might do to the growing child, but her offspring were affected anyway—the dead babies often had feathers and claws. At night, I would lay in bed and check myself for such horrors—rubbing the back of my neck in search of a prickly ruff, inspecting my fingernails as if they might to turn to talons before my very eyes. But I had nothing to fear. In this way, as in every other, I was ordinary.
But it wasn’t only the constraint that plagued Mother. In my early childhood, after a sentencing was carried out, she often spent days alone in her solarium, rooting cuttings and grafting branches, convincing things to bud and bloom bit by bit. I wept and begged her to play with me, but she only brushed my cheek with fingers stained green and resumed her work until my nurse bustled me away.
She told me once when I pleaded with her to return to court with me that a penance must be paid for taking a life. One way or another. I wonder sometimes if hers was paid when she died. Now I wonder how I’ll pay mine.
Neev is watching me across the small campfire, her eyes reflecting the fire in twin blue flames. “Thedra? You trailed off.”
I shake my head. “Sorry. I was just thinking about my mother. Something she told me.”
“What?”
“That’s there’s always a price for taking a life.”
She regards me solemnly. “Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know.” I stand up and turn my back to her, surveying the distant, tree-covered hills of Thornewood in the failing light. “Go to sleep. We need energy for tomorrow.”
Our journey is blessedly uneventful for the first few days. On the fourth afternoon, we reach the first trading post outside Lazul, stopping to water our horses and stay the night in an inn. The downstairs tavern is crowded, thanks to it being the end of summer and the start of autumn trading season. At least we’ll be less conspicuous. I find the proprietor to procure a room and then give one of the kitchen maids a bronze queen for a mug of small beer. Neev doesn’t want anything, but she stands by quietly as I drink, making me feel awkward with her large-eyed, silent gaze.
Even though it’s late summer, we’re many miles from the warmth of Zelen’s green hills, and the night is cold. When I’ve finished the ale, I warm my hands at a brazier of burning coal. Neev follows me like a shadow, although she hangs back from the heat.
“Come closer if you’re cold,” I say.
“I’m not.”
“Then why are you still wearing my cloak?”
Before she can answer, I hear the familiar timbre of a silky, melodic voice over the cacophony of the tavern.
“Two women. One tall and haughty and probably dressed in leathers. She might be in the company of another. Small and pretty, a maidservant—she has bright hair and a Zelenean thief’s tattoo on her inner wrist. You must take us to them immediately, by order of the king.”
It’s Agate Mason, and he’s speaking to the proprietor.
Damn it. If I had a flin’penny for every time this happened, I’d be richer than my father. I put my hood up to cover my face and snatch at Neev’s sleeve. “He found us!”
She looks frightened, as if she’s expecting a villain to jump out of the shadows and grab her. She looks over her shoulder.
“Who did?”
I place one finger along the edge of her jaw and turn her face gently toward me so she doesn’t draw their attention with her wide-eyed gaze. “That’s Agate Mason, a man from my father’s guard. Shit. Don’t look again.”
Neev disregards me and looks back to where Agate is conferring with the innkeeper. “Oh no. He has Pietr with him, Akina’s head of staff.”
“I said don’t look at them.”
“Oh green goddess, Thedra. Do something.” Her voice sounds as panicked as I feel, but I don’t fail to notice that this is the first time she has called me by my given name.
I grab her by the waist and yank her toward me, pulling her head down onto my shoulder in an embrace.
We should’ve gone straight to our room. At least then we could’ve barred the door and escaped out the window. With the tavern so packed, our best bet is to weave through the crowd and escape through the kitchen and out the back door before Agate and Pietr see us. I stand up, hauling Neev with me, and sidle toward the arch at the back of the room where I’ve seen servants coming and going with trays of ale and tureens of soup.
I glance over my shoulder several times to make sure they haven’t spotted us. But just when I think we’ve made it, the innkeeper points toward where we were sitting by the large, open fireplace, and I see Agate stride in that direction with Pietr scuttling behind him. I shove Neev into the dark corner near the kitchen door and press my body against hers, putting my hands to either side of her head like a swaggering man attempting to seduce a maid.
“What are you doing?” Her voice is barely a whisper.
“Would he know your face?”
She nods.
“Then keep still. Look.”
Her eyes dart over my shoulder, wide with fear.
“Not at them, at me. They can’t see you.”
Uncertainly, as if she is breaking a rule, she lifts her gaze to mine. This close, her gray eyes have shades of dark slate and pale blue blended together. I reach out and pull the hood forward to cover her face, and she presses her hands against the wall behind her. I lean my forehead on my arm, waiting for Gate and Pietr to pass our darkened corner.
Neev is frantic, her hot breath puffing against my neck like a tiny dragon’s.
“Do the glamour,” I whisper. “The one you used on the stable hand at the palace.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t. I’m too nervous. If Pietr finds me, I’ll be taken back to the palace. And what if they know about the man at the well?”
She’s trembling against my arm and there’s a note of hysteria in her voice. I place one finger against her lips to quiet her before she gives us away. “It’s all right,” I breathe. “I’ll get us out of this. Look under my arm, just for a second. Tell me if they’ve passed.”
She ducks down. “No.”
A few tense seconds pass, and then she looks again. “They’ve gone the other way.”
“Follow me to the kitchen.”
I grab her hand, and we run for the doorway of the hot kitchen. I dodge the cook and a kitchen maid, losing my grip on Neev’s hand. I was expecting to pull her behind me, but the instant we’re separated she darts off and leaves me behind, scurrying around tables piled with vegetables and strings of hanging onions.
“Have you stolen somethin’?” barks a woman, possibly the innkeeper’s wife.
I dart out the back door into the dirty alley. Neev is a good ten steps ahead of me and we continue to run, skirting oily puddles and piles of refuse.
We weave through the narrow, unpaved streets of the trading post, hearing footsteps close behind us. When Neev veers into the side streets of a nearby slum, I follow her. I run until I feel like my legs will give out and my lungs will burst, but she’s so fast I can barely keep up. Several times I nearly lose sight of her among the tightly packed ramshackle houses.
When I can’t run anymore, I lean against a wattle and daub wall, holding my aching side. “Neev! Please stop.” A scrawny black cat nibbling at a discarded meat skewer eyes me with dislike before running away.
Neev returns silently, edging along with her back to the wall.
“You’re fast,” I manage, still struggling to catch my breath.
She nods. “I’ve run for my life more than once.”
“I kept them from seeing you and then you left me behind,” I say, unable to hide the accusation in my voice.
“The only thing on my mind was escape. If they find me now...”
The consequence of deserting the Empress’s service is imprisonment. In some cases, depending on the reason, even death. But perhaps the fact that Neev is on a rescue mission for the princess would be in her favor.
“I understand,” I say, “but when I give someone the benefit of the doubt, as I’ve given you, I appreciate being shown some loyalty.”
Neev lowers her head. “Yes, Your Highness.”
Just like that, we’re back to commoner and princess again, and this time it’s my doing. I had to turn queen-bitch on her just because she was faster than me. I drag my hand across my mouth. “Let’s find some water and get out of here.”
She nods and follows me out of the alley. We fill our skins at a well on the outskirts of town. I hate the thought of leaving Zmaj, of not knowing what will happen to him. I’m afraid he’ll be stolen and sold, and then I’ll never see him again. But returning to the stables is too risky, so we go on foot, heading onto the rocky moor where we can hide in the rock crevices and the tall heather. We walk for a few hours, then stop to gather kindling before making camp beneath an outcropping.
Neev gathers rocks and places them in a circle and I make a pile of peat and dry sticks in the center.
The rock is tall enough to hide the light from our fire, but it also conceals the view of the open moor, which makes me nervous. We won’t be able to see anyone approaching from a distance.
“We should take turns as lookout,” I say.
“Pity. I was looking forward to sleeping in a bed.”
“Me too. But I’ll take first watch. Can you make fire? With your power, I mean.”
She gives me a distrustful glance. “Why? You lit the fire last night.”
“With a spark. But it’s hazardous. Heat is much safer than lightning for creating fire. I just thought you might be able to help.”
“I’m sorry, Your Highness. But I can’t control it except when I’m in danger.”
“Please, you should call me Thedra. My father’s court is obsessed with bowing and scraping, but I’m not.”
“Oh. All right.” She crouches beside the little pile of tinder. As I get the fire going, she produces a packet from within the recesses of my cloak.
“What’s that?”
“I did steal something,” she says, sounding sheepish. “It’s just dried meat, but there’s a good amount.”
“That’s brilliant!”
She brightens at my praise, and we share some of the jerky. It’s salt cured and seasoned with herbs and it tastes delicious.
“Does it hurt?” I ask.
“What?”
“Your power. Mine did, when I was young and untrained.” I roll up a sleeve to show her the silvery scar branching down my forearm—a painting of lightning in miniature.
I glimpse what looks like remembered pain in her eyes and she looks down at her gloved hands, concealing her gaze. “Not that badly. That was clever, by the way. The way you kept them from seeing us at the inn.”
“My father has me followed all the time, ever since my mother died. I’ve learned how to escape without notice.”
She looks curious. “He has you followed? Why? To keep you safe?”
I grimace. “Something like that.”
“But that’s not how King Thede is portrayed in Zelen. Our political mummers make him out to be decadent and withholding—" She catches herself, placing a hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry, Your Highness. I didn’t mean...”
I laugh at the look of horror on her face. I’m well aware the people of Zelen mock my father for his self-absorption and opulence, just as those in Lazul mock Akina for her haughtiness.
“I promise my father is just as self-indulgent as they say, but I’m his sole heir. Without me, he’ll be stuck ruling Lazul until he dies, and he doesn’t want that. I’d say it’s in his best interest to keep me safe.”
“Oh.” She places her hands in her lap, and trains her eyes on the ground again, appearing prim and polished, a good maidservant. I don’t like it. I want her to act like a regular person again, so I change the subject. “Why have you had to run for your life?”
She blinks at me, not understanding.
“In the alley, you said...”
“Oh, that. I stole a few times when I was a beggar. To eat, you know?”
I nod, but the truth is, I don’t know. I’ve never known true hunger in my life, aside from the night and day I fasted for my death ceremony. But I can imagine it. The kind of long distance traveling I’ve done in my life sometimes means long tiring days and cold nights. But I always knew there was a palace and a warm bed awaiting me at the end, whether it was in Thistle, Lazul, or on Lebed. What Neev is talking about—poverty, homelessness, and the fear of starvation—is foreign to me, although I’ve seen it all my life on the streets of my own city.
I see nothing during first watch but a lone gray wolf making its way toward our fire, drawn by the warmth and the smell of our food. He’s skinny and his eyes have a haunted look to them. They glimmer silver and green in the moonlight. I hate to drive him away, but wolves and wild dogs are dangerous even when they’re alone. If I give him something to eat he’ll never leave, so I send up a spark and he slinks away. When Neev takes my place, I fall asleep as soon as I lie down. It feels as if she awakens me an instant later.
“Your High—Thedra. Wake up.”
My back and hips ache from sleeping on the hard ground, and I groan as I sit up. It’s still dark, and the fire has dwindled. I clutch the edges of my cloak over my chest. “What is it?”
“I see a light.”
We climb the rock outcropping together, and she points to a flickering pinpoint of light in the far distance. Another campfire.
“Damn it.”
“It might just be another traveler.” Neev sounds uncertain.
“Maybe. Or it might be Agate and Pietr. And if so, we’re on foot, and they’re on horseback. We should smother our fire and go.”
I’m still exhausted, and it gives my frustration an edge. Agate has always been a pain in my arse, but this is worse. They should’ve known it wouldn’t be like me to wait around for an army to form to rescue Dette. But maybe they think I was kidnapped by her magical little servant.
We cover our campfire with dirt and hide the evidence of our presence, hastily sweeping away our footprints. By sunrise, we’ve already walked several miles and stopped to eat wild berries and drink from a pool. By dusk, the trees of Thornewood Forest look like we could reach them before dark, but it’s an illusion. They’re still at least two days away on foot.
Despite our good timing, the light of another campfire appears again tonight, much closer this time. I’m certain now that we’re being followed. A small voice tells me they just want Neev. Maybe I should let them have her. She’s a raw, untrained elemental, and she left the Empress’s service without being released. Though I disobeyed the king, I won’t face imprisonment or death for it. I decide that’s unfair, so I resist the urge to turn her over to them.
The owners of the distant campfire aren’t the only repeat of the night. During my watch, I glimpse the glow of the gray wolf’s eyes again. It is growing bolder.
Its fur gives off a strange bioluminescence in the moonlight, and I can hear ragged breaths as it paces in and out of the trees just outside the circle of our fire. It must be starving, cut off from its pack and hunting alone. Against my better judgement, I take a small piece of jerky and place it at the far edge of our campsite.
For a while, nothing happens. Then two glowing paws appear, followed by a snout. The wolf scarfs the meat and withdraws. When I’m sure it’s gone, I lie back, pulling my cloak snug around me. The stars are plentiful out on the moors, like chipped mica scattered in thick whorls on black velvet.
Dette loves the stars. I wish she were here beside me, safe. She’s always been such a confusing mixture of strength and frailty. Her light bones make her more fragile than a human, but her body can heal itself from most wounds, even breaks and deep cuts, and she has the ability to absorb pain to help others heal faster.
She’s one of the only half-sylphans to survive infancy, but the few who lived on in the past were longer lived than mortals, if nothing like the sylphs, who live for centuries. They’re also talented greenhealers, like the dryads. Empress Akina thinks Dette’s healing power comes from her sylph heritage.
If whatever it is that took her harms her, maybe she’ll be all right. If we can get to her in time. I curse Agate for coming after us and forcing us to leave our horses behind.
When Neev relieves me of my post, I tell her, “We need a plan for tomorrow night.”
“Why?”
“They’re not going to stop following us, and soon they’ll have caught up. I don’t know why they haven’t already, honestly. But we need to sneak up on them before they can do it to us. In the dark.”