THE adrenaline from her first battle shook everything loose that Amarande had been ignoring on her way to this point.
Her stomach rumbled.
Her dry throat ached with thirst.
The princess was happy to be alive, clothed, safe. But suddenly she wished she’d bothered to pause long enough that morning for a bit of food or a sip of water. Or, at the very least, to afford those things to Mira.
The princess’s eyes wandered to the filly’s shiny black flanks.
The saddlebags were perfectly filled.
It didn’t do to dwell on their loss. Comforts were the last things to mourn. Especially on a journey such as this. But a thread of sadness ran through her still—she’d learned how to pack a saddlebag properly from Luca. He was excellent at matching every need to a crevice and fitting a plethora of items that gave everyone else trouble. There was an art to it, if you had the patience. She didn’t, not naturally, but she admired Luca’s talent for packing things away so that everything had a place, nothing squeezed, squashed, stuffed. And so she had learned.
But she’d also told it true when she’d reminded the Royal Council that she could track prey as well as she could hold a sword and throw a knife.
Human or animal, she could find it, and those skills in this environment could lead her to exactly what she and Mira needed at this moment: food and water.
The princess mounted her horse and reset her focus.
Birdcalls, bees, animal prints, vegetation—all proved useful in tracking down what she needed.
The landscape was in a heavy, dry roast under a climbing sun. To the north, the dragon’s spine. To the east, the mountains and home. To the west, Luca’s trail. And, to the south … nothing but russet dunes. That was the direction the bandits had gone.
No birds circling. No animal prints. No vegetation.
Somewhere out there were landmarks—the Hand, standing as high as the tallest juniper tree in Ardenia, its stone fingers reaching for the stars. The Warlord, pulling strings from his caravan. Great fire pits dotting the landscape, littered with the bones of the defiant.
These were the things Amarande was certain to find in the Torrent, along with Luca. As for anything resembling sustenance and hydration? Even if metered by the Warlord, they were necessities. They existed, too.
But where?
Luca had once told her horses could go ten days without food. Without water that span dropped to three days—the same time frame for a human. But all those estimates considered ideal conditions, not the Torrent, with its heat and open spaces and unrelenting sun.
More than a half day, gone.
“I’m coming, Luca,” she whispered as she tapped Mira into motion, and pulled her handkerchief up over her nose and throat. “I just hope I won’t be near collapse and dragging a dead horse when I find you.”
Amarande pointed Mira’s sand-dusted nose to the north and west, back along the dragon’s spine, which was now splitting the sun’s rays in equal measure. Noon.
Accounting for the fight and the cleanup after, she’d likely lost all of the time she’d gained over the course of the night and into the morning. Fifteen hours riding, yet still three hours behind. Maybe more.
But she’d get that time back.
As the sheer umber face of the long spine of plateaus neared, Amarande searched the ground for any hint of the three horses of the bandits carrying her love. The winds had whipped the trail clear, fresh red dirt blanketing what was there only an hour earlier. It became obvious to the princess after about a mile of combing along the rock wall as she’d done previously that the trail was gone. There was nothing now, not even an oat.
For the first time, panic clawed at Amarande’s throat.
The princess swallowed and shut her eyes for a moment. She was not helpless. It was not hopeless.
Again, her father came to her. A warrior made is a warrior alive.
The tenet was an obtuse one, but said plain, the meaning was: Use what you have to your advantage to survive.
The princess’s eyes sprang open.
She had herself. She had Mira. She had the terrain.
Cobble them into an advantage, Ama.
She blinked again at the tail of the dragon’s spine. Yes. That was it.
She would guide Mira up the narrow rock ledges until they either reached the plateau or could go no farther and search the horizon. Whatever she saw there had to be more informative than what was left down below.
Amarande and Mira made the turn to climb, angling for the first ledge leading up the mass of rock, the heavy light casting the path in little relief. Which was when Amarande realized there wasn’t enough room for them to safely maneuver. The ledges grew increasingly thin toward the top, a true path crumbling into a careful hop and skip.
There was no way they were making it together.
Amarande peered at their surroundings. She didn’t have the perspective she craved, but she had enough of a view to see they were alone.
“Don’t worry, I’ll only be a moment.”
She looped Mira’s reins around a craggy thumb of burnished rock and edged her way around the filly, to the first gap between ledges. It was just short of a full split leap’s distance, and the princess leaned hard against the rock face as she tested the weight of a single foot against it—a fall would be another disaster.
But her weight held, and she hugged the rock face, skirting around, picking one ridge and then another, boot tips freeing fresh red dust with every side step and balance check.
The fourth ledge was the leanest—the width of an Itspi windowsill, and at the height of three of Luca’s best stallions placed one atop another. Her fingernails clawed at porous stone, combing for every available groove. Her grip wasn’t the best, bruised knuckles smarting, functional but cranky. But she was spry and had plenty of childhood moments spent in trees—most of them with Luca, of course. Picking lemons to deliver to the kitchens along with a heavy-handed suggestion that they’d go to rot if someone didn’t make cake. Rescuing a gray tabby who’d chased a bird too far. Spying on Koldo’s meticulous methods of reducing new recruits to tears.
By the sixth ledge, she had the top of the plateau within literal reach. Sweat slid down her temples; her hands were wet, too. She dried her palms one by one on her dress, the coating of russet dust adding much needed grit to the slick. She shoved her kerchief up from her nose almost to her hairline, blotting sweat before it could sting her eyes.
She wiped her palms one more time, hooked her hands at the wrists above, and dug her grip into the windblown rock of the top. Amarande closed her eyes. Her breath came in puffs. She could do this.
To the top or not at all.
Her father had never said such a thing, not to her, but the sentiment fit with everything he taught her.
The princess opened her eyes. Readied her worn arms above her head. Squatted as deep as her balance dared. And sprang for the top.
The upward momentum gave lift she wouldn’t have had from a dead hang. Her fingers gained tenuous purchase on the plateau, just deep enough that she was able to drive her left elbow into the graveled skin of the flattop, lace shredding as the bent joint skidded to a delicate halt.
For one sick moment, her entire body weight, plus the heft of her crossed swords and her boots with their hidden knife, was suspended on three points.
With everything she had left, Amarande’s right hand left the safety of her grip and shot forward, her elbow jutting out and catching the plateau’s lip.
Teeth grinding, she hauled her upper body toward the bend of the edge, and swung her right leg on top, and then rolled onto the table of rock.
Breathing in ragged kicks and starts, she lay on her back, swords pressed in an unforgiving cross over her spine. The air she sucked in was sweet and clean, even mingled with a harsh cut of new perspiration from under her arms.
She made it.
A smile touched Amarande’s lips as she sat up and opened her eyes, eager to peer over the edge, hoping for three horses at a distance and therefore more pointed guidance on the correct direction. The barest sign of water along the same general path would be even more desirable.
So much to gain. But when she stood, something came that she didn’t expect.
The sudden sensation that she wasn’t alone.
The princess immediately extracted both swords and whirled a quarter turn to her left, Egia and Maite out in a high blocking cross.
Between the intersection of glinting Basilican steel, the princess saw a ghost.
A wolf as black as night.
Her breath caught and her swords quivered.
Dehydration might kill a person in three days, but the princess knew not how long a person could go without water and maintain sanity.
This couldn’t be real.
There were no black wolves left in the Torrent or anywhere else in the Sand and Sky. All had been famously murdered and their pelts made into various fluffy gifts to the Warlord. The symbol of the Otxoa, eradicated right along with the family that held it dear.
Yet the wolf’s eyes narrowed.
Its canines flashed, the length of her hand from wrist to middle finger.
It took a step forward, onyx paw landing in a whisper of cinnamon dust.
Amarande’s mind raced. This was the face of something that didn’t exist. “Extinct” didn’t mean lying in wait atop a plateau the height of the Itspi’s tallest tower.
“You’re not real.”
The wolf took another step, its carriage lowering, power coiled in its hind legs.
“You’re not real,” the princess repeated, this time a whisper. An appeal to the stars. Amarande couldn’t attack an actual black wolf. She couldn’t. She had her swords, yes. But this creature might be the last of its kind.
Like her.
The wolf’s grin spread, snout crinkled. Yellow pupils just slits now. It didn’t howl, and it wouldn’t, not if it was real. Real wolves attacked in silence. In packs, too—if a lone wolf was spotted, more were near.
But here? On top of the worst part of the world? How could there even be one, let alone a pack?
Amarande backed up on a curve. In her periphery, there was a mass of some kind—a crush of rocks. Koldo’s voice stuck in her head, the advice the same for any fanged beast: Cover your flanks. She needed protection on one side, and without a tree—ideal—anything upright would do. Looking bigger than she was would help. Her left hand scrabbled at her skirt, pulling the fabric out to the side.
The wolf hesitated. She was wider. Bigger. Flank covered.
It didn’t matter.
Before she got to the next viable tactic—be as noisy as possible—the wolf sprang forth.
Amarande dove right.
A mistake.
The promise of a bone-shattering fall blew in an upward gust against her cheek as she landed on the edge of the plateau, the width narrower here. Her hair dangled in the breeze, the lip of stone spilling pebbles to the ledges and earth below.
The princess rolled onto her back to distance herself from the plateau’s edge and certain death. Her boots and palms struggled to gain purchase as the wolf bounded off the mass of rock she’d used as cover and vaulted back in her direction. She crab-walked back, sword pommels scraping the dirt from an indefensible position, heels shuffling as she tried to get the balance to stand.
“No, don’t—”
Again, the wolf came. Its paws connected high on her chest plate, the metal driving into the diamond necklace beneath the lace of her gown’s neckline. Her heels released as she fell, and she whipped her shins and boots up, hitting the animal broadside against the concave target of its belly. The creature flipped, head over heels. Amarande spun to her feet and stood, swords out, the scent of the wolf’s rank breath full in her nostrils.
The creature regrouped, teeth bared. But before it took the first step in a new attack there came a piercing whistle—so high Amarande thought it might be a keen of pain. But then the wolf sat, as docile as a dog, its eyes still over her shoulder.
The princess turned, now half-recognizing that stand of rocks to be not a boulder and stones, but the makings of a rock-hewn lean-to. A whoosh that was not the wind came and, following it, a sudden, intense stinging at her neck, right beneath the edge of her kerchief.
The princess dropped Egia, her hand flying to her hair and brushing it aside to find a dart, sticking straight out from the cluster of veins that made up her jugular.
“Who—” she started, her voice slipping from her lips before petering out, her thought dying with the sound.
She couldn’t speak; she couldn’t move; she couldn’t even blink—everything was still beyond her breath.
Amarande fell then. The red dirt coating the plateau top swirled before her eyes as her body hit, Luca’s chest plate clanging as it made contact with the unforgiving rock.
As the edges of her vision bled into darkness, a face appeared before her, only the proportions and stature giving away that it was a man.
“This one is both our penance and our entrance, Beltza. Yes. The stars have given us a mighty prize indeed.” The voice was haggard but pleased. Amarande heard it like an echo, her ears not complying. Not the men from before. A new threat.
And then her vision died out completely.