KYRA SPRINTED THROUGH the darkened forest at an all-out run.
She ran and ran and kept running, Rosie jostling in her arms, trying to put as much distance between herself and her pursuers as she could. She ran until tears were streaming down her face and her breath was coming in gasps.
This was nothing like being hunted before—it was a million times worse. They’d know exactly where she was. It would just be a matter of getting to her.
Her only hope now was that a big enough head start would make a difference.
Of course, they’d be able to travel twice as quickly on horseback as she could on foot.
Nothing could stop a potions tag. It could be confused by cloaking it in other magic, or by hiding amid a huge crowd of people, but that didn’t stop the tag; it only put it off the track for a moment. Eventually the tracker would be able to find his prey again.
The taggee never felt a thing, but the hand of the tracker would grow warmer and warmer the closer he got to his prey. By the time he found the tagged person, his hand would be burning and he’d do anything to touch the object of his hunt. That was the only thing that could stop a tag—direct, deliberate contact of the tracker with his marked quarry.
And maybe even worse, Kyra thought, was that Hal had just tried to break up with her. Like she hadn’t already cut things off before she’d moved back to Wexford!
Clearly Ariana had been right about him all along.
It had started the previous summer. She and Hal had been working on a new cloaking potion, a vast improvement on the potion Kyra and Ariana had used to sneak out of the castle. Ned had fallen asleep at his worktable by the window, his mouth open, an occasional snore rumbling out.
“This is it.” Kyra had let the last drop of the red elixir she was holding fall into the vial in front of them. She could feel Hal’s breathless reaction beside her as the liquid changed from muddy brown to transparent.
“Kyra,” he said. “I think we’ve done it.” He gently swirled the bottle around, then put little test drops on the ink-dipped pen in front of them.
The pen vanished.
Kyra dropped her head closer to the table. The air around where the pen should be shimmered a bit, but way down at one on the visibility scale. Negligible.
There was no sign of the pen itself. You’d never know it was there.
Kyra let out a little yelp of excitement and was swept up in Hal’s arms. He swung her around, then set her on her feet.
“We,” he said, “are brilliant.” Then he leaned forward and kissed her smack on the mouth.
A friendly gesture in a moment of heightened excitement. Except…
“Kyra,” he’d said. “I love you.”
“That’s sweet, Hal.” Kyra reached up to pinch his cheek. “I love you too.”
“No, not as a friend. I really love you, Kyra. Working here beside you these past months, I’ve never been happier. I think we should get married.”
Kyra had almost fallen off her lab stool.
It had taken him months to convince her, and when she’d said yes—shortly before her sixteenth birthday and the silly underwear gift from Ariana—she’d thought she was sure. It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? And working well with someone, doing something you cared about—that was more or less love, wasn’t it?
Kyra tried to push away the memory of that moment. She knew now that she wasn’t in love with Hal, not by a long shot, but she missed the easy companionship she’d had with him and Ned. She’d been happy. And now—
If they caught her, the least that could happen would be imprisonment.
More likely she’d hang.
As the sun sank beneath the trees, Kyra saw a sparkle of water up ahead. She stopped and set Rosie and her pack beneath a tree, then got out her waterskins.
The bank down to the water was carpeted in browned pine needles, and their sharp scent revived Kyra, who felt like she almost couldn’t take one more step. She was tired and forlorn. No closer to the princess than she was three months ago. And now she was tagged. Things couldn’t get any worse for her.
At the edge of the stream she reached down to fill the first skin, the water icy over her hands. She watched the reflection of the trees on the water, the small yellow leaves twirling in the eddies.
A shriek burst out from Rosie.
Kyra turned, and there was Rosie being attacked by a wild dog. The pig squealed again.
Even as Kyra leaped up, shouting, the wild dog sank its teeth into Rosie and started shaking her back and forth.
“NO!” Kyra shouted, letting the waterskin fall to the ground and throwing a needle. “Drop her!”
She hit the wild dog square on the side. It fell to the ground, its jaws releasing Rosie. She tumbled to the earth and lay absolutely still. There were bloody puncture holes where the dog’s teeth had sunk into her belly.
The sight of the little wounded pig drove Kyra to her knees.
Cold fear gripped her heart, and all thoughts of her mission fled her mind.
She couldn’t lose Rosie.
Kyra touched a hand to Rosie’s chest. The pit-pat of a beating heart pulsed under her fingers. She tore off the hem of her shirt and wrapped it around the pig.
“Rosie, I’m so, so sorry.” Why hadn’t she brought a single healing potion with her? Her only friend in the entire world lay bleeding to death at her feet, and she was too exhausted to think clearly enough to come up with a way to keep Rosie alive. Kyra felt again like things could get no worse.
That’s when she heard the voices behind her. “She’s here. Close by.” Ned.
“Spread out the troops, Sergeant.” Hal’s voice was so cold, so sure of himself.
“You heard him!” a harsh man’s voice barked out. “Fan out!”
Kyra gingerly scooped up Rosie and ran as quickly and as quietly as she could in the opposite direction, tears streaming down her face, her body racked with fatigue.
It took a good long while before the voices faded. But Kyra didn’t think for a moment that she’d lost them. They were right on her trail.
She didn’t dare look down to see if Rosie was still with her. She convinced herself that she could feel the little pig breathing, but couldn’t bring herself to check.
She’d been jogging along for hours, feeling so tired it was an effort to keep her eyes on the trail and her legs moving, when the trail ended in the shallows of a wicked-looking bog. It appeared from nowhere and stretched in front of her as far as she could see, a swampy mess of fallen trees bearded with moss, and low-lying fog clinging to the water, and the stink of things decomposing in murk.
Kyra tried to pull herself up short at the marshy edge.
But she was unsteady on her feet from running for hours straight. And instead of stopping, she tripped over her own feet and tumbled directly into the mucky water.
Only it wasn’t mucky water at all. The ground beneath her looked exactly like regular dirt. It was regular dirt.
Kyra raised herself up, keeping Rosie tucked under her arm, and looked around. As she got to her feet, she could see the bog take form in the air, coalescing out of nothingness. She felt the cold cling of the fog, smelled the stench of rotting things, heard the lapping of the swamp water. Then she ducked her head down and watched it all vanish.
The bog was an illusion.
She stumbled forward, hunched over, working her way deeper into the bog glamour, knowing the magic of it would help confuse Ned’s tag.
Kyra had read about such large-scale illusions but never seen one: it took many magic workers to pull one off, and finding that many powerful people together was rare. Potioners’ schools, or witches’ covens, or—
Gypsies.
Kyra saw the glimmer of the caravans’ lanterns before she saw any people—their wagons were ringed around a large fire. She staggered toward the nearest wagon, but it only seemed to get farther and farther away the more steps she took, until finally she fell to her knees, the lantern light an ever-distant glow.
Of course they’d have other protection spells, she thought, realizing her confusion was another ward placed by the Gypsies on the caravan.
It was her last thought before she collapsed in exhaustion.