“You’d better answer her,” Meredy snarls, and Lysander echoes her with a distant growl. “If you’re interested in getting out of here in one piece. The bear is hungry.”
The baroness braces herself against the stall door, and the horse I’m saddling whinnies happily. Baroness Abethell strokes the horse’s soft nose with a trembling hand as she says quietly, “I was just following Prince Hadrien’s orders. I can show you his letter. He asked me to keep you delayed and entertained in Abethell until he sent for you. And not to breathe a word about it to anyone. Not even my guards.” She frowns as she gazes from me to Meredy and back. “Has something happened? Is he in some kind of trouble?”
“You have no idea,” Meredy murmurs.
“Am I in trouble, too?” The baroness glances between us, still pale. “Is this about the Shade attacks . . . ?”
“Kind of.” I push open the stall door, leading my horse into the wide aisle with Meredy’s. The baroness makes no move to stop me. “There’s no time to explain now, but you’re not in any immediate danger. We just need to hurry. Prince Hadrien . . .” I swallow hard, the name sticking in my throat. “The prince urgently needs us back in Grenwyr. We received a raven in the dead of night ordering our return.”
“Safe journey, then,” Baroness Abethell says softly, looking uncertain but like she’ll be glad to see the back of Lysander.
As Meredy and I ride out of Elsinor, back up the mountain path where charred remnants of our wagon still litter the ground, my eyes are on the grizzly scouting the road ahead. But my thoughts are with Hadrien.
I picture the bruise on his face where Vane punched him and wish I could give him a few more bruises. Scenes of the Shade attacks in Elsinor—attacks that Hadrien ordered—flash mercilessly through my mind, death and misery on the grandest scale I’ve ever seen.
Then I remember the way his eyes lit up whenever he spotted me at the palace. The way he seemed so protective of Valoria and his younger siblings. The way he looked up to King Wylding as though he were Vaia the Five-Faced God himself. Was it all an act?
“I’ve been so stupid,” I mutter, mostly to myself, though Meredy turns in her saddle to glance at me. “I should’ve taken you at your word when you told me your suspicions in the wagon instead of trying to pick a fight with you.”
Meredy narrows her eyes and says nothing, evidently lost in thought.
“But why all this murder? Why destroy his family? Why hurt the people of Karthia if he wants to rule them? And why hurt—?” I stop myself before I can add me. Whatever I thought he felt for me, it must have been part of his grand illusion.
“I wonder if anyone can ever truly know another person,” Meredy says softly, her eyes lingering on me as she trusts her horse to stick to the path. “Or if we all keep a few rooms’ worth of secrets locked away in our minds.”
I’m tempted to ask what secrets Meredy keeps, but I’m too exhausted to hear them. I wonder if I’m keeping any of my own. Yet all thoughts seem to lead back to Hadrien, making me too sick to eat despite my stomach growling.
We ride in silence for hours.
“You were right about something else,” I say a while later, as we descend the mountain. The late afternoon light makes our shadows leap and dance along the path ahead of us, like phantoms leading a parade of the living. “I am selfish.”
Meredy halts her horse until mine catches up, frowning as she watches me.
“I took Master Cymbre for granted. I thought she’d always be there to clean up my messes, like that was her job or something. Like she was untouchable.” I take a breath. Just saying her name makes my whole body ache with the loss. “I didn’t even pay enough attention to you when you came to me for help with Firiel. I should’ve taken time to warn you about what was happening in the Deadlands, and because I didn’t, you nearly died.”
I drop my gaze. “I was hurt, and I forgot about everyone else who was hurting, too. Cymbre, and you, and Lyda—”
“Shut up.” Meredy leans toward me in the saddle, tucking back a loose strand of my hair. “You can’t take on the blame for any deaths Hadrien caused. This was out of your control, like you’d have me believe Firiel’s death was out of mine.”
I nod, choked by a sudden rush of tears. I flick the horse’s reins and urge her to resume the steep downward walk, Meredy’s fingers grazing my cheek as I drift away. My hands shake, reminding me of my potion withdrawal. But I don’t want potions anymore. I don’t want to be numb. I want to feel angry, want my blood to run so hot that when I find Hadrien, I can kill him without mourning yet another lost life.
I want to grieve for my friends, so that their deaths will have meant something.
Tears slide down my cheeks as I hold their faces in my mind. Evander. Nicanor. Cymbre. The people of Elsinor. And perhaps even King Wylding, if we’re too late.
Please, by Vaia’s grace, don’t let us be too late.
One day blurs into the next as we cross Grenwyr’s lush farmland on our way back to Grenwyr City. Meredy forces us to stop for a few hours’ rest, which I agree to only because I can’t tell which end of my horse is the head. I wake up curled against Meredy’s back, and we push our still-exhausted horses to gallop the rest of the way to the city.
Early morning sunlight warms Meredy’s hair, turning it from its usual deep purple-red to a fiery shade. From behind, I could almost mistake her for Master Cymbre, but when my horse draws level with hers, the scar on her cheek and the determined look in her eyes—even her smile—are all Meredy. Not Cymbre, not Evander. Just Meredy.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” I murmur as we cross into the oddly quiet heart of Grenwyr City at last. “This isn’t your fight.”
Meredy smiles, a warrior’s sharp smile, and I’m flooded with gratitude that I’ve got such a brave girl beside me. “But it is. I’m helping you get justice for Evander. Besides, this is every Karthian’s fight now. I know I wasn’t myself in the Deadlands after working my magic with Lysander, but I still heard most of what the masked necromancer said before he died. Hadrien has a lot to answer for.”
“Thank you.” I clutch the horse’s reins harder, resisting a sudden urge to reach for her, to steal a moment with her calming touch. I wonder if she knows how important she is to me. I want to tell her, but instead what leaves my mouth as we crest another hill is, “It feels like we’ve come a long way in just a few days.”
Meredy opens her mouth, but as the palace comes into view, the determination in her eyes is swiftly replaced with fear.
I follow her gaze, struggling to make sense of the scene unfolding on the grassy slope below the palace. It looks as though all of Grenwyr City has gathered there, a sea of dark and light hair, scarves and dresses and fishermen’s caps all blurring together.
That explains why the city seemed so quiet.