"Get down!" I shout, but not before something swings through the air, wrapping around the horses' feet. As Castien's mare goes down, so does he, and he hurriedly pushes himself off her to avoid being crushed. He hits the ground in a roll, but I don't miss the way his left ankle awkwardly tilts to the side.

The same contraption flies toward me, and I try to jump out of the way, but fail. I fall on my face and let out a groan as all air leaves my lungs.

Sloppy. So sloppy of us to let our guards down.

"Color me surprised," someone says as they step out of the shadows.

He's an elf, that much is easy to gather from his braided, crystal-colored hair and skin as pale as snow. "I'd expected the king to send his best men after his son, but I didn't imagine it would be this easy to capture them. What's more is that two of you are elves." He eyes me. "Or part. Then again, why send your secret weapon?"

"All three," Arlin mutters as Castien asks, "Secret weapon?"

The man clucks his tongue. "Don't you worry about that. It's unimportant."

I frown, rolling over to try and free my hands. "You mentioned the prince. Are you a part of the group that took him?"

"You're in no position to ask questions." The stranger shakes his head, the long strands of his hair swinging over his back. He turns and waves a hand over his shoulder. "Oren, free the girl, please."

Someone drops from the trees silently. Three others follow as the first draws a dagger and begins cutting the ropes binding me.

"Follow me, and all will be explained," the stranger says. "Unless you'd rather have my associates help you along."

I glance over at Castien and Arlin, who both look ready for a fight, but shake my head. If these men know where Kael is, this is our best bet. At the first sign of trouble, we can get away, but until then, we have no other choice.

"Now, as hard as it may be to believe, we are not here to hurt you. Or the prince, for that matter. Unless you give us a reason to." The elf mounts a horse and looks down at us. "My name is Bronn. My twin brother is the leader of our group."

Someone pushes me forward, and I growl at him, grabbing his wrist and twisting it to the side. When he yelps, I let him go, a satisfied smirk on my face.

"Haldir, if brute force is unnecessary, I would suggest you mind your manners."

The young elf bows his head before glaring at me from behind his hair. "I apologize."

Bronn shakes his head. "Where was I?" He pauses. "We are a group dedicated to ending the war. Most of us have lost our villages and families to it, so my brother and I formed this group to ensure that doesn't happen to anyone else."

I cut my gaze to Arlin and Castien. Joining a vigilante group doesn't exactly help our current predicament. And if Kael is aligned with them now, our job just got a whole lot harder.

"Where are we going?" I step carefully over a tree root. We're heading deeper into the forest, where the trees grow darker and denser as they close in on us. This fact doesn't seem to bother either my brother or Castien, though.

"To our camp." Bronn shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly, as if bringing strangers to the camp is something he does regularly. But it sets me on edge. Not only is he a stranger, but we don't know for sure that the prince is safe and that they won't kill us as soon as we get to their camp.

"Don't fret," Haldir says from behind me. "If we were going to kill you, we would have done so when we first stumbled across you."

"Keep your eyes peeled for any signs of danger," I whisper to Arlin.

"The trees are too close to pass through up there. Seems dangerous enough," Arlin quips, gesturing to the path ahead of us.

I follow his line of sight, and sure enough, the trees ahead are so dense that there is nothing but darkness ahead of us.

"Bronn, this doesn't seem -" I snap my mouth shut as Bronn and the horses disappear through the branches and into the dark abyss.

I turn to Haldir. "We won't be able to see! I don't trust this."

Haldir shakes his head and gestures forward. "Just trust. Trust that you will be safe. We haven't given you a reason to fear us."

The fact that Bronn just disappeared, and we have no clue where he went doesn't make it easy to trust.

I turn to Arlin. "Do you trust them?"

"They haven't killed us yet. Besides, we don't really have another choice, do we? This is the only lead we have on the prince." He grabs my hand and gives it a squeeze before stepping into the trees and pulling me with him.

Instead of the murky darkness I was expecting, I'm greeted by sunshine and chatter. In front of me is a large clearing, entirely separated from the woods around it. Tents line the outside in a ring, then a smaller ring inside, then so on, until they end, leaving a large space in the middle.

As Arlin and I tumble through the trees, Bronn grins at us. "Well, it's about time. I wasn't sure you would ever cross the boundary. Where is your other companion?"

The trees buzz behind us as Haldir and Castien step through. "They didn't trust you at first. But that one" - Haldir points at Arlin - "convinced the girl to follow him through. This one followed shortly."

I cross my arms. "I'd have gone through sooner or later, whether I had his help or not." I glance around the clearing again. "This is your camp? Why did it look like...?"

"It's a spell cast by the holder of an emerald heartsrune." An identical copy of Bronn stepped out of a tent, smiling slightly. "I'm Blade. Pleased to..." He stops as his eyes settle on Arlin and I, the corners of his lips falling slowly. "Adara? No... your skin is too dark."

My eyebrows pull down, and I frown as I look at Arlin, then back at Blade. "How do you know my mother's name?"

Bronn's eyebrows shoot up, and his lips part like a fish. That's a new look compared to his nonchalant act from before. "You're Adara's children?"

Blade's smile come back, wider this time. "She's alive, Bronn. And she had children."

Arlin's lips part slightly as he stares at the two elves. "You know her? Who are you?"

Blade nods. "We're her brothers. Gods, it is so nice to meet you two."

Castien pushes his braided hair out of his face and raises an eyebrow. "I hate to break up the family reunion, but where is the prince?"

Blade blinks slowly, clicking his tongue as his gaze cuts to Castien. "You warriors. Always right to the point." He sighs. "Very well. We can catch up later. The prince is in my tent. Follow me."

Blade strides through the clearing to the inner circle of tents with the five of us trailing closely behind. A group of children stops their game to watch us as we pass them. Their ball rolls away from them and bumps into Castien's feet.

He leans down to pick it up, white braids falling into his face, before turning to a young girl in the front. "Here you go, little one."

The girl's face flushes as she accepts the ball and returns to her friends.

"No child has ever reacted like that to me," Castien says as he straightens up again.

I shrug. "She's probably just at that age where every guy seems absolutely handsome."

Castien looks away as his face turns red, and I laugh.

"He's in here." Blade nods at the tent in front of us.

"Your highness," I said as I pushed through the tent flap. "Thank the Gods you're okay."

The tent looks much larger on the inside than it does on the outside, and without the expensive blue and gold clothing he usually sports, Prince Kael blends in with the neutral decorations. He's staring at a map on the wall, but when he hears Blade's voice, he turns around, the twitching of his lip betraying his otherwise stony expression.

"I came willingly. I doubt they'd have hurt me." The prince is sitting in front of an unmade bed, wearing only a pair of trousers and a thin, white overshirt. He seems comfortable; the exact opposite of what I had expected when Castien and I left the palace at the king's frantic orders. "How'd you find me?"

"You put too much trust in people you don't know." I cross my arms. "And technically, we didn't find you, your 'friends' found us."

Castien pushes through the flap behind me, almost shoving me forward as he realizes too late that I hadn't been far enough into the tent. There is a grunt as Arlin runs into Castien, pushing him into my back.

Kael peers behind them. "No one else came with you?"

I sit down in one of the chairs. "Your father felt that he couldn't spare anyone else. He trusted in our tracking capabilities."

His eyes narrow. "Or he didn't think my life was important enough to waste more guards on."

I roll my eyes. It's like reasoning with a child. The king didn't seem anything less than worried about the safety of his only son. If he wasn't worried, then he wouldn't have sent anyone at all. "Well, we're here, and that's all that matters." I stand up again. "Now, let's get you back to the palace where it's safe."

"I'm not going back."