When the sun rises, Castien, Arlin, and I are sent into the village, carrying only enough bread and cheese to last us around a week – if we ration well enough. If we end up being gone longer, we'll need to hunt or forage. Outside of the villages that dot the land every half-day's ride, there is nothing. No one dares to live alone in the woods.

"At least they gave us a way to ward off the Shades," Arlin says, slinging his bag over his shoulder as he walks with his horse. His pace is much slower than usual, his bulky frame weighing him down as he pushes through his fatigue. He raises his hand to brush his fingers over his forehead where the gash from last night should have been but no longer was. The palace healers are good at what they do, but still...

"Here. Let me see your bag," Castien says, reaching out to Arlin, who hesitates, but gives in. Castien carries it on his back as he continues walking through the crowd.

People are about their business early in the capital. Vendors and shopkeepers are hawking their merchandise, wares spread out on tables for people to look at. My horse's hooves clack off the cobblestone underfoot, and I inhale the smell of spices and the rich char of grilling meat.

Sunlight warms my shoulders, and I fight the urge to linger a moment or two and revel in it all. It's only been a few days, but I already missed the village so much. I slide off my horse and walk her forward.

Castien stops a vendor cart, and Arlin grabs the reins of my horse to get my attention.

"Good idea. We should get some dried meats in case we need them." Arlin reaches for the pouch of coins in his pocket.

"Maybe we shouldn't," I say. "We need to get going quickly, and we have Castien's bow if we need to hunt."

Neither man moves.

I groan but wait for them. There's no sense in arguing with them. Arlin is as stubborn as a mule, and Castien doesn't listen to anyone but himself.

A conversation catches my ear, and the subject makes my muscles tense.

"I heard Yvain say he saw the prince leave the castle last night. A man was with him. Said he looked like he was going willingly." A shopkeeper clucks her tongue. "I swear, people with their rumors these days."

Her companion shakes her head. "Yvain is no one to get news from, anyhow. The man is a frequent flyer at the taverns around here, so he was probably so drunk he was seeing things."

"I wouldn't be so sure," the shopkeeper says. "There have been a lot of people saying the palace recruited more guards." She leans in close. "I even heard Adara's children were recruited.

The shopkeeper's friend's brown eyes widen. "Suppose they might have had something to do with it?"

The shopkeeper tips her head and hums in agreement. "That's what I was thinking."

"Castien, we have to go," I say, but not before he also registers what the woman said.

"Arlin," he calls as he grabs two of the horses and ushers them away. He glances back at me when I hesitate, and his eyes soften. "Don't worry too much about it. The only entertainment those women get is watching a rumor spread – even if it's at their hands."

I nod. "Right."

Just as I start to move, movement in the distance reveals a man in a mask. Not just any mask, a bone mask like the one the palace infiltrator was wearing.

"Look." I tilt my head at the man, and Castien follows my line of sight.

Arlin looks too and narrows his eyes. "Is that..."

"A bone mask," Castien says, switching his horse's reigns to the other hand.

The man notices us watching and ducks behind a merchant cart. Castien takes off after him, leaving his horse and Arlin's bag behind.

"Sigrid, stay with the horses," Arlin says.

"What? No -"

Arlin throws a hand up to silence me as he takes a couple of steps. "Don't argue, just do it."

"Pillock!" I shout after him. A woman beside me eyes me but I ignore her. I march the horses over to a hitching post, quickly tie them, and take off after the three men. I narrowly avoid crashing into one of the merchandise carts, shouting an apology as someone yells at me.

Ducking under a stray wooden plank, I stick my foot out as I begin to slide. Castien and Arlin are at least fifty feet from me, chasing after the man in the mask, who slips behind a shop. Castien follows him, grabbing a lamppost to switch directions suddenly. Arlin crashes into a cart, letting out a string of curses.

"Sigrid!" he shouts as I pass him and turn into the alleyway Castien and the man disappeared in.

I stop abruptly to avoid smashing into a wall. A flash of white hair disappears over the roof, and I look around to find a way up. Spotting a stack of crates, I jump onto them, hoping they'll hold my weight. They do, so I jump once more and stick my arms out to grab onto a windowsill, then once more to grab the roof.

When I'm on the roof, something crunches under my foot. The bone mask has been discarded, now crushed into thousands of tiny pieces. I scan the rooftops and watch as Castien jumps down from a roof two shops over.

I get a running leap and manage to make it onto the first house, but as I attempt to reach the next shop, my foot slips and I slide on the shingles, sticking my arms out to catch myself on the side of the roof. My arm sockets pull from the effort, a white-hot warning radiating from my shoulders.

My muscles groan from the effort of holding myself up, and with the strain of our training when we got to the palace, I have nowhere near the strength I would need to pull myself back onto the roof.

I swear and try it, but only drop back down. There's nothing below me to shield my fall except a pile of crates. That wouldn't be enough, and the fall is steep enough to break bone.

"Sigrid? Hold on!" Castien appears on the roof above me, staring down at me in concern. He drops to one knee and grabs my upper arms, pulling me up. His foot slips, and we topple onto the roof in a heap.

"Are you okay?" he asks as he looks up at me. I'm over top of him now, and I push my hair out of my face.

"Yes, thank you." I try to distract myself from the thought that my knee is between his legs, dangerously close to -

"What are you doing?" A voice says from the roof behind me.

I clear my throat and stand up, face heating up as I realize how awkward it must have looked to Arlin. "I slipped. He came and helped me before I fell off the roof."

Arlin narrowed his eyes at Castien but let it go. "What happened to the man?"

Castien shakes his head. "I'm not sure. He took off his mask and disappeared into the crowd below. I came back up here to see if I could find you two."

"Which direction did he go?" I ask, examining the city in the distance. About 400 yards away, the city reaches the forest. If he went in that direction, I have no doubt that's where he went.

Castien nods his head at the forest, and I chew on my lip. Arlin follows his gaze and sighs.

"Of course," he mutters.

The forest is made of thick trees, so condensed that you can barely see a few feet in front of you at times. If we have to look for him there, the odds of ever finding him are very low.

"What do we do now?" Arlin asks, shifting his weight to his other foot.

Castien drops into a crouch and rests his fingers to the tiles below our feet. "I can track him, but the further away he gets, the less effective my tracking skills will be. The earth can only tell me so much."

He stands up and pulls his heartsrune out of his shirt and wraps his palm around it. "Go get the horses. Meet me at the edge of the forest." With that, he turns and takes off down the rooftop, leaping from building to building with feline agility.

"Come on, Sig," Arlin says, turning and eyeing the edge of the roof as if looking for the best way down.

"To hells with that," I say and follow Castien, leaving Arlin behind.

"Sigrid, I swear to -" The rest of Arlin's sentence is cut off as I jump down onto the top of a merchant cart, trying not to fall as I push myself to keep up with Castien.

As I jump down from the cart, I land flat on my feet. Pain shoots up my calves, and I stumble for a second until the pain subsides and I can run again. That was one part of Arlin's agility training that was always lost on me. Landing flat on your feet gets you hurt.

As we reach the tree line, Castien has barely broken a sweat, and watches me curiously as I stagger my way up to him, greedily gulping in the air around us.

"Not bad for a city-born," Castien notes.

"Kind of a backhanded compliment but thank you." I bend over, still huffing, and place my hands on my knees.

It doesn't take long for Arlin to appear with the horses and our bags. He walks past me, and I don't miss the air of annoyance surrounding him. Castien's gaze flits between the two of us as he regards Arlin's silence without comment.

"Shall we leave, then?" I offer and grab the reins of my horse.