Koldo wouldn’t fail the kingdom. She’d keep it as strong and protected in the princess’s absence as in her presence.
The princess ran straight into the arena, to her father’s casket, more silver than gold in the quarter-moon’s silky touch. And there, crossed atop it, were exactly what she needed—Egia and Maite. Waiting patiently as if Sendoa had told them of their quest long ago.
The swords felt perfect in her hands, the weight of them matching the fury roiling beneath her skin. Amarande crossed her father’s fabled weapons tight against her back, using the leather straps that held them to the casket’s form as her scabbard.
If Renard’s men did trail her, they would be in for one hell of a fight.
No hint of that new fear remained when the princess stepped out of the arena and back into the open, her feet quickly retracing the steps she’d taken only hours earlier.
Amarande ran straight into the stable, not a single hesitation in her gait. She had spent hours in that building and knew exactly where Luca kept everything. Saddlebags. Provisions. Exactly what she needed.
In minutes, she had packed bags with salt cod, almonds, and dried cherries. Filled two waterskins in the stream behind the stable. Pulled Luca’s chest plate off the wall and slung it across her body, tightening the straps as best she could against the garnet lace and silk of her dress. It would have to do. She tucked the diamonds at her throat beneath the lace neckline of her dress—they would be a decent trade if needed but no good to her if seen and stolen.
Loose armor clacking against the bones of her corset, she ran to the stall where Luca kept her horse, Mira, a filly black as the night that stood between her and her best friend.
Her love.
Another of her father’s tenets flashed forth in her mind. It had only been days and yet in death he seemed with her sometimes more now than in life, entering her thoughts as if he’d never left them.
Track prey as if your life depends on it, not theirs.
Amarande came to the edge of the stable and looked into the starry night, ready save for the first step. The princess was still, the girl her father had trained her to be waiting for just the right sign.
At her side, Mira was anxious on her reins, the filly shifting in the torchlight.
The wind changed and a fleck oh so small kicked up from the ground, like the first whisper of snow on the edge of winter. Though it was summer, high and stinking and dry. Amarande’s training seized upon the seeming snowflake and the princess bent to the dirt.
An oat.
The kernel was flat and floured—just like the kind Luca saved for certain horses.
In a blink, Amarande spied another white speck yards away. Then a cluster of them just outside the first of the juniper trees that marked her and Luca’s little meadow. The wind rustled down from the mountains, driving the flecks into the dark nothingness.
Her eyes adjusted again.Yes. There.The faintest of horse tracks there in the swirling, fluid mountain dirt. Even in broad daylight, they would’ve been nearly impossible to notice.
But they were definitely there.
Three horses. Not headed north toward Pyrenee but west. Toward the dunes and drought of the Torrent.
Maybe she wouldn’t just find Luca there but also the truth about her father.
And so Princess Amarande of Ardenia mounted her horse, pointed Mira toward the juniper grove, and followed her heart into the night.
CHAPTER
11
THEnight seemed to race across the sky as Amarande moved relentlessly forward.
She didn’t bother to sleep.
She didn’t bother to eat.
She didn’t bother to drink.
Instead, she pushed through the mountains, saddlebags heavy but eyes wide. Always searching for another hoofprint and corresponding oat.
One would think there should be only a single path through the mountains to get to where she was going, but no. There wasn’t even amainroad. The path dividing Ardenia from the Torrent was a web of alternate routes, all of them spidering out from one another in every direction like a cracked mirror.
