Amarande handed over one sword but kept the other in her grip, threat clear, as Osana righted and raised the sword she’d been given.
The Basilican girl didn’t say anything, just made her cut with her lips curling up slightly at the corners.
Binds shredded, Osana returned the sword. “The horses are this way.”
Amarande fought back the tendril of fear in her belly telling her not to outright trust anyone, even this girl, but the direction Osana ran was away from the thunder of footsteps, and so it seemed like her best option anyway. She had still been unconscious when they’d come into camp and she had no idea where horses might be.
The princess stowed one sword in her makeshift scabbard—Luca’s chest plate wasn’t worth the time it would take to find it and get it on and tight—hauled up her leg chain, and followed, remaining sword out and on guard. She followed Osana around the perimeter of the camp, sticking to the darkest corners as chaos ensued, a thousand men and women rushing around against thebackdrop of a roaring fire that almost appeared to leap from the earth’s center itself.
Human tallow made quite the kindling.
As they darted around the camp’s edge, the spires of the greatest tent Amarande had ever seen came into view.
The Warlord.
It could belong to no one else.
The tent was a lush blue like the waters that were so absent in the Torrent. The thick canvas held fast against the tug of the night wind and the commotion, men running through openings on all sides. Each time someone left the tent, there was a slim firelit glimpse of the inside. Furs swaddling the floor, a figure in the center.
Before she knew it, Amarande had veered off course by a half-dozen steps, drawn by curiosity.
This was the Warlord who’d met with her father. The one who’d let him go with a scar on his cheek and a censored story to tell. The one whom Sendoa had mostly allowed to rule unbothered.
Amarande stopped running.
She stood, heart pounding and sword lifted, as three women pushed out of the tent together, providing her with the best view yet.
The figure was slim and small and facing away. Clothed in swaths of blue, linens draped across slight shoulders, up to an elegant neck, draped in extra linen. Hair piled into a bun slashed through with a dagger.
The Warlord was a woman.
Granted, this person could be the Warlord’s mistress, but something about the cushion of space surrounding her, the dagger, the extra linen, the strength of her posture even while sitting, added to the press in Amarande’s gut.
Yes, a woman.
A grain of something shaped like hope dropped in the princess’s stomach.
Amarande took another step toward the tent, toward the Warlord, wondering if the timing of the Warlord’s rise to power wasn’t as important as it seemed. Her mind reached back, back, back, for her mother’s face. There were no paintings of her in the castle—not anymore.
Could it be? Or was it hope that shaped what her eyes thought they saw?
All Amarande knew of that face was what others told her. Facts, rattled off. Queen Geneva of Ardenia: dark hair, blue eyes, petite frame, punctuated by her youth at the time of her marriage.
The tent flap swung closed, swallowing the figure and the light, and a palm pressed against Amarande’s shoulder. The princess startled, hand to her sword hilt as dark hair, blue eyes, and a teenage face swam into view. Not a trick of her taxed memory but Osana, pointing to a shadowed mass ahead.
“There,” she whispered. The gate to the enclosure was already gaping wide, the other captives having found it first.
Amarande hesitated.
The timing didn’t make sense, no. Yet so many other questions could be answered by the Runaway Queen wearing the Warlord’s name.
But it couldn’t be. And staying on a wild scrap of hope would mean another chance at capture. Another chance at death in the fire pit. Still—
“There! Get them!” Men’s voices. They’d been spotted.
Osana yanked on Amarande’s arm, pulling her into a run. They stumbled over the landscape, rocks and dips and undulations catching their stride, which was already hampered by one leg cuffed in the heavy chain they slung in their opposite grips. Still, they careened into the pen, dodging newly woken horses, edging toward the open gate, escape in their eyes.
Osana dropped Amarande’s wrist and went for the first horse available, a chestnut gelding.
