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“Are you going to ask me who Bronwen is? Aren’t you going to ask me how to sculpt yourself into the person with the most advantage?”

Be the Shadow I trained you to be, was what he was really saying.

His lips were pink with the cold, and his flushed cheeks were distracting. But not that distracting—I already knew who Bronwen of the Ruckus was. Aster had miscalculated by thinking he would put me in the library for my ‘safety’—I might have been physically contained, but my mind had been exploring. Reading what I shouldn’t was my pastime. The histories written in the Barren’s books might have been one-sided, but they also—if you read enough—contradicted each other.

I knew exactly who I would have to be to meet the great Bronwen. What I really wanted to know was if Aster was going to help me or help her throw me back to the Barren.

With a neutral expression, I pressed my hands into Aster’s chest and, ignoring his warmth, pushed him off me. Giving Aster what he wanted, I said, “So, who is she?” How would Aster advise me to act in front of a Druid Chief whose partner was a Seer?

“Don’t talk; play meek. Don’t tell her who you are, what you can do, or where you come from. Play the little Annatalian dressed as a Barren noble to escape, and I’ll tell her you were rescued from a dangerous man.”

I rolled my eyes. That was way too vague, and I’d had enough. Stepping around him, I found a wide cobbled path and began to follow it. The hem of my dress had become sodden and heavy, and my boots cold and squelching. I wanted out of the elements. I wasn’t prepared for a nature hike through a forest with Aster, mentally or emotionally. The trees were sparser on this side of the arch, and smaller. As if they had been planted a lot later than the ones behind us. For the first time since I had landed in the Ruckus lands, the surrounding area wasn’t deserted—from somewhere in front of us, people were talking and chopping wood.

But then I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “Play meek?” I hissed back at him. “Did you lose your mind as well as your principles?”

He didn’t even flinch.

He was going to feed me to her and let her do what she wanted. For someone like Bronwen, strength was what she respected, and there was no lying to her when the woman at her side could see the past and the future. Even if Yule weakened her Earthworld sight.

“How will you explain Kit dumping me here?”

He swept around and glared at me. “Just follow my lead, and I’ll get you out of this. We’ll tell her you’re my lover.”

“She won’t believe that…”

My chest tightened as an old, familiar fear settled inside me. Perhaps I would never be more than a past fling. Never the girl he could choose. Never the future that he could claim. Just two people who, long ago, were trying to hold on to each other when their worlds fell apart.

But the way he couldn’t meet my eyes made me pause.

She would believe it because there had been others.

“Right,” I whispered, trying to get my traitorous heart under control.

He stepped closer. “Bronwen knew some of the Riders long before they became… Chosen.” He stopped, as if he wanted to say more, but couldn’t. “Just be good, and we’ll find a way around this, so you can ask for sanctuary here.”

Heavy footsteps crunched in the snow somewhere to the right of us, letting us both know we were being watched.

“Be. Good,” he mouthed. “And. Be. Quiet.”

I locked my eyes on his, making sure he understood every word I daredn’t utter. That isn’t who I am. And you know it.

“Such a shame.” He held out his hand toward the path. “Now let’s go.”

Somewhere behind us, a man feigned a cough, or was it a laugh?

I jolted forward and gave Aster a nod as I smoothed out my features.

“Lord Aster, she’s waiting.” The warrior stepped into view.

My bones ached, and my muscles cried out for rest, but I pushed through every spasm and ignored the sting every time a snowflake hit the open wounds on my neck. The little book vibrated in my pocket, reminding me of Morlan’s words that Aster had changed, and that the book had chosen me and I had to mend it. This was yet one more thing I hadn’t planned for.

15

After we’d walked a bit further, we followed a turn in the path through a cluster of trees, and a charming, lantern-lit town came into view. Built of logs and earthen chimney pots, the houses looked as if they had been designed from one of the children’s fairytale books in the Grand Library.

This was the real Ruckus; the one hidden from the world. I had stopped glaring at Aster’s back and was studying the warriors—men and women—draped in fur with swords on their backs. A sight I had never seen in all my years, not in Annatalia or in the Barren. Children laughed and threw snowballs, and a little further to my right were horses tethered to a long post on the outskirts. Which was fortuitous, as I was going to need one of those horses as soon as I got away from Aster’s watchful eye.

“Everything here’s protected by an illusion?” I muttered.