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I push open the door. The room is cavernous, themed in porcelain blue-and-whites and not nearly as ugly as Camilla suggested. Normally, I’d expect unpacked trunks strewn across the suite and the dressers to be full of traveling clothes, but Raya seems to have brought nearly nothing with her.
Also, she’s not here.
A cool breeze meets my cheeks. The slatted balcony door is ajar. I peek through.
This side of the palace overlooks a gated garden. No one is ever there except caretakers in the early morning. Tall cypresses provide a middling amount of privacy for any shenanigans happening on the second floor.
Like, for example, a future queen jumping into the shrubbery below.
I peer over the balcony railing. A large indentation mars one of the bushes and stuffed behind it is a tangle of bedsheets that might have been used as a rope.
Shit.
Raya ran off.
Here is the occasional problem with lying: I’m stuck pretending I never knew about something. I could make up anexcuse for why I didn’t warn anyone about Raya, but I don’t like stacking lies; they topple. As far as anyone except for Dante knows, I had mild suspicions of this hasty bride at most.
I doubt she’s gone far. I remember a scene I’d seen in her threads: her, outside the capital, cupping her fairies, who aren’t here right now either. She was on a rocky hill near a forest that looked like the hunting grounds to the northeast.
It’s light out enough to make a trek there, though it’ll be full dark by the time I get back. But that meansIhave to make the trek there.
I groan, glad that I wore boots. The next time I see her, I am making her answerevery single question I have.
Leaving the palace grounds through the eastern gates, I take the steep path down the cliffs that overlook the river Julep. Everything in the city looks small and manicured fromthis distance: the rooftop signs, the tidy sprawl of parks, the odd-sized buildings where the city grew without plan, the river boats cresting out into the valley, and the trafficked thoroughfares lined with carriages.
At the bottom of the cliffs, I cross a wooden bridge to the other side of the river. The ground becomes jagged and rocky through the soles of my boots. A shortcut through a pasture and some stumbling around later, I’m at the top of the exact hill I’d seen in Raya’s memories.
A laborer mentioned seeing some well-dressed lady heading down the same way, so my hunch seems solid. But I’ve underestimated the time it takes to get here—the sun is already setting. Scaling the hill would be the fastest way to the hunting grounds below. Being Seer means I never have toscamper anywhere myself anymore, but part of me itches tohike my skirts up and climb.
But I’ve also accumulated an impressive amount of injuries recently, so I start walking to a less steep area, accompanied by the sound of crickets and badger chitters.
I pass a lonesome cracked plinth that’s stained dark upon the surface, a former altar to the Fates. Shards of pottery and cloth scraps litter the weeds nearby. There’s conversation in the distance.
Grass rustles behind me. I frown. Or has the conversation been following me—?
“Violet?”
I jump. Something brushes my shoulder and I swing an elbow backwards, connecting into a body.
“Oof.Did you…aim,” a familiar voice wheezes, “or am I just…unlucky?”
“Dante?”I whirl around. He’s doubled over, eyes bulging as he processes the pain. “Toady hell, I’m sorry. What are you doing here?”
“I’m following Raya. What are”—he wheezes—“youdoing here?”
“Alsofollowing Raya. She went missing, and earlier, I saw a thread where she…Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, face contorted. Mud stains his patterned trousers and heeled boots; he also doesn’t look like he prepared for a trek down to the outskirts. “Been playing messenger boy for Ambassador Pincorn”—with one more wheeze, he manages to stand upright—“andapparently,news out of Lunesse is Raya’s manor burned down,and that’s not even the most shocking development. Gods, this is a mess.”
“There was a woman,” I say suddenly. “I dreamed of a woman at a burning manor.”
“What was she doing?”
“Laughing…which seems like a bad sign.”
“Not a fan of evil laughing, no.” He grimaces. “That could be her. Who knows who Raya is, at this rate?” Taking a deep, reinvigorating breath, Dante gestures toward the hunting grounds. “But instead of speculating, we should actuallyfindRaya. We mixed you two up in the distance at some point and lost her.”
“We?” I hear the crunch of approaching footsteps.
