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“No healer.” I didn’t catch sicknesses often, and nothing these last few days had indicated that I had caught one now. Just too much wine the night before, maybe. “A brief spell.”
Sebian smacked his lips. “He didn’t eat yet, and neither did I.”
Unless Galantia’s cunt counted. And while delicious, it wouldn’t hold us over, so I agreed with a nod. “I may have forgotten supper last night as well, with the dozens of meetings I had to attend.”
Sebian glimpsed into one of the nearby corridors. When a young maid shuffled by, he let out whistle loud enough that she startled and looked at him.
“Get your prince something to eat. Keep it simple and make it fast.” Pleased with how she curtsied and ran off, he turned his attention to Asker. “Malyr said he probably wants me west? Any particular area you need me to look at?”
Asker took the book from my hand. “The northern forest right on the border.”
“Too far,” Sebian said, probably because he’d promised Galantia some time spent over berries, and I could not hold that against him, the bliss we both experienced with her. “Send another pathfinder who flies faster.”
Asker eyed him for a moment, but no reprimand came as his attention drifted to the maid who hurried up the dais.
She held a large silver platter out to me and curtsied. “My prince, is this to your taste?”
I couldn’t help but smile at her concern as I looked over the steaming bread, the boiled eggs, and the cured sausages. As much as I’d always been a prince, I’d also been a prisoner and a fugitive, stripped of pride and food. She could have brought me a stale piece of bread, and I wouldn’t have taken notice.
I reached for the egg and gave her a nod. “This will do just—”
Pain once more lanced through my chest, intensifying as it settled somewhere near my heart. My torso buckled, and for a heartbeat, the room blurred into flecks of red and black. My balance drifted forward, further, further, until—
Metal clanked against stone.
My head hit the ground, sending a stabbing vibration through my skull as the world turned around me. But it had nothing on the agony that came through my bond, yanking and pulling as if it meant to snap.
“Malyr!” Asker shouted.
An unkindness fluttered around me, Sebian reshaping beside me and somehow staring down at me. “What happened?”
An excruciating, unyielding pain clenched my chest like an iron fist, each heartbeat a torrent of unbearable anguish that seemed to crush my very soul. I gasped for air, but no breath came, as if I was endlessly suffocating but never dying.
Galantia.
Myanoaley’sname sat on my tongue—a primal instinct, a warning—my mouth gaping but no sound making it past my lips. Something was wrong. She needed me. I had to… had to…
My shift surged through me, the five of us emerging to the sound of our anxious croaks. We dashed through one of the flight holes, our hearts pounding faster with each roof we passed before we banked right, rounded the wall of the mountain, and fluttered up.
Anoaley,we cawed among us.Anoaley!
I all but stumbled into the cavity of the spring, nearly crashing into Sebian, who must have read the panic from my eyes and sprinted off into the first shadowed area as he shouted, “Galantia!”
“She’s not here.”
I couldn’t see her.
Worse, I couldn’tsenseher.
But she had been here, I realized with another struck to my core when my eyes landed on her bathing satchel on the ground. I picked it up. Dry. Untouched.
“Something happened to her.” Righteous fear filled my entire being. “I can feel it.”
“Where is your bond pulling you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t… I don’t—” A gulp severed my voice. “I feel as if someone poured ice into my chest, making it hurt and dulling it at the same time.”
Five ravens fluttered in, only for Asker to shape beside us. “Where is she?”
