Chapter 44
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
SOFIA
Sofia didn’t let her mind wander back to the clearing where she’d left Fox.
She didn’t think about what he tasted like or the feel of his body pressed against hers.
She didn’t wonder what they’d be doing right now if she hadn’t had to leave.
And she definitely wasn’t thinking about the way he’d casually talked about the future—their future—as if he believed they’d have one.
She didn’t let her thoughts stray from anything but the forest in front of her and the path she had to take.
The night was cold, but at least between the trees, there was almost no wind.
She kept her steps soft, but her pace fast. She stopped every few minutes to check the light breeze, keeping herself downwind from the camp, edging toward the south side.
Every few minutes, she sent a message to Chalia, letting her know she was safe. And Chalia, in turn, passed on the information to Fox.
Sofia heard the army long before she saw it, and she quickly understood that the precautions she was taking in keeping quiet weren’t necessary.
Ten minutes later, she could make out the light of multiple fires through the foliage, thinner here than in the rainforest near the wall.
The voices she had heard had clarified into singing and yells, slurred with drink.
They were celebrating.
Her lip curled. They would have just made it back after their raid of the dragons’ nesting grounds. She hoped they enjoyed their drinks now.
“I’ve made it,” she sent to Chalia, edging closer until she could make out faces and individual voices. The dragon’s mind was distant, but she still felt her perk up at the message.
“Be careful,” Chalia sent in a tone that had Sofia rolling her eyes.
“Tell Fox I’m fine. I’m not an idiot.”
“He says he has no doubt, but he doesn’t trust the king’s men.”
Sofia sent a nudge, pushing just enough against Chalia’s mind to tell her what she thought of Fox’s concerns.
She was still careful as she moved, despite the sound of the army easily drowning out any soft sounds her footsteps made.
There were a few scouts perched against trees at intervals, staring out into the forest. But they were close to the light of the camp, enough that their night vision was probably terrible.
She also noted that none of the scouts were wolfshifters.
It would have been the smarter move to keep them on watch, but perhaps Harlow didn’t trust the creatures that far.
The few times she stopped to study the soldiers sitting around the fires, she saw only humans.
Chalia had smelled the wolfshifters when they’d flown in, but Sofia didn’t see them anywhere. She moved along the perimeter, searching for them. She was supposed to be finding and signaling Ian, but if the wolfshifters weren’t here, they’d need to know where they were to be safe.
It wasn’t until she was nearly to the north side that she saw where the shifters were set up, circled around their own fires.
They, too, were drinking, but there was a predatory anger in the air that didn’t quite permeate the humans.
There was a small wall splitting the two camps—hardly the setup of allies.
Harlow didn’t trust them, and the wolfshifters clearly knew it, though she doubted the humans left on guard could do anything against the wolfshifters should they decide to change their mind on any truce they’d agreed on. She wondered what Harlow had promised them. It couldn’t be good.
Those were questions she didn’t have time for tonight. She reached out to Chalia, her heart giving a small tremble as she realized she couldn’t hear her. She pushed a bit farther, but only silence answered her. Guilt churned in her stomach.
She wasn’t sure who was going to kill her first—Fox or Chalia—for losing connection without noticing.
She just needed to work faster and get back to them.
Taking a moment to let her eyes adjust again to the darkness of the forest, she turned back, moving south again toward where the humans were camped—where Vato would be.
If he were watching over Fox’s mother, as Harlow had suggested, he would be stationed near where they were keeping the prisoners.
She just needed to find where that was. Every tent looked the same: dark tan canvas stretched tightly over wooden stakes.
She was just about to give up on her plan when she saw it.
The tent was only a little larger than the rest, but it had two guards standing at attention outside.
The flaps were tied open, and she could just make out the bars of a cage tucked inside the shadowy interior.
Her father would be inside. Her heart ached, and she strained to get a better angle, but the cage was tucked away—her father hidden from her.
Sending a prayer to the dragons, she found a tree with branches low enough to climb.
She was careful, eyes searching out the scouts with every step.
But the nearest one was looking off toward the left, more bored than concerned about his duty.
When she was high enough, she stopped, taking a moment to hook her legs securely around the branch she rested on.
She still couldn’t look inside the prison tent, but she had already accepted she wouldn’t see her father tonight.
She waited.
It took only a few minutes to pick out Vato in the crowd, his face illuminated by the dancing fires he passed.
There was something off about the way he was walking, and she realized as he took a swig from the bottle in his hand that he was well past drunk.
She swallowed, unable to do more than watch him stumble over a tree root.
She had a small stash of fabric scraps tucked into her belt.
With a deep breath, she stood, hoping that the sun cycles of balancing on the roots through the mangroves would come to her rescue.
Her hip pressed against the trunk of the tree for balance as she tied the longest piece of fabric to the branch, making sure it was in eyeline of the prison tent.
It was the same signal they’d used back in the day when she needed Vato—Ian—to come to the inn.
Isadora would hang a scrap of fabric outside her window. Sofia just hoped he’d see it and know.
Just as she tightened the knot, she felt the branch bending under her, and she stumbled back, grabbing hold of the trunk for balance.
The branch broke with an echoing snap and dropped to the ground just as she shifted her weight to the one next to it.
She tipped precariously before catching herself.
The scout, half-asleep, shot up, spine straightening as he stepped forward, his eyes searching the tree she was in.
His soft gold curls caught the firelight as his head swiveled back and forth.
She swallowed her breath, pressing against the trunk as tightly as she could.
The night suddenly felt quieter than it had a moment earlier, and her eyes found the scrap of fabric waving in the breeze. If the scout noticed it…
Her stomach twisted. She knew throwing up on the scout’s head would be a bad idea. With a light breath, she swallowed back the acid in her throat.
She needed to distract him. She needed him to look anywhere else.
The only weapon she had was her dagger, but she couldn’t leave behind proof there had been another human here.
Her eyes searched the branches until she found a large seedcone, heavy enough for what she needed.
With a deep, slow breath, she reached out and grasped it.
Slower than she thought possible, she used her fingers to bend the small piece that connected it to the branch until, with a soft sound, it snapped.
Below her, the scout was getting closer, his eyes moving between the ground and the branches. She was hidden among the leaves, but if he were to approach the base of the trunk and look up, there was little stopping him from seeing her.
Quelia, please.
A sharp wind whistled through the trees, and she tossed the cone. It careened through the branches of the tree next to hers and fell, rolling until it was nearly at the scout’s feet. He crouched to look at it, his shoulders already relaxing.
“Specialist Mattia, do we have a problem?” Vato’s voice made Sofia’s entire body go rigid.
“No,” the scout said, dropping the cone, “just a damned seedcone. I hate this forest with its dying trees and fucking monsters.”
“Get back to your post then and stop whining. You could be sleeping on the king-damned mountain slope without the trees for protection.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, and Sofia saw him settle back into his station, suddenly at perfect attention.
Vato looked around briefly, his own eyes sweeping over her tree, and she wondered if he saw it—the cloth flag waving there for him—but then he turned away.
“Here,” he said, handing the nearly empty bottle to the scout. “Don’t drink it until you’re off duty.”
He walked back into camp without looking back.
Sofia closed her eyes, resting her head on the trunk behind her, and breathed.
Mattia remained upright and rigid for the next hour before the temptation of the bottle finally broke him, and he took a swig of the golden liquid.
Sofia watched, body rigid, as he slowly drained the rest of the bottle over the next hour, his stance softening and his eyes losing focus at last. Only once the bottle was empty and the young soldier was slumped against the gate did Sofia climb down the tree and slip away into the night.
By the time she made it to the south of the camp, close enough to reach out to Chalia, she felt the hammer of her mind crash into hers.
“Where have you been? What happened? You promised. You didn’t say. He’s going after you.”
The words were a crush of anxiety, and Sofia had to stop, her steps faltering at the onslaught.
“I’m okay. I lost connection, but I didn’t notice until it was too late. Nothing went wrong, though, and I left the flag. I just need to finish the trail so Ian can find us.”
“Pale Scales left me!” she yelled again, and Sofia tasted metal on her tongue.
“He left you?” Fox left her? What did that mean? Did he betray them?
Chalia gave Sofia’s mind a shove. “He’s coming toward you. He thought you were dead.”
“Shit,” Sofia said. She started moving, steps less quiet than before, choosing speed over stealth, but the drunk soldiers were still singing, and she knew now they wouldn’t be able to pick out her steps. Fox was going to come barreling through the trees any minute and get them both caught.
“Can you reach him?” Sofia sent to Chalia. “Tell him to get back to camp. He’s going to run into a damned faery out here.”
“I don’t think reminding him you’re out with the faeries will make him turn back sooner.”
“Then tell him I’m going to kill him if he’s not back at camp when I get there.”
There was a long moment of silence, and then Chalia was back.
“He says he’s going to kill you once you’re back at camp for letting the connection drop.”
A flurry of relief rushed back through Sofia. “I’d like to see him try,” Sofia sniped back, as if Chalia had anything to do with it.
“I think he’s relieved you’re alive.”
Sofia didn’t reply, unsure of what to say to this, but she heard Chalia’s cheerful hum against her mind.
“Shush,” she said, trying to focus on not tripping. She was moving fast, wanting to get back before Fox made another stupid decision.
Her lungs were burning by the time she saw the rocky outcrop they’d claimed as their camp, the dark shadows black against the sky.
“Chalia? Is he with you?”
Before the dragon could answer, she heard the snap of a twig behind her. She turned on her heel to see a shadow coming at her from the darkness.
“You,” Fox said, voice low and rough as his body met hers. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but it wasn’t for him to throw her against a tree, a hand at her throat. His grip was soft, but his body was rigid. “You promised you wouldn’t break the connection.”
She glared at him, his face deep in shadow.
“I told Chalia. I didn’t realize I’d lost connection until I already had.”
“So you just keep going?”
She pulled her dagger, resting it against his side, pressing just hard enough he could feel it.
“I found Vato—Ian. I followed through with the damned plan. Now let me go.”
“I was fucking worried,” he said, words gravel.
She flipped the dagger around, jabbing the hilt into his side hard. He stumbled back a step, and she kicked out her leg, hooking it behind his knee. He went down hard onto the ground, and she straddled him, the dagger now against his neck.
“You weren’t supposed to leave camp. You could have ruined the plan. You could have gotten caught by a faery or a shifter.”
“Were you worried?” his teeth flashed in the firelight filtering out from the rocks.
“No,” she lied. It wasn’t a good one, but she didn’t want to see the satisfaction on his face.
“You’re getting weak, my captor,” Fox said, smiling wider.
“What?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. As the words slipped from her lips, he bucked, throwing her off balance. She caught herself before she fell off, but his hand twisted her wrist, and he threw the dagger away from them. “Fuck—”
She couldn’t finish. He surged up, tangling a hand through her curls as he brought her lips down to his, kissing her as if he wanted to drown in her. Or drown her.