11. Kaedryn #2
The ravine ends sooner than I expect. It opens onto a narrow cliff shelf, jagged and wind-scoured, the drop beyond it steep enough that any human body would shatter on the rocks below.
Black pines cling to the slope, their branches bent under frost. Beyond them, the land falls away into dense forest and broken ridges, the kind of terrain that swallows sound and confuses direction.
Adelina’s prints continue to the edge. Then they end.
For a heartbeat, the old fear returns. A fall. A stumble in the dark. A body lost among the rocks below.
I reach the cliff before I realize I have moved. The wind tears at my coat, sharp enough to water the eyes. I look down, scanning the snow-covered ledges, the jagged breaks, the black thread of a frozen stream far below. No body. No torn cloak. No trail of broken branches.
Only empty air.
Then Soren points. “Wing marks.”
They are faint, nearly erased by the wind, but they are there. Two long disturbances in the snow dust near the edge, sweeping backward from where she must have unfurled. Not dragged. Not collapsed.
Opened.
She called her wings here. She ran from the tunnel, reached the edge, and flew.
Relief hits first. Then fury. It is fast enough to shame me.
She is alive. She was not taken. She did not fall. She chose the sky.
She chose to run.
Varek reaches the cliff and looks down, then out, his face darkening in a way that says he has reached the same conclusion.
“She flew.”
Sylas steps up beside me, his gaze following the line of the wind. “Injured or exhausted?”
Varek turns sharply. “She is not injured.”
The answer comes too fast. Too sharp.
Every part of me goes still.
Soren looks at me. Rowan looks at the ground. Merritt continues looking around while Kellan watches the king’s guard, daring them to try something stupid. Sylas’s expression does not change, but I know my brother well enough to understand when his thoughts have turned dangerous.
I face Varek. “Why would you say that?”
His eyes narrow. “Because she was whole when I saw her.”
Whole.
The word scrapes.
I remember her curtsy. The tiny tightening at the corner of her mouth. The way she held her back in the dining hall. The faint silvering near the edge of skin Selvara’s touch made her guard. The almost imperceptible breath she caught when her wings flickered.
My voice lowers. “That’s not what I asked.”
Varek steps closer. “Take care how you speak to me in my kingdom.”
“Then answer plainly in yours.”
The wind cuts between us, carrying the distant sound of horns from the castle. Search parties are already spreading. Too late, if she has been in the air for hours.
Varek looks toward the horizon instead of answering. “She will not get far.”
The words send something hot through me, not because they are wrong.
Because of how he says them like he is speaking of a bird that slipped its tether. Like the sky itself is an insult because she dared enter it without his permission.
The pull in my chest answers, stretching outward, faint and maddening. East, perhaps. Or only away. I turn toward the wind and try to separate instinct from anger, but both are burning too close together now.
“Maralis,” Varek says. The name snaps through the morning. He should not have said it so quickly. His reaction tells me what Selvara’s would have if she were standing here.
The Celestial Sea.
The temple.
Sanctuary old enough that even kings hesitate before breaking it.
She is running from every crown.
Including mine.
The thought cuts deeper than it has any right to.
Last night, when I offered her my hand, she took it. When I summarized the contract, she listened. When I spoke against her being blindsided, some part of me thought she understood I meant no harm.
She saw what she needed to see. A man powerful enough to challenge Varek, yes, but also distracted enough by concern to create friction in the room.
Perhaps she did not intend to use it. Perhaps she was too frightened to think that clearly.
Perhaps the plan had been in motion long before I crossed Dravaryn’s border.
It does not change the result.
She ran with my name still drying beside hers.
Varek begins issuing orders, his voice hard and clipped. Gates. Roads. Outposts. The town searched. Freya’s rooms stripped. Anyone seen aiding the princess detained. His guards move quickly, grateful for commands that give fear somewhere to go.
I listen only long enough to know he is wasting time. Then I turn to my men. “We return to the castle.”
Varek’s gaze cuts back to me. “You are abandoning the trail?”
“No. I’m not wasting it.” I look toward the sky, then back to him. “She has hours on us. We need supplies, warmer flight gear, scouts, and enough men to divide the search without blundering through the obvious roads.”
“My guard can handle this.”
“Your guard is already searching where she expects them to search.”
His mouth tightens.
I step closer, just enough that he understands I’m done asking permission.
“My men and I will search from the air. We will take our own supplies and a wider formation. If she is headed toward the Sea Temple, she will not fly the obvious route. Whoever planned this knew you would close those routes first.”
“She is my sister.”
“She is my betrothed.” Again, the word tastes bitter. This time I let it stand, because it gets me what I need.
What he wants to say next is plain on his face. That she is to be returned to him, and only him. But the answer that rises in me is too instinctive and too revealing, and a windswept cliff is not where I intend to have that fight.
“We move faster from the air,” I say, and turn from him before he can force it.
Varek stares after me with open hostility now. At least it is honest.
Sylas moves to my side. “We should go.”
“Yes.”
I take one last look at the cliff edge, at the small marks in the snow where Adelina chose the sky.
Anger steadies me because the alternative is worse.
Concern. Regret. The memory of her shock.
Her cold fingers in mine. The way her wings shimmered when our hands touched.
The thought of her alone above the clouds with an unknown injury and no real understanding of what the world beyond these walls can do to an unguarded princess.
I softened in a room that punished softness, and whether she meant to or not, the space I made for her helped her disappear.
That will not happen again.
We move back through the ravine, faster this time, the hidden door swallowing us into damp blue light once more.
The return through the tunnel feels longer, though I know it is not.
Every mark of her passage appears in reverse.
The scrape on the wall. The small, hurried boot prints.
The place where she must have stumbled. Each one pushes me harder toward the castle, toward supplies, toward air.
By the time we climb back into her chamber, the alarm has spread. Horns sound through the walls. Guards move beyond the open doors. Servants scatter in the corridor, faces pale and eyes lowered, carrying fear from room to room faster than any official order could.
Selvara waits near the hearth. Her gaze moves over us the moment we emerge. “You found the exit,” she says.
“Yes,” I answer.
“And?”
I meet her eyes. “She flew.”