11. Kaedryn #3
For the first time, something unguarded passes across her face.
Calculation.
Then it is gone.
Varek steps past me, already snapping orders to the guards outside. I ignore him and turn to Sylas, Rowan, and Soren.
“Gather our gear. Full flight kit. Three days of travel rations. Water skins. Cold-weather wraps. Signal flares. Healing supplies. No heavy armor.”
Sylas nods. “How many fly with you?”
“The six of us. You, Rowan, Soren, Kellan, Merritt, and me. We take the route I think she actually flew.” I weigh it a breath longer.
“I want a second group in the air within the hour. Our men, not Varek’s.
Send them south and along the coast roads, loud and visible, in case I’ve read her wrong and to give the king something to watch.
Men who can fly long, read weather, and keep their mouths shut.
The rest hold here with the delegation.”
Rowan is already moving. “I’ll issue the second group their orders and meet you below.”
“Soren, supplies and field kit,” I add,
“On it,” he responds.
“Sylas, maps.” I turn to my brother. “Dravaryn’s official ones and ours.”
Sylas’s mouth curves faintly. “And if they object?”
“Be charming.”
“You usually say that is where trouble begins.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. Stars above and seas below, my brother will be the source of an ulcer one day.
“Then be quick,” I retort while forcing my temper down.
He leaves with Rowan, Kellan, and Merritt, and Soren follows a heartbeat later.
I remain in Adelina’s chamber. The room feels different now that I know she left through its floor.
Less like a room and more like a shell. The vanity stands open.
The rug is shoved aside. The bed still holds its false shape beneath disturbed blankets.
Someone had built a princess out of pillows to buy her time, and the absurd tenderness of it bothers me more than it should.
She had been loved here by someone who was willing to risk death to help her.
I look toward the trapdoor again, then turn away from it and walk out.
The courtyard below is chaos by the time we reach it.
Dravaryn guards pour across the stone, riders mounting along the lower gate, messengers flying low toward the town, wings flashing black, gray, and white against the pale morning.
The castle that felt frozen last night is awake now, and all that discipline has sharpened into pursuit.
My men gather on the far side of the courtyard with the efficiency I expected, packs strapped and gear ready.
Across the yard, a second flight of our men is already lifting toward the southern roads, loud and unhidden, exactly as I want them, while the route I mean to take stays quiet.
Rowan speaks quietly to Kellan and Merritt, both of whom look more eager than concerned.
Sylas arrives last with maps tucked beneath one arm and satisfaction in his expression. “They objected,” he says.
“And?” I raise a brow.
“I was charming,” he says and flashes a smile.
“Meaning?”
“I took them anyway.”
For the first time all morning, I almost smile.
Almost.
Varek approaches before we can launch, his cloak snapping behind him in the wind. “My men will ride the roads and patrol the southern pass. If you find her, you signal immediately.”
I fasten the last strap on my pack. “If we find her, we secure her first.”
His gaze hardens. “You will return her to Dravaryn.”
“I will return her to safety.”
“She is safest here.”
The words are so absurd after everything I have seen that I simply look at him.
Varek understands the insult.
Selvara appears beside him, wrapped in white fur, calm despite the disorder around her. “Adelina is frightened. She may resist reason. She responds best when given clear direction.”
I think of Adelina’s face when Varek named her my future wife. Her hand trembling around the quill. Her wings flickering when Selvara touched them.
“No,” I say. “She responds that way because she has been given little else.”
Selvara’s smile stills. Varek steps toward me, but Sylas moves at my side, and several of my men shift with him.
Then I call my wings. They unfurl in a rush of shadow and dark blue-green sheen, the familiar weight snapping into place behind me.
The courtyard quiets around the sound, as it usually does.
My wings are not courtly things. They were never meant to be admired in torchlight.
They were made for command, for war, for the kind of flight that ends arguments before they begin.
Around me, my men call theirs.
The air fills with movement.
I look once toward the mountains, toward the direction she must have taken before turning from the obvious path.
Princess Adelina wanted freedom badly enough to run from a king, a queen, a treaty, and me.
Fine.
Let her run.
I launch into the air, and the cold strikes hard across my face as the castle drops beneath me. For one breath, the world becomes wind and height and the savage relief of movement.
Then the thread pulls again.
I turn with it, anger burning clean beneath my ribs.
I will find her.