12. Kaedryn
Kaedryn
The storm came down off the northern ridges at dusk, faster than any of us could out fly it. We climbed above the cloud line to get over the worst of it and found the high air worse, gusts strong enough to fold a wing, to throw a flying man into a ridge before he saw it coming.
There is no flying through that, not even for us. So we did the only thing the mountains allow. We bunked down in the lee of a stone shelf, raised a heat ward, and waited out the night with our wings folded and the hours bleeding away beneath the snow.
It gnaws at me, the night we lost. But the same wind that grounded us grounded her too. No one crossed open sky in that, not a war party, not an exhausted girl with an unknown injury. Wherever she sheltered when it hit, she hasn’t gone far.
By dawn, the false reports begin.
The first comes through my Astral Stone before the sky has fully lightened, the crystal waking with a soft silver pulse against the map spread over the frost-hardened ground.
I’m already awake, though I doubt I slept more than an hour.
The cold has settled into my bones, and the bond hasn’t eased, that pull beneath my ribs I recognized the moment her fingers brushed mine over the contract in Dravaryn.
I’d known then what it was and said nothing. A celestial bond was not something I intended to announce in Varek’s court, and since then I’ve had no reason to name it out loud. It pulls faintly, always faintly, just enough to keep me from ignoring it and never enough to let me trust it.
After we made shelter but before the storm fully closed in, a figure stepped out of the tree line at the edge of our camp.
Old. A woman. Gray-cloaked and still in the way of someone who had spent years not being noticed.
She refused to give her name. She said only that she served those who had served Adelina’s mother, and that she would rather the princess was found by us than by Varek.
Then she pressed something into Soren’s hand and walked back into the trees before anyone could follow.
A folded scrap of blue cloth, and four words in a steady hand: ribbon under latch means safe.
Soren had handed it to me without comment. I’d read it twice and kept it.
Sylas stirs beside the heat ward as the Astral Stone brightens, blue-white light moving beneath its cloudy surface like moonlight trapped under ice.
Rowan opens his eyes from where he has been sitting with his back to the rock, not truly sleeping either.
Soren is already crouched near the map with the patient stillness of a man who has been thinking through the terrain for hours.
Kellan straightens from the edge of the hollow, where he took the last watch, and Merritt lowers the strip of dried meat he has been chewing with the grim persistence of a man who knows breakfast may not come again soon.
I touch two fingers to the stone. “Report.”
Vael’s voice comes through thin at first, then steadier as his image appears. “A woman matching the princess’s description was seen near the southern road just before dawn.”
Every man in the hollow goes still.
I lean over the stone. “Seen by whom?”
“A woodcutter outside Harlowe’s Pass. He says she was traveling on foot beneath a gray cloak. Pale hair. Small build. Moving south.”
Soren’s brows draw together. “Harlowe’s Pass is too far south.”
“Unless she flew most of the night and doubled back,” Rowan says, though he doesn’t sound convinced.
Kellan glances down at the map, then toward the dark line of trees beyond our camp. He’s the youngest of the four, though anyone who has fought beside him stopped thinking of him as young years ago. Sharp eyes, sharper memory. “That would put her closer to the main patrol roads.”
“Exactly,” Merritt says, voice rough from the cold. “Too visible.”
I look down at the parchment, tracing the river bend, then the ridgelines beyond it. Harlowe’s Pass sits southeast of our current position, closer to one of Varek’s patrol routes than I’d expect from someone trying to remain unseen.
“When was this reported?” I ask.
“An hour ago. Dravaryn riders are already moving in that direction,” Vael answers.
“Did the woodcutter give any other details?”
A pause comes through the stone, long enough that I hear Vael’s hesitation before he answers. “He said she was crying.”
Sylas makes a quiet sound under his breath. I close my eyes for half a second.
Crying. That’s the detail meant to sell it.
A frightened runaway princess, alone and weeping beside a road where any man with eyes might notice her.
It’s possible. Fear doesn’t always act wisely.
Exhaustion can break even the disciplined.
But the woman who crossed a hidden tunnel, flew from a cliff, followed an eastern route, and vanished before dawn wouldn’t suddenly choose the southern road where every rider in Dravaryn expects her to appear.
Not unless she had no choice. Not unless someone forced her there.
The bond in my chest goes quiet.
“Don’t follow yet,” I say.
Vael’s projected outline flickers above the stone. “Your Highness?”
“Send one scout high enough to observe Dravaryn’s movement without joining it. No engagement. No pursuit. If the sighting is real, we need to know who reaches her first. If it’s false, I want to know who benefits from moving patrols south.”
“Yes, Highness.”
The stone dims.
Sylas looks at me over the map. “You think it’s false.”
“I think it’s too easy.”
“That doesn’t make it false.”
“No.” I study the drawn valleys until the lines blur. “But it makes it useful to someone.”
Merritt wraps the remaining dried meat and shoves it into his pack. “People here know these roads better than Varek thinks.”
Kellan looks at him. “You’re saying a woodcutter would lie to royal riders?”
Merritt’s mouth curves without humor. “I’m saying a woodcutter who hates his king might.”
The answer settles quietly over the hollow.
We break camp before first light, leaving nothing the snow won’t cover. In minutes, the hollow looks untouched.
The morning is hard and gray. Clouds hang low over the ridges, thick enough to hide a careful flyer but broken enough to reveal anyone careless. It’s good weather for someone trying to vanish and terrible weather for men trying to find her.
We call our wings together.
Mine unfold in a rush of dark weight and blue-green sheen, familiar as breath, while Sylas rises at my left with his usual controlled ease.
Rowan and Soren take the forward angles, Rowan scanning for movement and threats, Soren reading terrain from above in a way few men can.
Kellan flies high enough to watch the wider pattern of patrols, his eyes sharp in the uncertain light, while Merritt holds the rear, steady and broad-winged, the kind of presence a man can trust without looking back.
We fly east first, low beneath the cloud line, cutting along the river bend where Soren found the possible track.
The land below remains closed and dark, pine boughs heavy with snow, ravines etched in black lines between slopes.
If there is a shelter near here, someone chose well.
Nothing obvious breaks the canopy. No smoke rises. No movement disturbs the white.
By midmorning, the second report comes.
This time, the Astral Stone in Sylas’s bracer wakes, throwing pale light across the underside of his wing as he banks closer. He listens, then lifts his gaze to me. “A shepherd claims he saw silver wings near the eastern ridge after sunrise.”
“After sunrise?” Rowan calls, disbelief cutting through his voice.
Sylas nods. “Flying low. Alone. Heading northeast.”
Kellan drops closer from above, frowning. “Northeast takes her farther from Maralis.”
“Unless she’s trying to confuse us,” Merritt says.
Soren’s expression remains unreadable. “Or someone else is trying to confuse us.”
I look northeast. The clouds there are nearly touching the ridge. Silver wings against storm-gray sky, distinct, memorable, exactly the kind of detail a frightened witness would repeat.
“How far?” I ask.
Sylas relays the question, waits, then grimaces. “Too far. If she flew through the night to the first shelter, rested, then left again before dawn, perhaps. But not if she’s as exhausted as we think.”
“As we know,” Soren says quietly.
He doesn’t soften the words. “A woman who wasn’t trained for sustained night flight won’t be making clean long-distance turns by sunrise unless she had more help than we’ve seen.”
“Freya’s network may have healers,” Rowan says.
“Maybe. But good healing leaves traces. Smoke, herbs, fresh water needs, messengers moving.” Soren scans the ridge below. “We haven’t seen any of that.”
The bond doesn’t pull. It simply pulses in my chest.
I’ve spent my life trusting evidence over instinct. Today, instinct is looking more honest than the reports.
“Send two to verify from a distance,” I say. “No one abandons the river line.”
Sylas relays it. We continue.
The third report arrives before noon, this time through Kellan’s Astral Stone. His fingers slip over the activation, a rare fumble, before he catches it at once. Merritt dips closer all the same, steadying the formation without making it obvious.
Kellan listens, his face tightening. “A woman in a gray cloak bought bread in a village west of Harlowe’s Pass. Paid with five argels, kept her hair hidden, walked with a limp, and asked about the road to Maralis.”
“That one is definitely bait,” Rowan says.
Kellan frowns. “Because she asked about Maralis?”
“Because no one running for sanctuary asks strangers for the road to sanctuary unless she wants the question repeated to every guard in the region.”
Merritt nods. “Unless she’s desperate.”
“Adelina may be desperate,” I say, “but Freya isn’t careless.”
The name lands between us.
Freya.