12. Kaedryn #2
The old nurse who wouldn’t speak. The woman who prepared routes, stones, clothing, and enough loyal hands to get a princess out of a locked wing.
Whatever else she is, she isn’t the kind of planner who sends Adelina into a village with money from the royal purse and instructions to ask for Maralis in front of witnesses.
She is also, right now, in Varek’s hands. Because of what she built to keep Adelina safe.
The reports continue. A flash of silver hair near a frozen mill. Wings glimpsed over the southern pass. Each one pale hair, gray cloak, and Maralis. Always toward the roads. Always toward witnesses, and somewhere a patrol might waste a day chasing.
By the time the fifth report comes through, I understand.
I’m circling above a ridge with Sylas and Rowan while Soren studies the slope below, and the Astral Stone warms again.
I don’t answer immediately. I stare down at the forest, at the uninterrupted canopy, at the narrow deer path that curves toward an abandoned watch line too old to appear on the map in Varek’s war room.
The reports aren’t random. They’re a net thrown outward to hide her.
When I don’t answer, Sylas’ stone flashes. “Don’t answer yet,” I tell him.
He stills with one hand near his stone. “Kaedryn.”
“Wait.”
The light pulses again, patient and urgent.
I look across the sky, then back at the map board strapped to Rowan’s pack.
He angles close enough for me to see it, and I trace the points in my mind rather than with my hand.
Harlowe’s Pass. The eastern ridge. The village west of the pass.
The frozen mill. The old bridge. Every report circles the same broad absence.
Every false trail draws men toward roads, villages, places with witnesses and noise.
Leaving the deep middle quiet.
Varek already knows she’s heading for Maralis. That was never the secret. What the reports are hiding is the route, the path Freya planned, quiet and unmarked, while every patrol burns daylight chasing her across the obvious roads.
A stretch of old forest east of the river, south of the third ridge, and just far enough from any marked road that Dravaryn’s riders would avoid wasting time there unless they knew what they were looking for.
I look at Soren. “What’s here?”
He follows my gaze to the space between marked routes. “On official maps? Nothing.”
“On old ones?”
Sylas pulls the secondary map from his coat, fighting the wind with one hand while he unfolds the stiff parchment.
“There was a forester’s watch line through that region before Varek’s father shifted patrols north.
” His finger moves along faded ink. “Three huts. One watch house. An old signal post near a rock face.”
“A rock face,” Merritt repeats, then looks west of the river. “Good place to hide something if you don’t want smoke seen from the roads.”
Kellan scans the trees beneath us. “Or if you want people to think it’s empty.”
“Distance from the tunnel exit?” I ask.
Soren answers before anyone measures. “Reachable before dawn if she flew hard.”
My body goes still.
There.
The bond beneath my ribs tightens, closer than before, the sensation slipping into alignment with reason so suddenly that the hairs along my arms rise beneath my sleeves.
Sylas sees the change in my face. “You feel something.”
I look at him. Then at Rowan, Soren, Merritt, Kellan, men who have followed me into worse and never once asked me to explain myself when I couldn’t.
“There’s a celestial bond,” I say. “I recognized it when she walked into the meeting chamber. She’s my starbound.
” A pause. “I didn’t say anything because I was still making sense of it, and because naming it in Varek’s court would have cost us both more than the silence did.
But it has been pulling since we left Dravaryn, and right now it is pointing at that blank space on the map. ”
No one speaks for a few heartbeats.
Sylas exhales slowly. “A celestial bond?”
“Yes.” I nod.
“And you’re only telling us now?”
“I’m telling you when it became tactically relevant.”
Rowan makes a sound that might be a laugh in better circumstances.
Soren simply nods, the way he files anything he finds useful.
Merritt says nothing at all, which means he already suspected something was off and had the sense not to push.
Kellan stares at the empty space between roads for a beat longer than the others.
“So we trust it,” Kellan says.
“We verify,” I say. “But yes.”
Rowan’s expression sharpens. “The reports.”
“They aren’t trying to tell us where she is. They’re telling us where to look instead.”
“Freya has more people than we thought,” Merritt says.
“Or fewer, but clever enough to sound like many,” Sylas replies.
Kellan lets out a low breath. “The whole kingdom is lying to us?”
“No.” I watch the blank space between roads. “Only the parts of it still loyal to someone besides Varek.”
The realization moves through the group with a weight none of them joke away.
That may be the most dangerous thing I’ve learned today.
Adelina isn’t only a runaway princess. She is a fracture line Varek failed to bury. If servants, woodcutters, shepherds, and old watch keepers are willing to commit treason to misdirect royal search parties, then the kingdom’s obedience is thinner than it looks.
And the woman we’re chasing may matter far more than even Varek understands.
Sylas finally touches the Astral Stone. Vael’s voice comes through at once. “Highness, another sighting.”
“I know,” I say.
A pause. “You haven’t heard it.”
“I don’t need to. From this point forward, treat all civilian reports as suspect unless confirmed by our own eyes. Pull two scouts from the southern road and send them high above the old forester’s line east of the river. Quietly. Dravaryn isn’t to be informed.”
Vael’s hesitation carries through the stone like a cold breath. “Understood.”
“Any sign Varek’s men have noticed the pattern?”
“No. They’re chasing everything.”
Of course they are.
Varek’s cruelty may have made his people obedient, but it hasn’t made them loyal. Fear can force hands to open doors. It can’t make hearts tell the truth.
The stone dims.
I turn toward the blank space. “We go low.”
The search changes after that. No more broad sweeps.
No more chasing every rumor tossed into the wind.
We cut beneath the cloud line and fly in staggered formation, using ridges and tree cover to hide our movement from Dravaryn scouts above.
Rowan takes the northern arc, watching for smoke, movement, and any unnatural break in the canopy.
Soren flies lower, following the river cut and the patterns of old animal paths.
Kellan stays high enough to warn us if Dravaryn wings turn our way, while Merritt keeps to the rear, watching the places we’ve already passed because he knows as well as I do that a clever fugitive can circle behind pursuit.
Sylas remains at my left. He says nothing for a long while. That alone tells me he has too many thoughts.
The forest below is old, older than the castle, older than the roads that pretend to organize the kingdom.
Black pines stand tight enough to make the ground beneath them nearly invisible.
Snow clings to every branch, muting color and sound.
If a hidden house sits beneath that canopy, it would be nearly impossible to see from above unless a person knew the exact angle of roof and stone.
We find the first hut just after midday.
Empty.
Not recently empty. Truly abandoned. Snow has drifted through a collapsed side wall, and the roof sags beneath the weight of old rot. No tracks, no smoke, no sign of firewood moved from the stack outside.
The second is worse because it looks useful.
Too useful.
A hearth cleaned recently. Wood cut and stacked inside. A strip of blue cloth tied under the latch.
Kellan finds it first and signals us down. His face is flushed with cold, his expression sharp and focused when I land beside him. “Blue ribbon,” he says.
Soren enters before me, blade drawn.
The hut is empty. No bedroll. No dishes. No fresh ash. Nothing but the ribbon and a faint scent of pine smoke old enough to be meaningless.
“Decoy,” Rowan says.
Kellan’s jaw tightens.
Merritt crouches near the hearth and rubs ash between two fingers. “Someone wanted this to look recently used, but not too recently. Sloppy, if you know what to look for.”
“Good enough for men chasing rumors,” Sylas says.
I look at the ribbon. Someone knew the sign. That means one of two things. Either Freya’s network is using false safe marks to confuse pursuit, or someone has already compromised part of the route.
Either way, we move now. Before whoever left that ribbon comes back to check whether it worked.