13. Kaedryn
Kaedryn
“She wasn’t here,” Soren says.
The thread tightens when I step outside, and for the first time all day, it has weight, direction, a pressure beneath my sternum. “No. But she was close.”
Southwest toward the old watch line. I turn before I intend to.
Find her. Find her. The bond echoes in my head.
Sylas notices immediately. “There?”
“I think so.”
“You think or you know?” Rowan asks.
“I know nothing about this.” I shake my head.
“That isn’t encouraging.”
“No.” I look toward the trees. “It’s honest.”
We launch again.
The next hour becomes a slow tightening. We find marks that may be hers and may be planted. A broken branch at shoulder height. A shallow print in packed snow too blurred to confirm. The wind and last night’s blizzard have scoured away most of what she left behind.
Finally, we get a clue. The opening above the ravine is narrow. Too narrow for comfortable flight unless the person launching was desperate or very sure of her aim. On the other side, the trees press close again, but beyond them the land rises toward a rock face half-hidden by pines.
A rock that looks like a broken tooth. I remember seeing it on the map. This is the kind of landmark Freya would choose. A rock face distinct enough to find from a sketch, hidden enough that others would overlook it.
“There,” I say.
We move fast.
The pull is stronger now, sharp enough to make restraint feel like disobedience.
The men keep pace, wings slicing between trees and open pockets of air, weaving through the terrain with discipline that would be beautiful if my entire body weren’t fixed on the stone ridge ahead.
Kellan stays to the right, marking our approach.
Merritt drops lower, watching the air behind us.
Rowan clears the perimeter before I even give the order, and Soren follows the thin line of signs until the forest gives up what it has been hiding.
We land without a word.
I find it before anyone else does, a cluster of broken branches at shoulder height, the kind of damage a wing makes when someone comes down too hard and too fast. Below it, smeared dark against the bark, blood.
Not much. Enough.
Soren finds the tracks a few feet beyond the tree.
Paw marks, half-filled with blown snow, pressed deep enough to belong to something heavy.
Too large for an ordinary wolf. Four claws at the front.
A long drag between two prints, as though whatever made them had circled low before turning back into the trees.
“Wolf?” Sylas asks.
Soren’s mouth tightens. “Maybe.”
I look toward the black pines where the tracks disappear. “Maybe is not an answer.”
“Then no,” he says. “Not only a wolf.”
The thread in my chest pulls toward the house, but my gaze remains on the prints. Adelina landed here injured, exhausted, and alone. And something had been close enough to watch.
I stand there longer than I should. The cold is absolute. The forest says nothing. Somewhere in the night she came down here, hurt, and got back up.
Sylas crouches near the base of the trunk, one hand hovering just above the shadow pooled between the roots. He goes still the way he does when he is listening to something the rest of us cannot hear. “I can feel her echo in the dark,” he says quietly. “Faint. But recent.”
Merritt moves up on our left. “Wind shifted. I smell smoke.”
“She can’t be far,” I say. “Circle above.”
We launch into the sky again. We don’t see smoke.
Someone must have it cloaked, but the smell is there.
Then we see it. A watch house appears beneath the rock face, nearly invisible until we’re on top of it, low and dark beneath black pines, its roof buried under snow and needles, its walls the same rough gray as the slope behind it.
No smoke rises. No sound comes from inside. It looks abandoned.
But the smell hits us in waves, almost like the wards simply can’t contain it.
Rowan signals the perimeter sweep. Kellan and Merritt drop to the far side, taking opposite angles around the house. Soren lands near the door, crouching immediately over the snow. Sylas comes down beside me, quiet now.
Soren touches the ground near the threshold. “Three sets of prints. Two bigger, one small.”
My heartbeat slows. “She was here,” I say.
“Yes,” Soren answers. “She’s close.”
The words move through me like a blade sliding home. Not found. Close. There is a difference, and that difference is starting to feel like punishment.
I cross to the door and knock once. No answer.
Again. Silence.
Sylas steps to the side, hand near his blade. “Occupied?”
“Recently,” Soren says.
I press one hand to the door and let a thread of command move through it. The wood is old and warded. Clever work. Gentle work. The kind of magic meant to let a house be overlooked by anyone who has no reason to see it.
It’s not designed to withstand a prince of Elyrion who has run out of patience.
The latch gives with a low crack. I push the door open. Warmth meets me, crashing over me like a wave.
The room inside is small and dim. A hearth sits along the far wall with embers buried beneath ash, banked carefully to smother smoke. A chair stands near it, a blanket folded over the back. A bowl rests on the table, scraped nearly clean. A cup beside it still holds a few drops of tea.
A woman steps from the shadow near the rear curtain with a knife in her hand. She’s older, weathered, with dark hair threaded with gray. Fierce eyes go first to me, then to the men behind me, then to the open door, calculating whether any path remains.
There is none.
“Where is she?” I ask.
Her grip tightens on the knife. Sylas moves slightly, but I lift one hand. No one touches her.
The woman’s chin rises and narrows her eyes. “Who?” The lie is immediate.
“The princess.”
“I’ve seen no princess!” she snaps.
Soren crosses to the sink and points. “You have too many dirty dishes to be alone.”
Rowan lifts the cup. “And someone drank tea recently. There are three cups.”
“Perhaps I was thirsty.”
Sylas’s mouth twitches despite the tension.
The thread beneath my ribs pulls beyond the house, not here, not anymore. Close, then gone, like warmth where a hand has just left skin.
“She was here. How long ago?” I ask.
The woman says nothing.
I step closer, slowly enough not to frighten her more than I must. “I’m not Varek.”
“No,” she says. “You’re just the man he sold her to.”
Behind me, Kellan inhales sharply. Soren and Sylas shift simultaneously.
Merritt appears in the doorway behind us, snow on his shoulders, eyes moving from the woman to the room to me. He says nothing, but the look on his face tells me he heard.
I hold the woman’s gaze. “I’m the man trying to find her before he does.”
“And then what?”
I have no answer simple enough to give her. That is answer enough.
Her mouth tightens. “If we were helping her, why would we help you?”
The question is not fear. It is defiance. Rebellion.
“Because she’s exhausted,” I say. “Because she flew through the night. Because if she keeps running without rest, she may collapse before she reaches whatever sanctuary Freya promised her.”
The woman’s expression shifts at Freya’s name.
I look toward the rear curtain. “When did she leave?”
Silence.
I cross to the curtained alcove and pull it back to reveal a narrow cot.
The blankets are disturbed, and a faint impression remains where a small body lay curled on one side, careful even in sleep.
On the floor beside it, a pair of damp cloths rests in a shallow bowl.
Near the wall, a small tin of balm sits open, the scent of pine resin and bitterroot rising sharp into the room.
My hand closes around the curtain.
The rumors. Her flinch. Soren’s assessment. The king’s too-fast denial. We were right. Something happened in that castle, and every new room, every silent servant, every loyal stranger seems to know more of it than I do. She crossed a ravine in the dark with that on her.
I turn back to the woman slowly. “Was she ill? Injured?”
The woman says nothing, but grief moves across her face before she buries it. That is answer enough.
A rough male voice comes from the side room. “You’ll get nothing from us.”
An older man steps through another doorway, one hand braced against the frame, the other holding a short blade. He is broad, gray-bearded, and limping slightly, though he carries himself. Now we have two elderly fae willing to fight and even die for Adelina.
Rowan shifts, but again I lift a hand. The room is crowded now, too full of fear, loyalty, and old anger. Kellan stands very still near the door, visibly struggling not to stare at the disturbed cot. Merritt stays beside him, one hand light on Kellan’s shoulder.
“I don’t need you to betray her,” I say.
The man gives a humorless laugh. “That is exactly what you need.”
“No.” I glance toward the cot again, toward the balm, the tea, the scraped bowl. “I need to understand what condition she’s in. I want to help her.”
The woman’s jaw tightens. The man’s blade lowers by half an inch, but he says nothing.
Soren steps beside the cot, kneels, and studies the floor. “She slept here.”
“Long enough to eat,” Rowan says.
“Long enough for balm,” Soren adds.
“And then?” Sylas asks.
Soren follows the floorboards toward the back of the room. “Then she left through the rear.”
The woman’s face doesn’t change. The man’s does.
Rowan moves toward the back wall, where a low storage door stands half-hidden behind hanging bundles of dried herbs. He opens it carefully, blade drawn, then disappears inside.
“Clear,” he calls. “Storage room. No one here.”
I step in after him. The room is narrow, shelves lining both walls, with clay jars, folded cloth, old snares, dried roots, and bundles of firewood stacked along the far side.
A small back shutter sits high in the wall, too small for a grown man to pass through, but not too small for someone like Adelina if she were desperate enough and willing to climb.
Soren crouches beneath it. “Here.”
I cross to him. The dust on the shelf beneath the shutter is disturbed. A small boot print mars the edge, the toe angled outward. Another mark cuts along the sill, where someone dragged fabric or a pack through the opening.
“She went out this way,” Soren says.
Snow has been brushed carefully over the ground outside, but not carefully enough. Soren finds the edge of another print.
“Clever,” Sylas murmurs from behind me.
“Yes.” I look through the shutter into the trees. “And slow.”
The woman says nothing from the doorway behind us. She doesn’t need to.
We return outside through the front and circle the house.
Kellan and Merritt have already secured the far side, one watching the trees, the other the sky.
Behind the house, the thicket claws at our coats, branches stiff with frost and needles sharp enough to scrape skin.
Adelina had to crawl through it or fly low enough to drop beyond it.
Either way, it bought her distance. Anyone coming through the front would lose time.
Anyone searching from above would see nothing but pine and snow.
Soren finds her trail on the far side.
Barely.
A scuffed patch near a root. A broken twig hanging by a strip of bark. One small print where the snow is thin over frozen mud.
“She’s limping,” he says.
I stare at the mark, the thread in my chest pulling taut at his words. “How can you tell?”
“Uneven depth. Left step lighter. Right step driving forward harder. She’s compensating.” He looks up, expression grim. “Exhaustion can do that. So can pain.”
My hands curl. All of this is just more confirmation that she is injured, making this even more dangerous.
The old couple stands in the doorway now, both silent, both watching us with the same expression. They won’t stop us. They won’t help us either.
I look at the woman. “If Varek’s men come, they’ll be less patient.”
Her mouth tightens. “We know what Varek’s men are.”
“You should leave,” Sylas tells them.
The man laughs quietly. “This is our home.”
“It won’t protect you,” Kellan says.
“Few things do,” the woman replies.
There is nothing else to say to the couple. Nothing that won’t sound like a threat or a promise I have no right to make.
So I place a small purse of aurel and argel, silver and gold coin, in the woman’s hand and turn away before she can reject it.
The trail leads southwest, toward lower ground where the forest thickens and the ridges fold into one another, bending toward Maralis without committing to it. She is still moving under cover. Smart. Slow now, likely too tired to risk open sky unless forced.
We are close enough that the thread in my chest has become a living thing. Every breath feels like restraint because all I want to do is tear through the forest to find her.
“She can’t be far,” Rowan says.
“No,” Soren agrees. “But she knows she’s being hunted now.”
Sylas looks at me. “By us or by him?”
I don’t answer. Because that is the question, isn’t it? To Adelina, there may be no difference.
I look toward the trees, where her trail disappears between black trunks and snow-shadowed ground. “Move quietly,” I say. “Rowan, left flank. Soren, trail. Merritt, rear watch. Kellan, sky and ridge line. Sylas with me. If we see her, no one rushes unless I give the order.”
Kellan frowns. “You think she’ll run?”
I see her face when Varek called her my future wife, the way her hand trembled around the quill, the way she fled through a tunnel, across a ravine, into the sky, and then through an old woman’s storage room rather than be found.
“Yes,” I say. “She’ll run.”