18. Kaedryn #2
Tropical heat rises from the coast even beneath the storm clouds, lush and alive and almost obscene after Dravaryn’s endless winter. It should feel like relief. For one moment, some traitorous part of me understands why Adelina might have crossed into this air and thought the world had opened.
Then the pull in my chest drags south.
Relief dies.
If Adelina reaches the Sea Temple before we reach her, she becomes untouchable.
The sanctuary laws are older than the current crowns.
Older than the treaty. Older than any marriage contract signed under witness.
Once a royal petitioner reaches the Sea Temple and speaks renunciation before the tide altar, no crown can remove them without declaring themselves enemy of Maralis, the temple order, and half the sacred laws still binding the realm together.
Varek could rage. My father could argue. I could do nothing. None of us could. The thought burns because if Adelina reaches sanctuary, she is gone by her own choosing, and some part of me understands I may deserve that, and perhaps that life is far kinder than anything even I could offer her.
That only makes me angrier.
By midday, the Astral Stones bring another flood of sightings.
Two from northern Maralisian ports. One from a ferry master who swears a silver-haired woman crossed disguised beneath a fisherman’s cloak.
One from a dockworker claiming she boarded a river barge headed inland.
Three from Dravari soldiers who have suddenly decided every pale haired woman near water is a princess.
We ignore most of them.
Soren checks the ones that align with the pull.
Rowan and Merritt question dockhands with enough coin to loosen tongues and enough threat beneath politeness to make lies tremble.
Kellan listens when men forget a younger guard with earnest eyes might be dangerous.
Sylas does what Sylas does best, which is smile until people tell him things they meant to bury.
The first real hint comes at dusk. It is not a sighting. It is a smell. Spoiled onions in abandoned cargo crates. We find it in a narrow cove north of the main western port, where the tide has left strips of kelp shining black on stone and gulls scream overhead.
The tropical cliffs rise around the cove in a riot of green, vines spilling toward the water, bright flowers opening even in the rain. The air is thick, warm, and salt-heavy, full of insects humming in the brush, and the wet slap of waves against rock.
A cargo boat had stopped there that morning, according to a fisherman who first swears he saw nothing, then swears he saw everything, then settles on having seen enough once Merritt places two argels in his palm and tells him liars who waste our time will be turned over to whichever soldiers find them most amusing.
The boat was broad-bellied, dark-hulled, stinking of fish and onions.
“It came in before dawn. It put someone ashore,” the fisherman says.
“Someone?” I ask.
The fisherman’s eyes dart toward Merritt, then to the water.
He is an older man with a face like dried leather and hands permanently calloused from rope.
He does not like me. Most people with sense do not like armed strangers asking questions near hidden coves or the dark prince with shadows at his beck and call and sword strapped to his side.
But his fear is not the same as the old couple’s at the watch house.
This man can be bought.
“Small,” he says at last. “Cloaked. Walked on her own. Climbed off a boat that reeked.”
My chest tightens.
“Hair?” I demand.
“Covered.”
“Face?”
“Didn’t see it.” The man shakes his head.
“You’re lying,” Rowan says conversationally.
The fisherman looks offended. “After all I’ve told you, why would I lie now?”
I step closer. “Which direction did she go?”
The fisherman’s gaze flicks south.
Then, he jerks his chin toward a narrow trail winding away from the cove and into the wet hills. “Not the harbor road. Lower path. Old pilgrim trail if she has sense, marsh track if she has better sense.”
“When?”
“Before dawn.”
A day. She has a full day on us again.
“Alone?” I ask.
“There were others on that stinking boat. But I don’t know who went where.”
Soren crouches near the edge of the trail, studying the damp earth. Rain has ruined most of it, but under a jut of stone where the ground stayed sheltered, there is a partial print.
Small boot. Soft tread. Not limping now.
“She’s healed,” Soren says.
Relief hits before anger can stop it. Then anger catches up.
Of course she is healed. Of course the network that spirited her across a watched sea also had potions strong enough to put her back on her feet.
Of course every person between Varek’s castle and the western shore seems to know how to help Adelina except the man bound to marry her.
“She’s not far,” I say.
Sylas looks at me. “No. She isn’t.”
The fisherman mutters, “If she’s going where everyone says, she’s closer than you’d like.”
I turn toward him.
He shrugs, suddenly very interested in his net. “Sea Temple sits south of here. Pilgrims go by road if they want blessings and witnesses. People who don’t want either take the marsh. Slower, wetter, fewer questions.”
“She took the marsh,” Soren says.
“Likely.”
I look south. The land there folds into long stretches of reed marsh, low hills, and old stone tracks half-buried under moss.
Palms and white-barked trees bend over the wet paths.
Bright birds startle from the reeds as thunder rolls far out over the sea.
Beyond them, though I can’t see it yet, is the temple city.
It is ancient and sacred, modest in size by Elyrian standards, where the faithful gather before crossing the final passing to the tide altar.
If she reaches the city, she can disappear among pilgrims. If she reaches the temple, we lose her forever.
“Move,” I say.
The trail south is a miserable thing, all sucking mud, wet reeds, and narrow raised paths that force us to move single file more often than not.
Flying would be faster if the storm clouds did not break every few miles and if the temple approaches were not watched by half the factions in the realm.
Aerial pursuit close to the sacred city would announce us to everyone.
So we move low when we can, on foot when we must, using wings only to cross flooded channels and broken ground.
The warm rain soaks us within minutes. Kellan nearly sinks to his knee in mud and comes up swearing with enough creativity that Merritt glances at him like a proud uncle.
“Where did you learn that one?” Merritt asks.
“From you,” Kellan replies with a snarl.
“Good,” Merritt replies.
No one laughs long.
We don’t stop when night falls. South of the cove we find a shrine where someone rested, a heel print in the mud, a streak of temple chalk on the inner wall, the kind pilgrims use. Or guides. Or someone learning to look like either.
Adelina is learning. Or the people helping her are very good. Both tighten the chase into something almost unbearable.
By midnight, Vael reports through the Astral Stone that Dravari riders have reached the western ports in force.
Varek is pushing toward Maralis jurisdiction and making enough noise to sour every harbor official in reach.
My father sends a message an hour later, not full projection, only voice through the stone, controlled and cold.
“Status.”
I stand beneath a leaning palm at the edge of the marsh, rain sliding from the broad leaves onto my cloak. The others give me space without going far.
“We have her trail,” I answer.
“Has she reached the temple?”
“Not yet.”
“Then recover her before she does.”
The word recover grates. As if she is a lost jewel. A misplaced asset. A piece of treaty property that wandered too far from the table.
My hand tightens around the stone. “When I find her, I’ll need room to assess the situation.”
There is a pause. With Astral Stones, silence carries weight. My father’s silence carries displeasure like a blade held close to the throat.
“You have had three days to assess,” King Rhaegar says.
“I’ve had three days of lies.”
“And what have they taught you?”
I look toward the dark marsh, where somewhere ahead, Adelina keeps running. “That people are willing to risk treason for her.”
“Then bring her in before her flight becomes a rebellion.”
The stone goes cold before I can answer. For several breaths, I stand still, rain soaking into my gloves.
A rebellion.
The word should alarm me because of politics. Instead, it feels far more personal.
A princess no one has seen in years runs from the king, and suddenly half the kingdom remembers it has a spine.
I shove the Astral Stone back beneath my bracer and turn to find Sylas watching me.
“Father?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Unhappy?”
“You know as well as I do that aside from when he’s with Mother, he’s rarely anything else.”
“That is not true. He was mildly pleased last season.”