He closed his eyes and knelt down to focus. He sent his mind out, questing in every direction, ranging over the forested mountains, down to the bottom of the valley. Nothing. It appeared that they were alone.
Wait—there!
It was so far away that he almost couldn’t sense it: a bright point of life, coming toward them. But it wasn’t a single point… it seemed to move and pulsate just beyond his vision, expanding and contracting strangely as if moving in disparate parts. And then he understood.
“They’ve found our trail,” he said, standing quickly. “And there’re following with an army. That must be why we haven’t seen or heard them in so long, they’ve been gathering together a force. My guess is they have half the countryside covered. They’re still a few miles away… I can barely feel them… but they’re coming.”
“Are you certain?” Tomaz asked.
The Prince nodded. Tomaz didn’t hesitate.
“Find Leah,” he said, before beginning to quickly repack the campsite.
The Prince set off around the side of the mountain in the direction the girl had headed. He closed his eyes, and the Talisman picked her up, pointing him toward a river that came down from the mountaintop. He burst through the trees, already launching into an explanation of what was happening.
Leah was standing up to her knees in the river, her clothes piled carelessly on a rock beside her.
The Prince’s mind went suddenly blank.
Her midnight-black hair fell halfway down her back, shining and clinging to her light olive skin in a shimmering wave, glints of deep blue highlighted by the rays of the sun. Her skin glistened with water droplets from the stream, and she stood, back straight, arms spread wide to either side, drinking in the sun, the mountainside, and the miles of landscape spread out before her. A wind whipped through the trees, racing across the clearing as if to embrace her, and she breathed it in. She seemed to shine with an inner light, her eyes closed, her mouth open, and her jaw slack. The cold dimpled her skin, but she didn’t cover herself. She stood in the rushing water as much a part of the world as the wind, the river, and the earth itself.
Without warning, she whipped around and locked eyes with him. The Prince didn’t remember having walked forward, but he now stood on the bank of the river. He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen, perhaps for her to yell athim, or for her to run for her clothes, maybe even attack him for invading her privacy, but she did none of these things. She just stared at him.
She shifted slightly, and as the sun hit her from another angle, the Prince’s breath caught in his throat.
Scars crisscrossed her body, some red, thick and ugly, others barely a razor’s width and white, nearly invisible. Some were scars from battle, but many of them were long whip scars, their latticed crossings along her arms and stomach and shoulders standing out as if branded into the skin.
She’d been beaten. Horribly.
Horror and revulsion seized him. Not at her disfigurement, but at the person who had done such a thing; his stomach knotted up, and anger rose in his throat, choking him. She pierced him with her eyes, daring him to look away, daring him to defy the evidence of the Empire’s cruelty.
She took a step forward, the muscles in her legs bunching and stretching with a steely, coiled grace. Her hands slowly lifted to each side; she inclined her head and bent forward at the waist.
She was bowing to him.
“Your Mother’s legacy, my Prince,” she said, voice emotionless but gaze so intense it felt like a hand squeezing his heart and lungs, making it impossible to speak, impossible to breathe.
“Be glad you can choose to ignore it. Some of us were never given the chance.”
Something about those words broke through his clouded mind, and he dropped his gaze to the ground, looking anywhere but at her.
“Tomaz,” he said, his voice coming out in a croak. He swallowed and started again, still not looking at her. “We’re breaking camp. They’ve found our trail, we’re leaving, Tomaz sent me to find you. I’ll see you back—back there.”
He turned and ran, not even waiting to see if she would follow him. When he reached Tomaz, he was out of breath, but the ex-Blade Master didn’t seem to notice.
“Where’s Leah?” he asked.
“Coming,” the Prince managed to respond.
“Good,” the big man said, finishing the packing.
Leah burst into the clearing not a minute later, once more clothed, and without hesitation jumped onto her horse.
“This way,” she called out as she spurred her mount through the trees.
As they rode, the Prince could feel the men behind them hot on their trail. They rode around the lip of the mountain before dipping down into a small valley that split into two paths at the far end. When they reached the fork, the Prince realized the path to the right led downward, and in the distance he could see that the mountains gave way to a large thoroughfare with a steady amount of traffic on it. The road to Roarke.
“That’s the way back to the main road,” Tomaz said, pointing the way the Prince was looking. “This is where we part ways. Hopefully they will split their force and we will both have an easier time of avoiding them.”
