I don’t wait. Kicking my heels into the horse, I lean forward as he springs into action, his hooves pounding against the floor as we fly from the gate of Umbraxix.
Let me be in time.
Lyra
Cold air clamps around my lungs the moment I cross the threshold from Umbraxis into the shadows of the Veilspire. The path ahead of me narrows, swallowed up by firs and pines, branches laden with snow that coats me when the wind stirs.
The unfamiliar horse snorts beneath me, breath steaming. I pat his neck, my fingers already numb even through my gloves. I didn’t take the precautions I should have before I left. The leather tack creaks. “I know. I’m sorry I stole you.”
Kaelen is going to be furious.
The horse snorts again, and I glance around.
“Quiet,” I mutter. I’m not sure who I’m talking to. But Elspeth had said they were ambushed close to the entrance. It’s entirely possible that a trap lies ahead.
And if that’s true, only my Lightbringer features might get me out of it.
As I pass beneath the trees, following Beckett’s instructions, I start to see signs of the encroaching Lightbringer incursion. Kaelen doesn’t have the numbers to maintain a significant presence here, and my gut grows tight when I see footprints in the churned snow. They’re too wide, too uniform. The kind of tracks left by disciplined boots and armored weight. The snapped branches close to the path have been trimmed cleanly instead of hacked, cut back to widen the narrow track in places.
This is preparation.
My stomach knots.
I guide my stolen horse off the main path and into thinner brush, choosing a winding route that will slow me down but keep me out of anyone’s line of sight who might be on the path. Snow clings to my boots when I dismount briefly to check the ground before I swing back into the saddle, forcing my breathing to stay controlled.
Darian is in here somewhere. And memories of the last time I was in here, theonlytime, threaten to choke me until I push them away and force myself to breathe.
I slow my horse until he’s only walking, ears flicking and uneasy. Scanning between trunks in the dim light, my eyes strain, and minutes stretch into a tense hour.
The terrain around me jumps from dense, packed forest to uncomfortably open patches of rocky incline and back again, the path that runs alongside narrowing into smaller trails that snake around boulders, pushed to one side for ease of passage.
I pass a cluster of low huts tucked into a dip in the land, and my stomach knots. Whoever was there is long gone. The small structures have been burnt out, the people displaced or worse. Thoughts of Tharn fill my head as I ride past with my eyes averted.
The smear of red against the snow stands out. Not old, darkened blood, butfresh. Bright as a newly-made wound.
My pulse kicks. Sliding off my horse, I leave him loosely tethered to a tree so he can get free if he needs to, covering him with a dark blanket I find in the saddlebags to dull his shape. He shifts, anxious, but stays in place.
Crouching, I touch the blood with a gloved fingertip, feeling it stick to the material. Nearby, a scuffed patch reveals where something heavy has been dragged, not yet covered by the snow. Several pairs of bootprints appear on either side, leading off the trail into the trees.
A lot of them. I count twelve in total.
Moving lower and faster now, I weave between trunks, stepping where snow is already disturbed so I don’t leave any obvious new prints. I keep my hands near my sides, my palms loose and ready.
Thank Aedryn for the antidote.
The forest ahead glows faintly, and I slow. It’s too controlled to be natural, and the light barely filters through the trees here. Luminth, thrown above to cast a light.
I pause behind a thick trunk and lean out, just enough to see. A clearing opens up between the trees—small, sheltered by rock outcroppings that block some of the wind. Four Lightbringers stand in a rough half-circle, their golden armor dulled by frost but still unmistakable. My father’s three-line crest is stamped over their chests.
Between them, on his knees and hands bound, isDarian.
His head is bowed, dark hair falling into his eyes and breathing visible in short, controlled bursts of white air that fill the air. There’s blood at his temple, and his lip is split. But he’s alive.
He’salive.
Relief hits me so hard that it almost knocks me out of hiding. Then I see the dark stains on the snow around him.
Bodies. I count seven Lightbringers, sprawled near the edge of the clearing. They almost look as if they’re sleeping, no injuries to be seen, until I look closer. The one closest to me has his face turned in my direction, and I recognize him as part of the unit I left Solvandyr with.
