“I know.”
“Can’t you tell me?” she pleaded, and Vi nearly gave in.
“No, not yet. Eventually though.”
“Swear to me.”
“I swear.” Go to Meru. Put an end to the White Death. Find her father. Reunite her family. Andthentell Ellene everything. It was a long list of things that had to come first, but Vi would do them all. She had no other choice.
Another soft knock stole their attention. Jax stood in the halfway open doorway. His expression was closed and difficult to read.
“It’s time,” he said, and Vi didn’t know where his solemn tone came from. What did he feel? Joy, surely? This had never been his home. He must be far more eager to be liberated of it.
Ellene gripped Vi’s hand again, as though she could stop her from leaving.
“I’ll give you two a moment to finish up.” Jax stepped out of the room.
“Vi… please don’t go.” Ellene’s voice cracked. “What am I to do without you?”
“The same things you do with me.” Vi forced a smile. Crown princesses did not fall apart outwardly. Any crumbling would be hidden from the world. For Ellene’s sake, right now, if nothing else. “You will get into trouble. You will race noru, and go on hunts, and learn how to be a good and just chieftain from your mother. And at—” Her throat went thick, choking on her lie. “—at the first possible opportunity before the roads close in winter, you’ll come visit and I’ll hear all about what trouble you’re making.”
Ellene nodded, once, twice, several times. As though she could convince herself if she jostled Vi’s words around in her mind enough. Her fingers squeezed once around Vi’s, so hard her knuckles popped. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, and closed it once more when no words came.
Slowly, the girl lifted her hands, releasing Vi’s. She undid the clasp on the bracelet she always wore during ceremonial events—a simple leather wrap with a single wooden bead carved from the bark of the Mother Tree.
“I want you to have this.”
“Ellene, I cannot.” But even as Vi spoke her objection, the girl was tying her treasure around Vi’s outstretched wrist. “This is—”
“I will live under the shade of the Mother Tree for the rest of my days. I don’t need its bark protecting me. You need this more than I do.” Her dark fingers wrapped around the bracelet, holding it against Vi’s skin. It was a comfortable warmth, like a security blanket. “If nothing else, it will be something for you to remember me by.”
All objections dropped with her stomach. A sorrow unlike anything Vi had ever felt before flooded in, filling the space, rising through her chest and pouring from her eyes and onto her cheeks before she even had a chance to stop it. She pulled her wrist from Ellene’s grasp and threw her arms around the girl, her friend—her sister of another’s blood. Vi tightened her grip and Ellene held her just as fiercely. Crushed against each other, they could each feel the quivering breaths, the shaking shoulders of the other that meant the tears finally won.
The two sat, quietly crying, holding each other, airing their grief in private, so that they would each be prepared to wear the faces of royalty when the world needed to witness them separate for good.
* * *
When Vi descended, it was with a stoic Ellene at her side. Jax and Jayme were behind them, Andru and her tutors behind even them. Not one more word was said among any of them the entire way through the fortress.
The horses were already saddled, carts strapped to bigger stallions who could bear the loads. At the front was a massive warstrider—black, said to have descended from the same lineage of equestrians as her father’s favored mount.
Sehra and Za were waiting for them, and Vi said her goodbyes and final thank-yous in a blur. She wanted to ask if the traveler had said anything else. If Sehra had secretly known about the visions, or somehow had some of her own. But nothing mattered now other than the road ahead.
Nothing could change the path she was on—the path that led to her mother, brother, father, and a man far across the sea.
Ellene stayed at her mothers’ sides as Vi continued on alone. The jungle had never felt so cold, though Vi was dressed in more layers than she usually sported. Her hair was carefully done, the riding clothes that had been made for her impeccably stitched.
She was the image of perfection, molded in every way.
Perfect… so long as no one looked past the facade to the nearly crippling worry and doubt that festered within.
Vi mounted and two servants helped adjust the elongated train Holina had stitched over her mount’s haunches. Vi took up the white leather reins and spared a moment to admire the gilded buckles and embellishments glinting in the sunlight. She suppressed a snort at the notion that she and her mount were similarly bedazzled, the golden circlet she wore heavy on her brow. “Are you ready?” Jax asked softly.
“I am.” Vi did not take her eyes off the road ahead. A princess did not waver or hesitate. And she was not going to smear her makeup a second time with doubt or fear. The colors on her face were now her mask and her warpaint, protecting and strengthening her.
“Keep your head high.”
“I know.” She turned slowly to him, her back rigid in the saddle. “They will see my strength.”
