“Alright,” Niel whispered.
“Alright?” Ayla answered, her fists squeezing tighter. “You’ll do it?”
There was so much hope in her voice. He couldn’t bear to meet her eyes.
“Go to your room and pack your things. I’ll fetch what I need,” Niel whispered.
He cupped a hand behind her neck and kissed her again, deep and slow, then stepped back.
“Meet me back here,” Niel said. “We don’t have much time.”
Ayla nodded and turned, hitching her skirts. When he did not follow she looked over her shoulder at him.
“I need to tell Kerr,” Niel told her. “Go. Hurry.”
He made a pretense of moving back towards the castle doors. By the time he reached them, Ayla was around the corner.
Niel returned to the alcove. He unbuckled his sword belt, and then the chest plate he’d worn throughout the siege, and left them on the floor with all four daggers he’d worn. Next was his cloak, because he would need to be fast if he had any hope of survival.
He returned to the courtyard. It was empty, the walls bare of sentries. He’d meant to let his men gather before they let the army in. But perhaps, Niel decided, he was more of a coward than he’d ever realized. He could face death more easily than he could face Ayla’s pain.
He worked the winch to raise the portcullis, then to lower the drawbridge. Both jobs were meant for two men, and his muscles strained. The army waited outside, rows of soldiers with spears gathered to watch as the castle opened. He could not see Blackfell or his brother among them.
Alone, unarmed, and unarmored, Niel stepped out of the castle and into the open mouth of his enemy.
The Unicorn Cloak
She ran the whole way to her room. Ayla had no choice but to trust Niel, but she was still frightened he’d do something idiotic. She made the packing list as she went, knowing she’d have no time to think when she got there. Two changes of clothes; she’d knot her jewelry up in a handkerchief. They could sell that for money. A few things from her bathing-chamber, but they could buy what they needed on the road. There was no time for sentiment, but could she bear to part with her little book of poems? No, and it would not add too much weight.
She burst into her chamber, chest heaving and lungs aching from the cold.
A large leather satchel lay on her bed, clasped closed and its strap neatly folded. It hadn’t been there the day before, the last time Ayla had been in her bedchamber. She stared at it for a moment, trying to come up with a reason—any reason—one of the soldiers might have left such a thing in her room.
Wasthiswhy she’d woken to find a change of her clothes neatly folded beside Niel’s bed?
“No,” she whispered to herself, and ran to it, fumbling with the clasp to pull it open. She lifted the flap to reveal an iridescent, furred hide. “No,” Ayla whispered again, her voice shaking. She yanked it out, hand over hand, until the cloak was in her hands. It was a revolting, savage thing to have stripped the hide from a unicorn, but she felt far sicker at the thought of whatever Niel was up to. He’d left this in her room for a reason. Ignoring the other few items in the bag that had lain beneath the cloak, she grabbed the satchel in one hand and the cloak in the other and raced back out the door.
She didn’t know who was the bigger fool. Niel, for refusing to run, or her, for not dragging him upstairs with her. For thinking that he would put his own safety first, instead of the revenge he’d sworn her.
She reached the spiral stairs down and froze at the top. From the heavy footfalls below a whole group of men were charging upstairs.
“Search the rooms,” she heard a man yelling on the floor below. With a sharp hiss of breath, Ayla dragged the cloak around her shoulders. Its weight settled there. What if it did not work? She looked down at herself and saw her dress, surrounded with the hide. It smelled not like leather, but like the woods on a warm summer’s day, pine and ferns and sun.
Please,she thought desperately.Maybe they won’t hurt me, those soldiers, but they’ll certainly stop me from getting to him.
Her skin tingled all over as an odd warmth washed over her, like the castle hall had flooded with some substance other than air, and she was surrounded by thick golden light. Ayla stared in disbelief as the first two soldiers emerged over the stairs, holding their spears out before them in case they met with combatants. They did not seem to notice her, or the way the colors had allshifted, even though she was only a foot to the side of them. She watched, frozen, as they began to methodically search the rooms. A set of soldiers went into the nearest room on the hall’s left; another set on the right. Four more soldiers remained in the hall, keeping guard.
Barely trusting herself to breathe, Ayla tiptoed to the open stairwell.Please, let nobody be coming up it, she thought, and ran down as silently as she could.
The floor below was full of even more of them. Ayla pressed herself flat against the wall, watching as Enarian soldiers led two of Niel’s men, with their hands raised over their heads, out to the yard. Nobody seemed to see her.
She made her way slowly to the door, bending backwards as a soldier carelessly swung his spear. She inched along the wall and slipped into the alcove where Niel had said to meet, to avoid another group of soldiers coming into the castle.
She had known he wouldn’t be there, but had not expected to find his armor, cloak, or swordbelt. Ayla stared down at these items with her mouth hanging open. Had he been forced at swordpoint to remove them—but no, the folded cloak did not make sense of that. Hadheremoved them, willingly? The man who’d taken off his chestplate on no more than a handful of occasions during their weeks of siege?
Dread was a terrible feeling. She didn’t know why Niel had done this, or what it meant, only that she was terrified. The door to the outdoors was propped open, a small blessing.
She ran towards it, then jerked back as another pair of soldiers entered. Ayla backstepped quickly, trying to get out of their way. If there weren’t so many men in the hall, they might have heard her slippers smacking on the floor as she stumbled and threw herself to the side, but the men’s faces gave no indication they’d noticed anything. She waited, heart pounding, then crept back to the door and finally slipped out.
