This was a soldier’s traveling gear. Dark leathers softened with wear, a light breastplate of overlapping bronze leaves. A cloak the color of new moss hung from his broad, lean shoulders. His eyes were the same as before, though—bright, calculating, amused at everything and everyone, including himself.
“Talthis,” I said, voice rough.
“Rydian, you old, crusty shadow. Good to see you up and breathing.”
“What are you doing here?” I grunted.
“The real question is, what areyoudoing here, my friend?”
“Feel free to answer either one.”
His gaze swept over me, quick and assessing. “How do you feel?”
“Like I lost a fight with the river and then got trampled by a pack of Obsidian horses,” I said. “Where am I?”
“A very long way from where you nearly died,” another voice answered.
Princess Naliadne slipped past Talthis into the tent, her bare feet silent on the packed earth floor. Her dark blue hair hung in wet ropes down her back, dripping onto a simple shift the color of riverstone. Her skin still held the faint, pearly sheen of the river’s magic, eyes a shade too bright to belong to anything wholly mortal. Or wholly fae.
The naiad had dragged me under. Apparently, they’d decided not to keep me.
“You brought me here,” I said.
“Beneath didn’t suit you,” she said, glancing at my body currently wrapped in a thin blanket. “Too much shadow. Not enough scales.” She looked at Talthis, a playful grin on her lips. “Besides, Talthis made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
I looked between them, trying to figure them out. “I hadn’t realized you two were… friends.”
“It’s more of a partnership,” Talthis said.
Nali’s gaze glittered at that, and I decided not to ask for details of this so-called partnership. Instead, I tried to piece together what led me here.
I remembered hands on my ankles, my wrists. A pale face underwater, blue hair fanning around it like ink, eyes luminous in the dark. A pressure against my mouth that had tasted like cold lightning and let me breathe where no one should.
Then nothing.
“How long?” I asked. “How long since you pulled me under?”
Talthis and Naliadne exchanged a look.
“Two days,” Talthis said.
My heart lurched. “Two?—”
“Your lungs were full of smoke,” Naliadne said. “Your skin was half-cooked. Your shadows were… tangled.” She tilted her head. “You should be grateful you woke at all.”
I wasn’t feeling particularly grateful. Not with the image that slammed into me next: Aurelia on that hillside, surrounded by Frostwights and Obsidians. Her mark blazing. Power pouring out of her like a god had taken her over.
“What happened?” I demanded. “Aurelia?—”
“Is alive,” Naliadne said before the panic could finish carving its way through me. “My scouts saw her reach the caves. Your friends dragged her into the mountain before the fire could eat her as well.”
Some of the tightness in my chest eased. Not much. Enough.
“Then we need to go,” I said. “If they’re in the tunnels?—”
Talthis made a quiet sound, somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “You’re in the Emerald Forest, Prince, smack in the center of Menryth. Four days’ ride from the Concordian border if your horse doesn’t break a leg in the foothills. And that’s if you had the strength to remain in the saddle—or a horse, which you don’t.”
I stared at him. Then at the tent walls. Then at the trees beyond his shoulder. “The river dragged me this far?”
