What? What would I have said? Thank you for not killing me? Thank you for healing me when you could have let me die?
I don’t know what I would have said, and now I’ll never find out. He’s gone, the hoofbeats are growing louder, and I have to get a grip on myself.
Three riders come around the bend in the road, all wearing the Dell’s colors, swords at their hips. They see me, and the lead rider hauls back on his reins.
“Miss. What are you doing on the road alone?”
“I … I am Princess Alleria.” There’s a tremor to my voice that I don’t have to fake. “I?—"
“Gods above!” His eyes go wide. “Is that … Markus, that’sher!That’s the missing princess. Go back and inform Cowen.”
One rider wheels his horse around, and spurs it back toward the Dell. The remaining two stare at me.
“Where have you been?” The first rider dismounts and walks toward me cautiously, eyes scanning me from head to toe. “Are you hurt?”
“I … I escaped.” The lie comes smooth and easy. “While the fae … while it was distracted. I ran.”
Why am I lying for him? Why aren’t I telling them the truth? Why aren’t I screaming that he’s close by somewhere?
But I know why.
You told the serving girl I was a pet. You told the seamstress your father bought me. You spent the night in a room with me. What do you think the guards will see when they find us? A kidnapped princess, or a woman who helped a fae escape?
Every lie I told to survive has become a link in a chain of deception. If I tell the truth now—that he took me prisoner, and threatened to kill me—they’ll ask why I bought him clothes, why I sat in the common room and fed him while he knelt at my side … Why I shared his bed. The guards witnessed what happened there.
He knew. He knew what he was building around me, and I was blind to it.
“You’re safe now, my lady.” The rider’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “We’ve turned the entire region upside down searching for you.”
Safe.
“Allow us to take you back to the Dell. Your companions refused to leave. Your handmaiden was returned to the palace, but your guards remained to search for you. They wouldn’t give up.” As he speaks, he helps me onto his horse, then mounts behind me, sliding an arm around my waist to keep me steady. The remaining rider brings his horse to our side, and they turn as one back toward the Dell.
I look back over my shoulder at the empty road. Cairn could be ten feet away, and I’d never know. Or he could be miles away, I know how fast he can move, I have no doubt he could put enough distance between us that no one would find him if I told the truth.
I open my mouth to warn them, then close it again.
The Dell appears ahead, and we ride through the gates toward the wooden lodge with smoke curling from its chimney. My gaze goes to the fenced enclosure where I first saw him. It’s empty, the post he was restrained at standing bare, with the chains heaped at its base.
I can still see him there. His head bowed under the weight of those antlers, with gray-green skin that I thought was his natural coloring. The iron collar wrapped around the ruin of his throat.
The courtyard is crowded with people, but my gaze is searching for one person only. My heart picks up speed when I see him, tears stinging my eyes.
Brennan pushes through the people milling around, reachingfor me before the horse has fully stopped. He lifts me down, his arms closing around me so tight I can barely breathe.
“Alleria.” His voice breaks on my name. I’ve never heard him sound like that. “Gods, girl. We thought?—”
“I know.” My face is pressed against his chest, and I breathe him in, letting the familiar scent of leather and horse and the soap he’s used for as long as I can remember fill my lungs. “I know what you thought.”
Someone wraps a blanket around my shoulders. Voices crowd in from all sides.
Is she hurt? Does she need a healer? What happened? Where was she?
I answer with the same words I gave the riders. I escaped. I ran. I’ve been lost, hiding from the fae, and trying to find my way back.
The lies come easier each time.
Huntmaster Cowen pushes through the crowd. He bows low, lower than he did when I first arrived, when I was just a patron instead of a scandal he’s desperate to survive.
