Despite herself, Amarande grinned just a little as the boy shrugged and glanced at the blond one, snoring across the way. “If he leads, I don’t have to make decisions. Easy enough life being a follower.”
The girl plopped down, her back to Amarande as she lay all the way to the ground, her head cradled in her hands, elbows jutted out toward Luca’s soft breaths.
“One day you might wake up to how sad that statement is,” the girl said, shaking her head, “but for now, enjoy the sounds of midnight. See you at dawn.”
And that was that.
Amarande’s plan began to form. She knew her foe. She knew when they would leave. And that gave her time to rest up andprepare for a proper attack, her father’s words again appearing in her head.
Lack of preparation can squander the element of surprise.
It was a gamble, because if she was rested, they would be, too, but she had one chance at this. And she wouldn’t miss.
The Warrior King’s daughter backed away from her opponents and shrank back into the trees. Back to Mira, to the chance to recover enough to be at her best when saving her love.
She removed the slip of fabric she’d used as a cowl, unknotted it, and tied it to the black filly’s bridle and her left wrist, hopeful that the predawn feeding routine Luca kept with his horses would mean Mira would grow restless at precisely the time Amarande needed to attack.
It was the best she could do.
And if it failed, she was on the right track and would adapt.
Boot knife tight in her right hand, the princess lay in the dirt, the pommel of her father’s sword digging into her back. Rather than move it, she shut her eyes and finally fell asleep.
CHAPTER
25
AMARANDE’Sleft hand dragged through the dirt, and her eyes immediately shot open, her body rocketing up until she was sitting, knife out, blinking into consciousness.
It was still dark.
Oh, thank the stars.
There was Mira, up from where she’d lain down the night before, muzzle digging coolly through the underbrush for something worth eating. Right on time.
The princess took a deep breath and squinted over her shoulder—the fire was still burning in the distance, hot enough that if the kidnappers had moved on, they weren’t far. To the right, the horizon beyond the thick cluster of spindly trees was slightly lighter, the first blues bleeding into the night’s endless black.
Relief flooded through Amarande’s body. She blinked again, eyes renewed, though being rested was not something she could claim. Three hours, that was it. But that would have to do, and it would have to last her—the second she had Luca’s hand in hers, they were on the run until they were safe or they were captured.
The princess removed the cowl from Mira’s bridle, looping the excess around her wrist. The horse huffed, hoping for the breakfast Luca always had prepared for her at this hour. “Soon, girl.”
She stowed her boot knife for the moment. The sword stayed on her back as well. She guided the horse through the trees andwound around to the very edge of the slip of forest, walking along the border, feet in the sand that sloped out to the desert she’d ridden through the day before.
Amarande couldn’t risk taking Mira into the kidnappers’ camp. Though she was a very good horse indeed, she was still too loud and too smelly—the other horses would notice her in an instant. What’s more, there were too many variables to getting Luca free from his ropes and onto the horse while potentially fighting three people who likely would only get paid if they held on to Luca—or captured her to go right along with him.
And so the princess tiptoed along the dirt, keeping Mira at a wide berth of the tree line and the crackling debris that would snap under hoof. Then when she was right in line with the orange glow of the fire, she tied Mira to another spindly tree. Not too tight that she couldn’t get her free when she came back to her with Luca in hand. The idea that the knot had to be loose in case she never returned to Mira blinked in the recesses of Amarande’s mind, and she shut it away just as quickly as it came.
Warriors didn’t make concessions like that.
Mira taken care of, Amarande turned her attention back to the fire. Using the orange glow as a beacon, she snuck toward it on soft steps, her movements sharper than they had been only hours earlier, her senses heightened, her focus clear.
The princess’s steps slowed, her center of gravity becoming lower as the fire grew closer. Her fingers slipped into her boot yet again, the knife at the ready as she came within striking distance. She was approaching from an angle that put her between where Luca and the girl had been on the sundial, and the blond boy—the Eritrian, who apparently was giving the orders.
Amarande didn’t know how long the watch shifts were for the party, but she guessed by the conversation between the girl and the Myrcellian boy that it should now be the Eritrian’s turn. And so she scanned the site, hunting for movement, especially from theblond boy, whose form she pinpointed at the tenth spot on the sundial.
No movement.
Good.
