“Gladly. Where are we exactly?”
Taillefer didn’t know the castle as well as she did, but based on his ability to figure out where she’d been held from what little he did know from infrequent visits to the Itspi for state occasions, she thought he was bluffing. He was too clever to know so little. And this, like his most recent attempt at humor, would slow them down. She wheeled on the prince. “Taillefer, before we go any further, I need you to promise me you won’t continue to pretend to be dense, because it really does not suit you.”
The fox smile flashed. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You do. It does not make me feel brilliant or trust you more for you to rely on my intelligence. It makes me feel quite concerned about our very tenuous partnership and we’ve barely made it twenty feet from the cell. If this continues, I’ll have your tongue before we see daylight because I justcannotwith you—the jokes are bad enough. Stop. That.”
“As you wish.” Taillefer stooped over Pualo’s body. “I should arm myself—since you require my weapons.”
He reached for the second captain’s dagger but Amarande slapped his hand away. “And have you stab me in the back on the way out? No.”
As long as they were in close quarters, she would not allow him any weapons—his fire swamp tincture and whatever other potions he had in that pouch were dangerous enough.
“My having a weapon does not diminish your possession.”
“It does if your knife enters my back. Take Pualo’s dagger and I will stab you with it and leave you here to bleed out.”
To her surprise, he relented. “Fine. But only because dying in an Ardenian uniform would make for a highly embarrassing afterlife, given I am the current crown prince of Pyrenee.”
The princess stood. “Follow me. And keep quiet. I’d rather not die escaping my ancestral home, no matter what I’m wearing.”
THEItspi was crawling with castle guards. The normal contingent was doubled, possibly tripled. This was new—very new, along with the locked castle gate. Koldo—or possibly Geneva—was being very cautious.
The guards patrolled the hallways in pairs, nearly coming upon Amarande and Taillefer numerous times. Still, they managed to avoid being caught as they moved cautiously into the main body of the castle, slinking through the shadows, coordinating their movements with the patrols’ repetitive ones. As four guards on early-morning rounds of the north side of the castle passed their hiding place in a small alcove near the throne room, Amarande grabbed Taillefer’s wrist and yanked him across the hall and into the library.
The double doors whispered closed, heavy wall and floor coverings absorbing the sound. Hundreds of shelves lined the double-height walls, stuffed full of military texts, histories, folktales, poetry, and other tales from across the continent and beyond—King Sendoa was many things and one of them was well-read. The oft-repeated tenets that ran through Amarande’s mind were a mishmash of wisdom from the books on these shelves blended with his real-life experience.
“I spent quite a bit of time in your library during the funeral visit,and though your father’s collection is impressive,” Taillefer whispered, “I would highly doubt there’s a book here that can solve our current dilemma—unless there’s a hidden passageway out of the castle. Stars, tell me one of these bookcases leads to a hidden passageway.” He paused, pointedly grabbing at the nearest fat-spined tome, then another and another. “Is this the trigger? What about this one? Or this one.”
Annoyed, Amarande forcefully yanked him onward and again confronted his willful, pretend denseness. “If you knew the general location of where I was being kept, why on earth did you scale the tower rather than use your stolen guard’s uniform to walk through the castle to get to me? I would be recognized, of course, but you wouldn’t have been.”
Taillefer blinked. “Had I known I would be breaking into the Itspi so soon after your father’s funeral, I wouldn’t have been so eager to leave my room and roam the grounds during my visit. I came across enough people in my reconnaissance of your location to know that eventually I would have the misfortune of running into someone who could put a face with my true name. I am not as forgettable as you assume I am. The second son of a king is still a prince.”
They passed a long, ornate table stacked with leaning scrolls of parchment. Figurines—Bear, Mountain Lion, Tiger, Shark—dotted the open patches of tabletop. Items used in strategy sessions. Amarande’s eyes snagged on a handful of black wolves mingled in with the current sigils. Each had a recently scratchedWon its chest—old Torrence figures co-opted and reused for the Warlord. The prince paused as something caught his eye. He reached for one of the scrolls. “Hmm… what’s this?”
“We don’t need a map,” she snapped. “I know where I’m going. It’s up to you to follow.”
To Luca. Always to Luca.
Taillefer sighed. “To your stableboy, yes. But where is he? Will you tell me that?”
Not until they were on the way. “Share with the defenseless boy who would sell me out at the first flash of Basilican steel before we are beyond the Itspi’s grounds? No.”
“Your trust is truly staggering.”
“Until you’ve earned more than a modicum of it, I will not supply you with ammunition.”
“I rescued you and I have only received a modicum? How very stingy of you.”
Amarande wheeled on him. “You broke in, but I rescued myself. And even with your modicum you are still very much in the negative, trust-wise. I shall never forgive you for what you did to Luca with that abomination.” She gestured to his pocket and the outline of the pouch that contained the fire swamp and whatever else he might be carrying.
A smirk unfurled on his face as the prince nodded. “Then I shall require a map. It’s simply good practice when onedoesn’t know where he is going.”
Taillefer’s fingers, still gloved, combed through the scrolls as he squinted in the dim predawn light. Not finding what he wanted, the prince moved to the flattened pages littering the table with the figurines. Within a moment, the parchments rustled as he crowed with success. “This will do.”
Amarande did not venture to see which map he picked. Instead, she was already moving in the direction she’d planned, to the center of the southern wall. There, a large banquette, upholstered in rich golden silk, was built into the wall beneath a large tapestry featuring the five sigils of the historic Sand and Sky.
The princess’s eyes paused on the black wolf.
