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Esme continues ascending with apparent ease, while I curse as my bound hands struggle to grip. “I rode alicorns, asked questions, and annoyed people.”

“I bet.” The response tumbles out before I can stop myself.

She stiffens, and I brace for her to shut down again and retreat into defensive silence.

She surprises me by exhaling a long breath. “I’m bad at most things humans value. Dancing. Conversation. Needlepoint. People.” Her humorless laugh contains a hint of old hurt. “I’m bad with people.”

Propping my boot on a rocky outcropping, I shake my tied wrists. “Yeah. I noticed. This is a terrible way to procure a suitor.”

She ignores the jab. At least I think I’m funny. “My mentor saw something my family didn’t.”

I seize the opening. “What didn’t your family see?”

She pauses mid-step. For a long moment, she stays still, staring at the path ahead. “They saw a disappointment.”

I know that feeling. It creates an ache that never heals, no matter how much you try. “I asked what they did not see.”

Esme blinks at me from over her shoulder before offering a small but genuine smile. “There was one person I didn’t annoy.” She starts up the path again, but at a slower pace. Our trajectory winds us between spindly trees with thick green needles that soften the rocky ground wherever they fall. “A guard named Torven who mostly worked in the kennels. I found him inside once, crying over a dying hound.”

I can picture the palace guard who loves his hounds more than people. The type of man who hides his grief in a place he believes is private. “What did you do?”

Esme navigates around a washout, her strides less cautious as she sinks into the story. “I had no training then and no idea what I was doing, just instinct. When I put my hands on the hound’s back, I felt something move through me. Like sunlight started flowing through my veins.”

Instinct.

I mull the term over in my mind. What she describes sounds like water or air magic, the healing specialties Tirene’s best medics spend years learning to master, but she claims she had no training at the time. An image of light pouring from her hands when she worked on the alicorn flashes through my mind.

I’ve never heard anyone describe their elemental abilities that way.

“The hound lived. Torven never forgot. He always…” Esme trails off and shakes her head. “He always said I saved his best friend. He made me feel like maybe I wasn’t completely useless.”

After that, we walk in companionable quiet for a while. The path briefly levels out, providing a chance for us to catch our breath. The tireless dire wolf ranges ahead, disappearing around bends and reappearing between the trees. Light cuts through the foliage in blinding streaks as the sun warms the needles, and the fresh scent of pine permeates the air.

Then Esme halts, her boots sliding on loose scree.

I nearly run into her back.

The dire wolf growls once. His nose points at a hare emerging from the brush, and then he dashes after his prey into the surrounding trees. Esme opens her mouth as if to call out, but stops without speaking.

Instead, she looks back at the tangle of vines cascading down the cliff face. “Home sweet home.”

Recognition sparks, along with anger. This cluster of Fusion Root Vine is the thickest I’ve ever encountered. Tirene asked for Fusion Root Vine from other kingdoms during the fight against the drachen and the War of the Gods, but Meridia refused to assist us.

I bunch my hands into fists, squeezing until my nails cut into my palms. How many of our people died because we didn’t have Fusion Root Vine tea, meaning they couldn’t merge magics to protect themselves? And the Meridians are using it as door dressing.

Esme pushes the vines aside like they’re dirty old rags blocking her way. The Fusion Root Vine moves with a slither like leather on stone, proving how old and potent they are. Even though the cluster is a lot sparser than regular vines, a crop like this could have saved lives during the war. Behind the roots, a dim cave entrance yawns open.

But it’s not the darkness that gives me pause. It’s the symbols carved into the rock around the opening.

Though elements have smoothed the ancient, weathered stone, marks remain. Within the curtain of vines, a silvery substance glows within the rock’s crevasses. Warding magic of some kind, I’m betting, though I’ve never seen it before.

I duck through the vines after Esme, stepping from bright noontime sunlight into cool, damp shadow.

“Well, fuck me.”

I stare at what I’ve wandered into, my eyebrows shooting up as my voice echoes back at me. Maybe Esme’s mentor has some power after all.

Chapter Twenty-Three