Suddenly, Cora’s fear surged, and Miara looked around frantically for the source. Fresh vines encircled Cora’s legs, and the other horses, too, to keep them from bolting. It’s okay, girl. It’s okay. I’ll free you.

“Sorin, your dagger!” she demanded. “The horses!” Her own blades were somewhere in some Devoted Knight’s pack, stolen and long gone. He handed Miara his.

She slashed away at the vines as quickly as she could and tried to glance around them. What could they use to get out of this situation?

Up ahead, one side of the road seemed to drop off, no trees in sight. A cliff?

“Sorin—up ahead. Does the road drop off there?”

He looked, and then his eyes blanked for a moment as he saw far ahead of them and then returned. “Yes. A bluff that now falls down to the valley’s river.”

“Can we—” she started, but then she hesitated, hating what she was about to say. “Can we use it somehow?”

His eyes lit up. “Ah, I like the way you think. If we can get them near it, we can… make use of it, shall we say?”

The vines continued their pursuit of the horses, but they were also putting up a struggle, prancing and jittering out of the vines’ grasp as best they could.

“Let’s go.” She gave one last savage slash at Cora’s vines and then whispered, Make for the road up there, I’ll be right behind you.

She leapt to Kres’s back after a quick hack at one persistent vine. She quickly tossed the blade back to Sorin and charged forward. At the same time, she gave a halfhearted attempt at pulling energy from the vines, not enough to really stop them—at least not yet—but perhaps to take some of her adversary’s energy for her own.

To his credit, Sorin was quickly on her heels, as were the wolves. She rode all the way to the very edge of the road at full speed and watched in horror as Sorin executed her plan. A blast of perfectly targeted wind sent the nearest wolf over the edge, tumbling down toward the rocks below.

Her heart in her chest ached. She gripped Kres’s reins tighter in her hands.

She maneuvered Kres away from the edge itself, dodging each of five wolves in turn. And each Sorin dispatched with astonishing speed. When the third started to dart away, seeing what was coming, he changed tactics. A lightning bolt touched the ground just in front of the wolf sending rocks sliding, and the creature lurched until it, too, fell to the cliff.

Silence fell, aside from their panting. She looked at Sorin, who smiled triumphantly, but she couldn’t return the expression. She could only hurt at the loss of these mages who’d fought valiantly for something she, too, believed in.

As her tension eased slightly, the pain in her forearm and cheek throbbed suddenly with full force, and she gasped for a moment at the intensity of it.

“Did you bring any bandages in that pack?”

“What would you have done without me, love?” He reached into his saddlebags.

“And some water,” she said gruffly, and nothing else. As if he’d have even survived the encounter they’d had with the Devoted, let alone still had his bandages with him. To hell with him.

What would she have done without him? Perhaps she would have died at the hands of honorable mages trying to save their future king, rather than having been the instrument of his destruction. She might have preferred that end to the one that waited for her. Instead, the Akarians had made a last-ditch effort to save him. And they had failed. Because of her.

But she had no choice in the matter. Sefim had told her time and time again that it made a difference. She could only hope he was right. She cleaned her wounds and bandaged her arm but left her cheek open to the air.

Let the Masters have no illusions. This journey had scarred her for good.

As the sun rose, they were surrounded by the thinner forests of Kavanar. The mountains in the distance were the same ones that sat beyond Mage Hall.

They were nearly back.

She and Sorin ate as they rode, trudging on even though they needed to stop. Aven, strangely, did not stir. She hadn’t thought Sorin had hit him that hard. Perhaps it was also just the fatigue of the journey. Hopefully, they could rouse him before they arrived—she didn’t want to explain an unconscious Akarian to the Masters. Damn Sorin.

The forests thinned even more, and soon they reached the farmers’ fields that lay to the west of Mage Hall.

Eventually, Aven roused. He didn’t sit up at first—she just noticed that after a while, his eyes were open, watching her. She risked a small, sad smile for him, and he smiled back. She let him have his peace. When he finally moved to sit up, he discovered how they’d tied him down, and she stopped the horse to untie him.

“What happened to your face?” Aven said, voice barely above a groggy whisper as she untied him.

“Wolves,” she said. “Wolves attacked us while you were down.” Akarian wolves, she added, straight to his mind so Sorin couldn’t hear. Mages, I think, transformed. I think they were trying to save you.

Aven said nothing in response, in his face or even in his mind. His thoughts were a sad, blank expanse, not that different from her own. There was a vague pain in his eyes, possibly from his own impending doom or riding a horse like that for so long. He had his choice of pains to pick from.

His eyes studied her as they rode, as if he were looking for something. Did he hope in these last hours that she would let him see some slight indication of her love? Would it really hurt anything now if she did show him? But she wasn’t about to show him anything with Sorin around to notice. It was too late. She’d lost her chance.

They rounded a bend, and the last of the trees stopped. Mage Hall squatted in the distance now, a black, disgusting lump between the flat green fields and the grayish mountains.

Sorin kicked his horse into a canter when he saw it. “Almost there!” he cried as if excited. Maybe he was.

At any rate, she was not excited, but she did want to get this over with.

She grunted. Kres knew her meaning, and Cora followed, and they sped past the farmers at a faster rate now. Occasionally, a man would stop and eye them suspiciously, whether for the right or wrong reasons, she didn’t know.

At the next field, several men stopped working, turning to look at them at once, on both sides of the road. Now, the farmers might hate the mages, but was it really worth such…

Seconds later, she discovered what they were really staring at as a shadow crossed Kres’s mane.