I sat on the shadow paths’ reflective ground and placed my palms down against it while smoke swirled around and obscured all the paths I could take. It was now or never. Either I made a path to Juniper or I had hurt Prevna for no reason. Abandoned her for no other reason than that I couldn’t stomach having no control over a situation no one wanted me to be a part of in the first place.

According to Fern I had the only tool that mattered for it: the ability to step into the shadows, find the one to leave from, and step out again. According to Esie I was focusing on the wrong thing. Forget about imagining trees in perfect detail and instead…trust everything to my intentions and the boon.

I didn’t have time to waste on trust. Even if I knew I could trust Prevna to do what she thought was best, even if I could trust in the boon’s power, that didn’t mean Prevna could trust me or that I could trust something from the goddess wouldn’t hurt me in the long run.

What I did have was focus and weeks of practice and the conviction that, no matter what, I couldn’t return and face Prevna without a shred of success. That would be the final blow to shatter everything after the cracks I had already carved into her support to do this.

She thought I could make it to Juniper.

I would prove her right.

First, I focused on the shadow I had entered. Grounded myself in its size and dark shade so that I couldn’t lose the first part of my pathway. If I wasn’t supposed to imagine where I was going perhaps picturing the entrance in such painstaking detail could help form the path instead. I built the image up in my mind and then reached out to find a shadow I could connect to.

It quickly became apparent that my range wasn’t wide enough to go nearly close enough to where I assumed Juniper and her kidnapper must be by now. I’d still be in easy walking distance of the search party and, if I had to make multiple paths, I wasn’t sure I’d have the stamina to make it to Juniper. Better to try to make it one big jump if possible. That was what Prevna thought I could do as well.

So I tried to focus my range in the direction that the tracks had been going instead of spread out around me in a circle. Turn it into a spear that stretched towards my target. It took several tries before I felt the shadows I could sense shift and change from the broad circle to a more focused line. It stretched into the distance, highlighting the deeper shadows, but there was nothing that indicated that Juniper might be near one of them. Nothing to know if my range now stretched far enough or not.

That wasn’t good enough. I needed to know that I’d show up where I was supposed to be so I didn’t waste my chance. Hana had traveled through the shadows with precision, showing up exactly where she expected to. Even Maybur, the head whisper woman of the Statue Garden, had been able to take Fellen and me to Grislander’s Maw, and Caretakers weren’t know for their ability to travel the shadows. Clara had been able to take me fairly close to Jin for the game of Hunter’s Quarry as well and she was only a Sprout that spent most of her time in the nested library.

Rather than mess around more with shaping my range I decided to ignore it. If I couldn’t tell if Juniper was near one of the shadows then there wasn’t much point in continuing to shape it in different ways. I’d focus on Juniper and if she was beyond my comfortable range I’d just have to force it further. After all, we made the paths which meant any limitations were our own that we had to break.

I pretended that this was one of the tasks she had given me without warning and with dire consequences. Complete it or listen to her twist my every action she didn’t like into another failure. Complete it or let her take a knife to my healer’s beads because she didn’t need an apprentice who couldn’t handle the unexpected.

During those tests everything else faded away until there was only the task and getting results. No matter how unfair or difficult. Right now the task was to reach Juniper.

I built up the image of her in my head and used it to help focus my intention. Her tall, thin frame topped with a bun of brown-blond hair. Her pant leg that was constantly rolled up to show off the root like bless mark on her ankle despite her frustration at being dragged away from her tribe. Proud and melancholy and a bit innocent. Afraid of heights and terrible at shadow walking but a good leader with the right support behind her.

I would find Juniper. There wasn’t any other option. I would bend the shadows to my will and I would reach her. That was the expectation and I would make it reality.

A flicker in the distance. A shadow that suddenly stood out more than the rest. I reached for it and tried to force a pathway between the shadows, but the connection was weak and I lost my focus on the distant shadow as soon as I tried to stretch further than my range.

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Wrong. Again.

I would reach Juniper. Nothing else mattered and the shadows would bend to my will. Another flicker. I took more time focusing on the distant shadow this time so that I’d be less likely to lose it. Make a solid gateway like the one beneath me to anchor the path. I reached and shifted to stand and…lost it.

Wrong. Again.

And again and again.

I didn’t keep track of how many times I tried to make the path between the shadows, but I could sense the shadows losing their depth as the clouds kept covering the sky. My head felt tight and aching like it was being squeezed under the constant attempts to make the path. If I didn’t travel between the shadows soon, one way or another, I’d lose my chance to.

I wasn’t even sure if I was trying to connect to the same shadow over and over or if it was a different one that drew my attention each time. They could be moving or with the changing light the shadows that were dark enough for me to connect to could be shifting.

One last chance before my concentration gave out and the shadows became too dim. One last chance not to fail.

I focus my intent again to find a shadow that would take me to Juniper and felt a shadow flare in my perception. I clamped a hold of it and jerked it towards me so I might be able to cross the path before it unraveled. Not really giving a thought to if I was forcing the shadow into my range or forcing my range to stretch even farther—or if it even mattered—I tied the two shadows together as tight as I could and lunged forward.

One step. Two. Three. I crashed through the second shadow and got a branch in my gut before slipping off and cracking my head against the cold ground. The snow softened the blow a little bit, but there wasn’t as much around the base of the pine tree I had used as a gateway.

That had been one of the worst exits I had in a while. I wanted to curl into a ball and soothe my head so it stopped feeling like it was being crushed between two rocks but I could hear movement close by. And there was flickering light nearby that seemed too bright and low to belong to the sun.

I lifted my head and squinted towards it just in time to see a figure step into view from the other side of the large tree trunk. A man. At first I thought he must have been from the Rookery with the amount of jewelry he was wearing, but there weren’t any feathers. No poncho or yellow eyes.

Skin as dark as Loclen and Andhi, dark hair pulled back and decorated with a variety of beads. Wide features. Sleeveless shirt despite it being in the middle of the cold season and pants that didn’t look thick enough for the weather either. Fancy belt with pouches and a long knife. Arm bands, several rings, one whole ear covered in rings and studs while the other had a drop that looked like a flower. A necklace that curled as tight as could around his throat. And not all of the jewelery was bone, stone, or leather. Some was…wood. And metal?

I stared up at the strange man while he stared back at me until my eyes focused enough to make out the fire behind him and the bundle behind it. Juniper, bound up in fur blanket and a gag covering her mouth but she was shifting around and seemed alert.

The moment broke. The kidnapper muttered something incomprehensible and reached for me. I scrambled to the side and went to dart past him towards Juniper but I tripped on a root. He caught my collar and there was an odd warmth that seemed to hover around his skin. I scratched at his arm and kicked out blindly. Felt him release his grip as he groaned in pain. A lucky shot between the legs.

Darted forward again and got my knife in hand. Reached Juniper. I wedged my knife under the cord wrapped around her and the blanket, and cut it twice before I heard the kidnapper get close again. I jerked out of reach his grip again and dragged Juniper as best as I could around the far side of the fire. Further from the man but also further from the shadow that promised escape.

Juniper got her feet under her and tried to shake off the loosened cord. The whole blanket sagged and tripped her as we ran from the kidnapper again. We both fell.

The kidnapper dragged me up into a bear hug so my arms were pinned and said something incomprehensible again. I tried to headbutt him but I wasn’t tall enough to reach his chin from where he held me.

Juniper just stared at us as he started fishing around for something on his belt. I yelled at her, “Get in the shadow!”

Juniper flinched at my order but she started to shift toward it until I saw her take in the lack of other clear shadows around us, the clouds in the sky. Saw the fear of getting stuck in the shadow paths again take her over.

I cursed.

Then I struggled for all I was worth. Knife or something else, I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. I didn’t get any more lucky kicks or other hits in though. The man had me pinned and I wasn’t strong enough to break his hold. I did get a few more scratches in when he forced my wrists together but I wasn’t able to twist away before he had my wrists tied. He grabbed Juniper again too and tied us, back to back, in the fur blanket. I tried to get Juniper to help me fight as he bound us up but all she said was, “There’s nowhere to go.”

I wanted to attack him in his sleep or try to slip away when he wasn’t paying attention because he hadn’t bound our legs, but then he got a stake from somewhere, touched one of his arm bands, and drove it into the frozen ground with one hand. After that we were tied to it on a short enough lead that we couldn’t reach the tree’s shadow.

That was when I took the time to take in more of our surroundings to try to find something else we could use to get away and I saw the harp. The same harp that had been cradled in the statue’s hand and that had likely put the whole Rookery to sleep.

How could he have gotten both the harp and Juniper so quickly? Why would he even want them both? I had suspicions I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer to.