Goldie fumed helplessly.

How dare he? What gives him the right to just pluck Adon away like that?

But of course, she knew what gave him the right. This was his garden.

In the week that had passed since Adon entered his chrysalis, Goldie had purchased Claustrian Language Comprehension. Listening in on the whispered conversations among the gardeners who regularly moved through the space near her new web was a way to pass the time in between consuming creatures that entered her home.

Through that medium, she came to understand the situation inside the palace.

The Princess who Adon had conversed with was apparently unwell, and the Queen was sick too. Neither gardener knew how they had taken ill, but it was the talk of the palace staff.

They seemed to be worried that she would not survive her affliction. The King himself was at their bedsides day and night, refusing to see anyone besides the doctor.

And now, it was apparent that the King believed that having a caterpillar chrysalis by his daughter’s bedside might bring her good luck or health or something.

Even though his motivations might have been sympathetic, Goldie could not simply let him run off with Adon.

Just because he is a king, he thinks he can tear through my home and kidnap my friend…

She had checked that her eggs were in place, firmly attached to her back with the strong, thick silk she had applied, and then chased after the kidnapper King.

But his long human legs had proven much faster than her short spider ones, even with her increased size and speed post-Evolution. She ended up drumming her forelimbs against the palace’s closed garden door, frustrated.

This is not the end, Goldie thought.

She took a few steps back to get a good look at the building.

As with her size, venom, Intelligence, and Will, her Perception had improved with Evolution. She could see much more clearly than she had before.

She saw that the palace’s exterior wall was a rich, cream-colored stone, that there was a second and a third door in the garden-facing surface, and that there were a half-dozen windows on the ground level and another half-dozen on the floor above.

And Goldie’s eagle eyes fixated on one of the windows on the second floor.

She had to stare for a few seconds to realize how she could tell that someone had left it slightly ajar. The angle was wrong for her to see the window sill itself, and the window was not open enough for her to see the actual opening.

Then she recognized that she could tell the breeze from outside was gently blowing the curtains within the room.

Satisfied, she moved back toward the wall and began skittering up the side.

As she climbed, however, she quickly detected motion from above and behind her. Reaching the first floor, she recognized the moving object was drawing closer to her rapidly. She stopped and turned her head to look.

Goldie’s eyes caught the profile of the crow, and then the bird was upon her.

Perhaps it is not such a good thing that I have grown so large.

The crow’s claws scraped against the wall beside Goldie’s head. She retreated down the wall, narrowly avoiding the attack. The sounds of wingbeats told her without her needing to look that the bird was coming around for another attempt.

That was fine with her. She had not tested herself against a truly challenging opponent since her Evolution, and Goldie was not interested in running.

She turned her body to face the bird, felt the shift in the wind as the crow’s wings brought it closer to her, and saw the glint in the crow’s eyes as it dove at her with its beak wide open. At the last moment before it could reach her, she jumped forward into the middle of its breast. Almost as she landed on the soft bed of its plumage, she sank her fangs into its flesh and injected a huge dose of her improved venom.

I think I must be close to the heart, she thought. That is near the center of the chest in mammals and birds, right? Goldie did not know where this random bit of anatomy trivia came from. As was so often the case, she simply knew something and had to assume it was vaguely related to a past life.

The bird twisted and jerked in midair, then flailed its wings at Goldie, trying to beat her off of its body, but she resisted being knocked away.

You started this. Now you become food. In her heart, she was a little nervous about her remaining eggs, but she knew that they were well secured with her strongest silk. She did not believe this clumsy creature would be able to break them unless it also succeeded in breaking her body.

A few seconds later, the bird began dropping, and the blows it landed on Goldie’s body as it fell were progressively weaker and weaker.

The heart is failing. Good.

Goldie threw herself clear of the bird as it hit the ground, trying to avoid being trapped underneath its bulk. Her body bounced twice and then skidded to a stop.

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She checked the eggs on her back with one nervously shaking limb and confirmed that they were unharmed. Her whole body relaxed. And she began walking back toward the crow.

It was breathing with great difficulty, its chest rising and falling erratically and bleeding from where she landed her bite. The bird pushed against the ground with its wings, trying to move to an upright position, but it kept slipping and flopping back down onto its face again. The strength seemed to have gone from its body.

Goldie was darkly satisfied.

I will not be left behind now, she thought. All Adon’s growth in the time she had known him had taken him to a different tier of power from other insects, and even above arachnids like her. She had begun to feel that she was becoming a burden for him to carry. Not that he would ever complain; it was more in Adon’s nature to feel guilty and think that he was the burden. But Goldie wanted to be a team member, not have to hide in a corner.

If I was just a bit stronger… Her mind returned to the subject of her mate’s death, until she forced herself back to the present. I have a mission. I cannot think about that now… Goddess, please hold Red close for me. Thank him for being so brave. And tell him I am sorry. For not having the courage to love him as I should have while he was alive.

Goldie was being unfair to herself, but there was no one there to tell her she was wrong.

The spider felt somewhat better after she had liquefied and consumed the choicest bits of the hapless crow. She set off on her quest again, and this time, nothing was unwise enough to disturb her walk up the wall.

Goldie finally arrived outside of the window she had noticed and targeted before. As she reached the opening, she darted quickly inside, wary of the possibility of someone or something suddenly closing the window on her.

But the only movement her eyes detected as she entered was the curtain itself, blowing gently in the breeze.

She surveyed the room and verified that it appeared to be empty.

A look at the furnishings—wooden chairs artistically carved to portray images of animals, a wooden chest carved with similar decorations, and a bed made up with silk brocade covers—told her that this room belonged to a member of the royal family. The toys on the floor informed her that it must be one of the children.

The Princess is certainly too old to play with wooden knights, she thought. One of her siblings’ rooms.

The thought made her nervous. She had seen those boisterous human children from a distance once before. They seemed like the sort of humans to fearlessly stomp on a spider if they saw her. After her Evolution, it probably would not injure her, but they would certainly call an adult if they failed to kill her. She imagined that no one would hesitate to kill a venomous spider found in a royal family member’s bedroom.

As she looked around, she thought she heard the sound of distant play coming from somewhere further inside the palace. It was only for a moment, but it was enough to make her wonder when the child would happen to come back into this room.

Goldie began walking quickly down the interior wall. At least she had made it inside of the palace. Now she simply had to remain unseen until she could get to where Adon was. She worked her way around the room, keeping close to the wall, so she could run up its side or under a dresser if a human came in.

When she made it to the door, she poked her head out cautiously. There was a long hallway.

Standing suits of armor, tapestries, ornate wallpaper, and the occasional painting lined the walls, but little of it interested Goldie.

I think I can use the armor as cover if someone comes in. But those were spaced out. Goldie would be exposed to sight for at least a few seconds if anyone happened to look at the ground when she was not near one of the armors.

The thought of being discovered was frightening. She still remembered how the King’s skin had simply rebuffed her fangs like they were blunt. Biting him—or rather attempting to bite him—had actually hurt.

Were other humans like that? She could imagine that Princess Rosslyn was. Were the household staff superhuman too?

She rushed into the hallway before her courage could fail her.

As she scuttled along, she found the hallway almost unnervingly quiet. She could have heard a pin drop. On the one hand, that hopefully meant that no one was coming just now. On the other hand, it felt wrong for a place where living things existed to be so quiet.

Her understanding of human behavior felt vague and unhelpful right now. This palace was their home—but was it also a hunting ground? Would a human sneak up on her while she navigated this hallway?

Goldie stopped and hid behind the armors’ metal boots far more often than she felt the genuine need to. It gave her a sense of security, as if she was suddenly safe and could breathe more freely. In this way, she made her way slowly down the hall.

She looked into rooms as she went, but all she saw were another pair of children’s bedrooms and a much larger chamber that she guessed was used for eating. She had a vague idea that the massive wooden table she saw was for dining.

She continued forward—then stood stock-still outside the next door. She heard a human voice quietly groaning.

“Oh, Alistair, help me…”

It was a woman’s voice. That told the spider that this could be the right place.

Goldie broke her paralysis and decided to risk a peek into the room.

As she thrust her head around the door frame, she saw two beds in a room with decor that was otherwise similar to the other royal chambers she had passed. There were two sleeping figures in them, and the one closest to the door was tossing and turning and moaning quietly in her sleep.

But Goldie barely paid attention to the humans. On a table between the two beds, sitting in a pot covered by what appeared to be some form of glass case, she saw Adon. He remained safely ensconced in his chrysalis, and it still hung from near the top of his birth plant.

She stepped into the room, slightly shocked that her quest should end so easily.

Well, I found him, she thought. And she began to wonder what she should do next. She had been determined that she and Adon not be separated—and vaguely worried that something might happen to him if he were out of her sight—but now they were together again, with only roughly a human body’s length separating them.

What would Adon want? He had already expressed his interest in getting them into the palace, if only for security and warmth through the winter. Now they were there. But he had not come into the palace by his own volition, or under circumstances that he could have foreseen. The benefactor they were planning to rely on to keep them safe inside the palace was the Princess, and she was apparently seriously ill.

Are we safe if the Princess does not survive this illness? Would Adon want to stay here right now? Should I try to remove him?

As Goldie was weighing her options, she heard the sound of footsteps at the end of the hall, and without stopping to look and see who might be approaching, she raced further into the room until she found a hiding place in the darkest space under the Princess’s bed that she could find.

A pair of large feet in silk slippers appeared in the doorway, and her heart sank.

The King.

If Goldie had wanted to leave, it seemed it would be impossible for the foreseeable future.