They headed out at dawn. The streets were quiet, as was the inn, and the sky a deep indigo fading to gold-touched violet—the reverse of last night. Faint wisps of cloud feathered the horizon, touching the morning stars as they faded. When they left town, the scent of baking bread trailed after them. They passed several carts of flowers on their way in, the merchants and delivery drivers nodding greetings.

When they left the last house behind and cast out into the world beyond, layers of ground fog draped over the fields and hills. For an hour, they seemed to drift between forest and field, the grinding clop and suck of their horses’ hooves in the sand-and-sawdust-packed mud and the morning-fresh blows of their breaths a steady companion. The dawn slowly leached more and more light into the fog until half the world was bathed in gold-tinged color and hazy shadows. The shapes of farm and field workers had turned to ghosts moving in the mist.

Then the road climbed up, their horses digging and surging into an incline that included more packed gravel and shale in the mud, and crested a cliff-side rise that turned around the rocky knee of a mountain.

Ears popping at the rise in elevation, she blinked at the sudden brightness of raw sunlight, gaze turning to survey the view. The land fell away dramatically on the left, the yawning canyon below still mostly in shadow. Far below, the wriggling track of a river smashed white across its rocks, the roar of racing water audible even from their distance.

Across the canyon, on the relative flat of a piece of shelf-land—and draped in the same peaceful, lazy green and gold foggy soup they’d just left—the train route they would have taken if they hadn’t decided to go riding off into marsh country slashed a line of shadow across the scenery.

She spotted one cart moving on an open track close to it, making its slow way alongside the cut of a field.

They walked their horses along the cliff-side road for nearly ten minutes, only the jagged timber of a warning fence between them and the dire white-water-surge of a drop, before the mountain’s rocky knee ended and the path tipped them back into a sparse wood. They descended, the mountain slope putting them in cold shade for an hour before the road turned toward sunlight again.

When they made the bottom, they stretched their legs for a few minutes, watered the horses by a stream, and started up again.

It was… blessedly quiet. And rather enjoyable. For her, at least. She kept in the lead, watching and listening, and the others followed. Nales came second, a shadow on his quick black gelding. Doneil and Matteo rode abreast at the rear, talking quietly to each other.

Occasionally, Nales turned and said something to them, clearly listening to their conversation.

Mostly, he stayed quietly in her wake, relaxed but watchful.

Steadily, the road and forest passed around them.

It was nice. Enjoyable. As if they were out simply for a multi-day ride rather than searching for evidence of their world’s ruin—and the ruins of all the worlds connected to it.

As if the absence of Kodanh’s ice didn’t ache in her heart like a missing limb.

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Truth be told, she’d mostly forgotten about it these past few weeks. Pushed it from her mind.

Last night’s resurgence, however…

She kept tasting snow on the wind. Drifting in from the gods-knew which mountain. Not the one they were leaving—its ridgeline was coated in solid green forest. Somewhere else.

In her mind, perhaps.

Maybe Kodanh’s memory would haunt her. Until she forgot about it again.

The runes prickled on her shoulder, as if picking up her thoughts.

Around midday, when their road dipped down from the mountain’s toes and stretched out between fields and loose woods again, they picked up the pace, sending their horses into alternating periods of trot and lope. The sun pressed through her armor, along with the breeze, raising sweat and cooling it at the same time. Conversation quieted as they focused on the ride and exertion. The smell of the air turned warm, tempered with the smell of long grass nearing its first cut.

The smell of snow drifted away.

Once, a different wind cut to them, bringing the smell of stagnant marsh. Reeds and rot. Water-bogged plants. Algae blooms. Mud.

They wouldn’t reach it for another day at least. They could have, if they’d wanted to. Levine’s inn—their planned rest-stop—was two miles past the crossroad that led to the marsh. If they took the crossroad today, they’d make the marsh by night.

None of them, however, were stupid enough to travel a marsh by dark.

After an hour, they dropped their horses back to a walk, loose rein, to cool them and stretch. Sweat darkened patches of their coats and roughed their hair, but a tributary snaked lazily through the fields and intersected with the road a mile ahead, its edges crested with riparian growth. In the distance, she could already make out the smudges of chimney-laid smoke that marked Levine.

They’d water and feed the horses, rest for lunch and stretch their legs, then set off again.

The road wound through the upcoming forest some, but they’d make Levine before dusk, even at a slower pace.

She’d just decided that, and was about to call the halt location, when a panicked scream pierced through the quiet, sunny day and brought all their attention to a resonant peak.

She slowed her horse, quieting the crunch of its hooves on the track, and reached out with her senses. The woodcraft was sluggish to respond so far from familiar forests—like sludge in a channel—but she moved it along with urgency. Slowly, the awareness linked into her, slipping to her in pieces, like disjointed puzzle blocks working to construct a picture.

Nales drew his horse alongside hers. “Trouble?”

“I presume so.” She chewed her tongue, thoughts jumping like water in a wheel. “You should stay here while I investigate.”

It was safest. They would need to either pass the presumed trouble or find a way around it. She needed to find out what the danger was before she could make that decision.

She also knew he wouldn’t go for it.

“No,” he said, proving her right.

A second scream pierced the air, more desperate than the first. Two screams, overlapping each other and distorted with the slight echo of distance.

Then, shouts. Yells. The snap of magic.

The entire party looked up, listening.

“Multiple targets fighting. Magic involved,” she identified. Her warning gaze slid to Nales. “As your guard, I advise you to stay here.”

“You’re not my guard, you’re my Undersworn,” he said. “My safety is not your paramount. We will all go, rnari, and help if we can.”

He was wrong. He was wrong, but she’d expected it—and it felt right, as if the gods were watching them and something old and prophesied had just fallen down from on high and clicked into place. The world narrowed, honing down to battle-focus. Her blood sang in her veins, pumping hard, pulse lighting up with adrenaline. Her woodcraft punched through the valley’s sluggish barriers, painting a crystal-clear picture in her mind. Already, she’d gathered her reins and readied her horse to run.

“In that case: follow my lead, stay behind me, and don’t get yourself killed. If I say run, you run. Understood?”

Prince Nales, second-in-line to the most powerful kingdom in the world, didn’t argue.

“Understood,” he said.

“Good.” She sent her horse forward, the mare bunching and leaping into a strong, heart-surging gallop. “Go!”