The innkeeper’s son passed me my coat outside the West Gate—it was damp. My lips curled in distaste as I slipped my arms through the sleeves and gave the young man a reassuring nod.

It couldn’t be helped. In the game of hunter and hunted, comfort was a small sacrifice. I slipped the hand bombs out of my belt sash and into the coat’s side pockets. I stuffed the oil flask into the secret compartment that once held my pocket sand.

Well then, time to hit the road.

I stopped mid-step, turning back to the city that had been my home for as long as I could remember. I thought back to scenes of desperation and friendship, hope and pain. This is where I abandoned Kirk, where I fought with Sin… and where I loved Cynthia. Like Sin, this city had shaped me, leaving me with a tangle of emotions I couldn’t begin to sort out. I didn’t have time; more importantly, it didn’t matter.

A weapon is not sentimental.

I met up with the rest of my party at a livery stable just outside the walls of the capital.

The seasoned adventurers had changed their gear for the road. Castille donned a well-worn breastplate and a dark grey cloak with a wolf pelt sewn along the shoulders. Dugan wore flexible leather armour over a green tunic and sturdy targe strapped to his back.

Isla dressed like Isla. She kept the hood of her navy-blue cloak up, holding her quarterstaff with both hands as if that was the only thing keeping her standing. The inn's staff had gotten the worst stains out of her dress. I did my best to ignore her and her blue-eyed stare.

As I walked up, Castille finished haggling prices for two young geldings. Horses were a blind spot in my training. They weren’t useful in the capital’s crowded streets and even less so during my time in the Red Room. Yet, according to Gren, horses were essential for small groups travelling between settlements. With the increased frequency of beastkin raids on the road, the last thing you wanted to do was get caught in an ambush on foot.

Castille nodded to me as I approached.

"Ah, Jacob. I was afraid you got cold feet."

"Me, never. Nothing keeps you warm like Rugar’s goons on your tail."

Castille smirked.

"Then your business in the capital is done?"

"Yeah, are we ready to go?"

She nodded.

"We have enough provisions to last for a few months, two horses for you and Isla and some other necessities."

I turned my head from Castille to the horses, not seeing a stockpile of supplies.

"Where are these provisions?"

Thor let out a series of squeaks that sounded like wheezing laughter.

Castille pointed her thumb at the pack boar’s saddlebags.

"There with him."

"Enchantment," Isla whispered, her voice dripping with awe.

Castille shrugged.

"I told you I'm from the Northwest."

"Why does that matter?" I asked.

"Enchanting items requires speaking High Song," Isla said.

High Elvish, I corrected in my head.

She continued, her voice barely above a whisper.

"The Sanctifiers have prohibited the use of spoken High Song. That's what makes enchanted items so rare. Most enchanted items are relics from when the Sanctifiers Guild was less influential or created by the elves of the Great Northwestern Forest."

I touched the top of my cane. Alden's reaction to my enchanted dagger made more sense now. Come to think of it, how did Elmer enchant my weapon? He must know how to speak High Elvish.

"Like I told Jacob, we trade with the elves of the enclave. It was a gift from a trader. The saddlebags shrink items and reduce their weight," Castille said.

That put my dagger and Sin’s knife to shame.

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"They could make a fortune selling enchanted items on the black market," I said.

"They would never do that. Enchanted items are special to elves. They are only given as gifts—never sold," Castille said.

I shrugged.

"Their loss."

"Maybe," Castille said, swinging into the saddle of her tall, black mare.

"Let's go. We're losing daylight."

After three attempts, I finally mounted my gelding. The brown horse, speckled with white blotches, was unbothered despite my frustration.

Isla mounted her white gelding with ease. Typical noble. She’d probably been riding horses around her manor house for years.

I half expected Dugan to use Thor as a mount. Instead, the quiet man had his own horse, a strong-backed, older gelding.

Castille led the way at an easy pace, trotting along the main dirt road with grassland on either side.

Was she going slow for me?

As I hid the flush of embarrassment on my face, another thought entered my mind.

"How are we going to break the curse on the Dellends?"

The rest of the party turned to look at me.

"You’re asking that now?!" Castille asked over her shoulder.

"There was a lot going on yesterday."

Castille nodded.

"True enough. Isla, you look like a smart girl. Enlighten him—one mage to another."

"What? Why me?!"

Isla coughed, regaining some poise as her face flushed.

Castille flashed her a playful smirk that narrowed the mage's eyes.

"OK. Um, there are two phenomena happening in the Dellends: the heavy metal curse and the inability to bond with the land. The common hypothesis is the two are connected.”

“Wait. What’s this about bonding?” I asked.

They didn’t say that in the history books.

Castille laughed in a mocking tone.

“It’s the biggest open secret in Luskaine. The nobles of the Dellends can’t become mages.”

“How is that possible?”

Isla piped in.

“It’s not uncommon. It happens when there is a contraction in contracts.”

"Now you're just making up words,” I said.

Isla’s face turned beet red.

“If you don’t want me to explain it, then… fine…”

Her quiet voice trailed off into a whimper.

Dugan walked his horse up to Castille and stared at her. The mirth left her face as she caught sight of him. I knew that look from Dugan. It was the kind Mrs. Dulldrey gave us when we misbehaved. He wasn’t mad, he was disappointed.

Castille nodded, something silent shared between them.

“Jacob. Quiet. Isla… please continue.”

Isla’s face lit up, making her stand straighter on her horse.

“Right! Ignoring the monarch loophole, Sanctifiers’ Landbound contracts are exclusive—one owner for one plot of land. If more than one person has a contract to the same land, it creates a contradiction. No owner can bond to the land while the contradiction exists."

"So, you're saying the nobles can't bond to the spirits of the land because someone else bonded to them first?" I asked.

"Yes. Someone older than Luskaine."

The conversation died; an eerie silence carried on the wind as we rode along the trail. Luskaine was founded over 130 years ago. If someone had been bound to the land all that time, they were old and powerful.

"Do you think it's an elf?" I asked.

Isla shook her head.

"Elves live twice as long as humans, so it's possible, but-"

"Elves don't use Sanctifier contracts," Castille said.

"Then how do they bond to the spirits of the land?" I asked.

Castille gave me a quizzical look as if I should already know the answer.

"I never asked them," she said with a shrug.

"If it helps, whoever was originally bonded to the Dellends is also caught in the contradiction. They can’t use their abilities, but…" Isla said, trailing off.

"But what?"

"They might have enchanted items. It makes sense for the time. The Sanctifiers were a new organization, and there were still elven slaves from the Old Elvish Empire that spoke High Song."

Isla's face blanched at her mention of elven slaves. I forced a smile to let her know it was fine.

Since reading that poem all those years ago, I have learned much about the predations of the Old Elvish Empire. As evil as they were, retribution had been just as fierce when the empire fell.

I ground my teeth.

It had nothing to do with me, even if people liked making it my problem. Given my age, my father or mother would have been an enclave elf from the Northwest, the only elves that were never a part of the empire. The only elves that survived the purges. I forced the subject out of my mind; my life was messy enough as is.

I leaned back in my saddle, tilting my head to the sky. Isla took that as a cue to end her lecture.

It was a beautiful day—warm with a gentle breeze. The sky was light blue, with no clouds blocking the sun's rays. We were trotting toward a forest on our left. That might be a good place to find some shade, as all this open country left us too exposed for my liking.

I let the tension flow out of my body as my mind processed Isla’s information.

Our quest was an assassination job, and our target was older than Luskaine. Someone powerful enough to afford a Sanctifier contract to an entire fiefdom. That sounded like one of the petty kings that rose after the fall of the Old Elvish Empire. Someone like that could have many enchanted items, possibly one that made them live longer.

A cold spike of fear ran through me. If I was able to work this out, others must have too. Yet, the quest had remained open since the founding of Luskaine. There was another angle here. One we needed to figure out before it was too late.

Thor grunted a short series of sounds that I recognized as a warning.

I looked up the road to see two riders galloping towards us at a breakneck pace.

"Form up! Me, Dugan and Thor in the front; Jacob and Isla behind," Castille said.

Her orders were sharp and crisp. She had to be former military, probably an officer.

"We wait here. On my signal, we stay on the road and push through them to make it to Miller's Hill."

She pointed past the dense forest on our left to a large grassy hill in the distance.

"What's the signal?" Isla asked.

"You'll know it when you see it."

We fell into formation, waiting with growing restlessness as the riders approached.

I hunched down in my saddle, the back of my shoulders tingling as I scanned around us.

I knew we were exposed.

Next to me, Isla chewed on her bottom lip as she wrung her hands around her staff.

Only Castille and Dugan sat on their horses, still as statues, as the riders pulled up short, covering us in a cloud of dust.

As the dust settled, I recognized one of them.

A heavy-set man with a wide mouth and a patch over one eye.

It was Took.