The Shadow Throne (The Ascendance Trilogy, #3)(37)

Mott had told me once that he was skilled in tracking, but I hadn’t appreciated his claim until I saw him at work. Once we lost the princess’s footsteps in the soft soil around the stream, he got off his horse and began showing me how he worked.

There were some things I already understood — to look for crushed grasses or bent twigs that indicated a person had passed that way. But Mott used a stick to measure the distance in her stride and then used that information to estimate where her footsteps should fall to find the trail again. It was slow work, requiring our horses to be led on foot, but after we had gone some distance, the indents suggested she was walking, not running, and the prints were less than a day old. If we kept at it, we should find her.

We continued this way for several hours, until the sun began to sink in the sky, and along with it our hopes of finding her before nightfall. That decision was sealed when we came upon another stream with no visible footsteps on the other side.

“She could’ve walked in the water, upstream or down, and exited anywhere.” Mott’s frustrations were clear. “It’s too dark for us to follow now. We should make camp and start again tomorrow.”

“We must keep going or she’ll get even farther away,” Tobias said. “Let’s try upstream. That would take her closer to Drylliad.”

“And closer to the soldiers who chased her,” I reminded him. “She’s already much farther south than I’d have expected. She may go south yet again.”

Faced with one choice no more certain than the other, Tobias reluctantly agreed to make camp. Mott prepared us a fire while Tobias and I put together a simple stew. After eating, we sat around the fire with little to say. Tobias went to sleep first, insisting we begin again at first light. Mott followed shortly after, and I lay down near the dwindling fire, but sleep would not come. I should have arrived at Falstan Lake that day, and although I had no regrets for helping Mavis, and certainly the search for the princess was a priority, I still felt disconnected from the war I was supposed to be leading. I worried that my country was collapsing from the center, even as I rode uselessly in circles around the action.

Finally, I drifted off, but it was a restless sleep filled with haunted dreams that kept me on edge. In them, Amarinda was on the same ridge in the camp where Imogen had fallen, begging me to come after her. Telling me that she was intelligent and strong and would fight for me. Then I heard the whoosh of an arrow —

I woke up with a start, sweat on my brow. But I soon realized it wasn’t the dream that had awoken me. Something near us had made a noise.

The horses were tied close by, but not immediate to our camp. Whatever the noise had been, it was minor, but something clearly had disturbed them.

As silently as possible, I reached for my sword and got to my feet. I poked at Mott and Tobias and, when they awoke, motioned for them to follow me. We had only taken a few steps when we caught the sound of our horses on the run. We gave pursuit, Mott racing far ahead of Tobias and myself. One of the horses must’ve pulled free. Mott caught it and, jumping into its saddle, set off to get ahead of the thief and force him back this way.

Tobias and I kept running in the direction of the noise. I yelled at Tobias to run to the right, in case our horse thief circled back that way. The thief continued forward, but another of our horses escaped and veered toward Tobias. He was able to grab the reins and calm the horse enough to climb on its back, then he set off as well, leaving me alone.

It wasn’t long before I lost sight of him, and Mott was already too far away. I wasn’t sure which way I should go until several minutes later when I heard Tobias yell, “Help! I see him!”

They were coming toward me, and I ran to intercept. The thief would come upon me first and be greeted by the sharp end of my sword.

Only it didn’t happen that way. When Tobias cried for help, our thief responded.

“Tobias?”

That was the princess’s voice.

Still running forward, I saw her approach in the moonlight. Amarinda had stolen our horses, and now that she recognized a friendly voice, she immediately turned back to race toward Tobias. When they were close, she slid from her horse, as did he. I was near enough then to call out to her, but something silenced me. Somehow, this reunion belonged to them, and not me. So I only watched as the princess called Tobias’s name and ran to embrace him. Several days ago, when I had seen them pressed together in the small space of the escape carriage, they had looked uncomfortable and awkward. Clearly, that had passed now.

“How did you get here?” she asked. “When you were captured, I thought” — her voice choked — “I thought they’d do to you what they did to Jaron.”

Tobias saw me behind them and released her as if she burned him. With an eye on me, he said, “My lady, what they told us about Jaron was a lie.”

Then he turned her to face me, and she stared a moment as if unable to believe her own eyes. The light from above was fairly dim, but her long brown hair tumbled in tangles down her back, her fine dress was torn and stained, and she was limping from having only one shoe to wear. She was dirty and ragged and clearly exhausted. Through all that, she was as beautiful as ever.

“Jaron?” She stumbled forward in disbelief. “Is this possible? They said you were dead.”

“I nearly was.”

“But how —” Amarinda was close enough then to touch me, and her face melted in sympathy. She reached out a hand to brush a lock of hair from my face. The hair had covered a dark bruise on my temple, a personal gift from the vigil Terrowic to me. “Jaron, what did they do to you?”