Ten feet out, she sank into a near crawl, crouched into the shadows and close to the ground as the people came into view.
There were four bodies surrounding the embers of a fire.
A boy with white-blond hair that shimmered in the bare light. His back was to her as he lay on his side, some sort of medicinal paste flaking from his neck. He appeared to be asleep.
Toward his feet lay another boy, this one long and lean, with smooth tawny skin and a mop of curls that shaded his eyes from the firelight. He also seemed to be asleep.
Closest to her, a girl, propped up with her back to Amarande, long dark hair spilling out of a linen kerchief and over her shoulders. From the gentle movements of her right forearm, the princess knew she was awake, and writing or drawing. Amarande shifted to the right to see, and, yes, the girl was scratching at a leather-bound book with the stub of a pencil. It wasn’t the only thing in her lap, though—a long curved blade lay across her knees.
It was such a casual place for a weapon that Amarande knew at once that this girl could use that blade as well as she could use her own.
Amarande sucked in a deep, quiet breath and shifted her gaze to the last body in the circle—sprawled out on the ground next to the lookout and her deadly weapon.
The moment of truth.
Raven hair, the right build, clothes that seemed familiar.
Heart pounding hard enough that she thought the girl might hear, Amarande took two careful steps to the right and squinted across the short distance to read what she could of his face.
Amarande’s heart stuttered.
Luca.
Relief spread across her shoulders and down her back as she saw his chest rise and fall. Luca, alive. In front of her.
He was rolled onto his side, one arm wedged beneath his ear as a makeshift pillow. She couldn’t tell from where she crouched if he was awake or asleep, unharmed or injured, but considering how they’d secured him, he had either put up a good fight or given them quite the reason to believe he would. Both his hands were bound, as were his feet, meaning that to use one arm to buffer his face from the ground, the other fell across his face at a slanting angle. The ropes that held his limbs were secured to another rope that was tied to the tree behind him. Amarande made note of each restraint, running through the blocking in her mind of what she’d have to do to pull him free—sawing and hacking at the restraints would take only marginally less time than releasing the knots.
Ropes cataloged, she began to document everything else, crouching against the trees, melting in with the shadows, forming a plan. Much of good reconnaissance was in training, but part of it was in luck—and here she’d been lucky, approaching the lookout from behind.
The girl stowed her pencil and journal in the saddlebag at her side, then sheathed the knife at a slant across her back as she got to her feet. Out of instinct, Amarande sank back farther onto her heels, watching as the girl picked her way around Luca and the fire before crouching over the lanky boy asleep on the other side of the flames. Her back was to Amarande as she tried to nudge the boy awake by tapping his calf.
The boy startled, hands out and ready to throw a punch. As if she’d done it before, the girl caught his knuckles in her palm.
“Your turn, you big oaf.”
“You like me more than your nicknames let on,” the boy answered, a smile sliding across his face. In the dark his teeth were the same brilliant white as the moon.
The girl dropped his fist.
“Keep telling yourself that,” she whispered, and stood, turning her back on the boy and heading back to her spot next to Luca with a bemused turn to her lips.
Amarande dared not even breathe with the girl facing her now—she was exposed more than she’d been at any previous moment. The knife’s weight seemed to double in her palm, her training flashing her through the motions she would use if the girl saw her.
Lunge and stab, straight under the rib and into the girl’s left lung as she raised her hands over her head to draw the sword from her back.
Immediate release and drop of the girl, freeing the knife to throw it straight to the boy’s stomach, chest, or neck depending on how quick he was to get to his feet.
Slash of a sword tip against the girl’s throat to finish her, then the same to the boy where he fell.
Next, the sleeping blond boy. If he woke, it would be the boot dagger to his chest as he sat up; if he slept, a clean assassin’s smile carved across his windpipe.
Amarande’s hand trembled around the knife as the boy brushed parched leaves from his foppish curls.
“Why do I always get the middle shift?” he whined softly to the girl’s back. “It’s so hard to fall asleep twice.”
She did Amarande a favor and turned, glancing over her shoulder while eviscerating the boy and his complaints.
“Because you haven’t figured out yet that you could disembowel the Eritrian as easily as those hares you caught for dinner, and he’s the one who gave you the middle shift.”
Despite herself, Amarande grinned just a little as the boy shrugged and glanced at the blond one, snoring across the way. “If he leads, I don’t have to make decisions. Easy enough life being a follower.”
The girl plopped down, her back to Amarande as she lay all the way to the ground, her head cradled in her hands, elbows jutted out toward Luca’s soft breaths.
“One day you might wake up to how sad that statement is,” the girl said, shaking her head, “but for now, enjoy the sounds of midnight. See you at dawn.”
And that was that.
Amarande’s plan began to form. She knew her foe. She knew when they would leave. And that gave her time to rest up and prepare for a proper attack, her father’s words again appearing in her head.
Lack of preparation can squander the element of surprise.
It was a gamble, because if she was rested, they would be, too, but she had one chance at this. And she wouldn’t miss.
The Warrior King’s daughter backed away from her opponents and shrank back into the trees. Back to Mira, to the chance to recover enough to be at her best when saving her love.
She removed the slip of fabric she’d used as a cowl, unknotted it, and tied it to the black filly’s bridle and her left wrist, hopeful that the predawn feeding routine Luca kept with his horses would mean Mira would grow restless at precisely the time Amarande needed to attack.
It was the best she could do.
And if it failed, she was on the right track and would adapt.
Boot knife tight in her right hand, the princess lay in the dirt, the pommel of her father’s sword digging into her back. Rather than move it, she shut her eyes and finally fell asleep.
CHAPTER
25
AMARANDE’S left hand dragged through the dirt, and her eyes immediately shot open, her body rocketing up until she was sitting, knife out, blinking into consciousness.
It was still dark.
Oh, thank the stars.
There was Mira, up from where she’d lain down the night before, muzzle digging coolly through the underbrush for something worth eating. Right on time.
The princess took a deep breath and squinted over her shoulder—the fire was still burning in the distance, hot enough that if the kidnappers had moved on, they weren’t far. To the right, the horizon beyond the thick cluster of spindly trees was slightly lighter, the first blues bleeding into the night’s endless black.