Relief flooded through Amarande’s body. She blinked again, eyes renewed, though being rested was not something she could claim. Three hours, that was it. But that would have to do, and it would have to last her—the second she had Luca’s hand in hers, they were on the run until they were safe or they were captured.
The princess removed the cowl from Mira’s bridle, looping the excess around her wrist. The horse huffed, hoping for the breakfast Luca always had prepared for her at this hour. “Soon, girl.”
She stowed her boot knife for the moment. The sword stayed on her back as well. She guided the horse through the trees and wound around to the very edge of the slip of forest, walking along the border, feet in the sand that sloped out to the desert she’d ridden through the day before.
Amarande couldn’t risk taking Mira into the kidnappers’ camp. Though she was a very good horse indeed, she was still too loud and too smelly—the other horses would notice her in an instant. What’s more, there were too many variables to getting Luca free from his ropes and onto the horse while potentially fighting three people who likely would only get paid if they held on to Luca—or captured her to go right along with him.
And so the princess tiptoed along the dirt, keeping Mira at a wide berth of the tree line and the crackling debris that would snap under hoof. Then when she was right in line with the orange glow of the fire, she tied Mira to another spindly tree. Not too tight that she couldn’t get her free when she came back to her with Luca in hand. The idea that the knot had to be loose in case she never returned to Mira blinked in the recesses of Amarande’s mind, and she shut it away just as quickly as it came.
Warriors didn’t make concessions like that.
Mira taken care of, Amarande turned her attention back to the fire. Using the orange glow as a beacon, she snuck toward it on soft steps, her movements sharper than they had been only hours earlier, her senses heightened, her focus clear.
The princess’s steps slowed, her center of gravity becoming lower as the fire grew closer. Her fingers slipped into her boot yet again, the knife at the ready as she came within striking distance. She was approaching from an angle that put her between where Luca and the girl had been on the sundial, and the blond boy—the Eritrian, who apparently was giving the orders.
Amarande didn’t know how long the watch shifts were for the party, but she guessed by the conversation between the girl and the Myrcellian boy that it should now be the Eritrian’s turn. And so she scanned the site, hunting for movement, especially from the blond boy, whose form she pinpointed at the tenth spot on the sundial.
No movement.
Good.
She could see the lumpy shadows of the horses and their owners, forged in the fire they’d left burning. They hadn’t left camp, and if they were awake, they weren’t alert yet.
The opportunity was exactly what she needed.
Her father’s words rang in her ears, and it made her smile.
Make the first mark.
Yes, she would.
The princess’s heart kicked into high gear, the promise of a fight approaching. The Warrior King’s blood was her blood, of that there was no doubt, and it sang and danced in her veins with a life of its own.
Her fingers tightened on the knife.
She came to a tree on the very edge of their camp circle. The horses stirred but didn’t alarm, as tired as they were and quiet as she was. That knife tight in her fist, she cataloged each of the people, closer than she’d seen them even last night.
The girl—of Torrent, it appeared.
The tall boy—Myrcellian to be sure.
The blond boy—Eritrian, as burnt as the landscape.
And Luca, breathing but bound, a massive bruise blooming across his temple. That had to be the tall boy’s work. And for that he would pay.
All of them still, but more than that—asleep.
There’d been a breakdown in communication on their watch. The tall boy’s handoff to the Eritrian either hadn’t happened or had and the blond boy fell back to sleep.
Either way, it was to her advantage.
They were sitting—sleeping—ducks, vulnerable in ways that may very well be their end, should her knife blade go to work.
The hesitation that she’d felt when she encountered the robbers crept forward in her mind—that instant when she’d held two swords to one man and hadn’t managed to kill him, getting nothing from him in answer to the question that initially kept him alive, all the while losing her provisions and the security they provided.
She’d most definitely suffered from her choices.
The princess shook free of the thought.
Retrieving Luca was the only goal. Punishment to the kidnappers and anything else would only be secondary.
And so she set her eyes upon Luca with the aim only of getting him out alive. Not starting a fight. Not settling scores.
Just Luca. Only Luca. Forever Luca.
Amarande crept forward, knife out and ready, attention skipping from one sleeping body to the next. She approached in such a way that she could go directly to Luca and meet him where he would see her the second he opened his eyes—approaching him from behind might startle him too much. But with that tactic came an additional hurdle.
The girl.
She was sleeping next to him at arm’s length—close enough that she could grab him if she sensed movement. Which meant to get to Luca this way, Amarande had to step over the girl, or go around her and then squeeze between their bodies, crouching down with either her back or her weak side to a girl who slept with a curved sword of Torrent like it was a babe at her breast.
Not ideal.
But it was the most direct path to her goal.
The princess crept toward Luca and the girl, sweeping around their feet. She paused in the space between them, squinting at the shadows that separated them. On further inspection, Luca’s binds hadn’t just been attached to a rope that had been tied to a tree, but to the girl herself after her watch, an additional rope tying his bound wrists to her left hand.
Again, not ideal.
But she would make it work.
Amarande crept forward, her footsteps as soft as a wren’s in the mud, though the brush was dry and she had the weight of what she wanted to do pressed down upon small-but-mighty shoulders, her sword, her long gown, and the hidden diamonds.
She swept her skirt close to her body with her non-knife hand, willing the fabric not to splay out and brush the wrong arm, and then sank all the way into a squat—split stance and ready to run. She angled her shoulders so that her left one faced the girl rather than her back, and then brought her hands within an inch of Luca’s sleeping form. So close she caught a whiff of the lavender oil he used on the Itspi’s horses.
Stars, he’s real.
He was really here. This was happening. Her love was before her and they were minutes from going home. She’d have Luca, and Renard would have nothing except a ruined plan.
The princess took a calming breath.
Always forward, never back.
Simultaneously, she gently placed one hand over Luca’s mouth and one on his hands, spreading her fingers so as to keep any startled movement at a minimum.
His eyes flew open, gold and alarmed.
His hands fluttered as she expected they would, and though she kept even pressure, the rope skittered across the dry dirt. She subdued it with the toe of her boot, attention shooting to the girl. She didn’t stir.