Mace had lost count of the number of times he’d read the letter. He kept it in his pocket, unsure if he should share it with Tristan, worried that someone would find it before he could decide. His fingers had left dirty prints in the margins, and Morgana’s pretty handwriting was smudged in a few places from rough handling. But Mace was less concerned with preserving it than with praying to it, like an icon. Please let her be safe, he’d whisper in his thoughts. Please let her come back to me.
Weeks passed before his prayers were answered. The days simultaneously dragged and flew – there was so much to be done and so little time to do it, but many of those tasks were the tedious work of survival, of teaching children how to survive. Not children anymore, he reminded himself, though it was hard to remember. So many of them were barely exiting adolescence: boys that had not quite grown into their shoulders, girls that still had the roundness of youth in their cheeks. Mace supposed he should be glad that their numbers swelled despite the royal notices pinned to every roadside tree, but they all represented mouths that needed feeding, bodies that needed defending. The youngest he’d ever had to train in the past had been eighteen.
Gods, what he’d give for a dozen eighteen-year-olds, now.
He was leading a group of trainees back to camp, sweaty and dirt-streaked, when a raven landed on a nearby branch and cawed, pointedly. Mace’s eyes flicked up toward it, his face settling into a stony scowl. “You all go ahead,” he commanded, and the boys complied without argument. They were too tired to wonder where he was going, and too trusting to ask. Mace sighed. Another thing I have to teach them. The list never ends.
The notices were heavy on his mind as he followed the demanding, noisy bird into the trees. Evening light was giving way to starlight, and the air beneath the canopy was cool and still. Mace had travelled these woods constantly in the past weeks, so his steps were sure even where his eyes were blind. The raven was a shadow flitting in and out of his vision, until it alighted on a tree stump and rattled at him. He assumed that meant “wait here,” in bird. He crossed his arms over his chest. The minutes ticked by. Mace was beginning to wonder if he’d followed a random raven, purposelessly, when he heard her and turned on his heel.
Her presence crashed over him, settled in his heart like a wound. “Ana,” he said weakly, his arms falling slack at his sides. She looked so vulnerable, barefoot in her nightgown, too much skin exposed to the cold. But there was a nimbus of light around her, clinging to her hands, her face…and a transparency that revealed the true nature of her appearance. There, and not there – using magic he hadn’t known she possessed. There was so much he didn’t know about her. He swallowed. “Ana, what are you doing? Tristan thinks…” Mace shook his head, a crease deepening between his brows. His fingers flexed minutely, as if he longed to reach out to her but knew there was nothing there to touch. When he raised his eyes to her again, his expression was pained. “Are you safe?”
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