shirt over her head.
“She needed the confidence,” he muttered, reaching for his boots.
“I’m aware of your feelings for her,” Dareus said. “But you must treat her as a man. I won’t have her fail because of you.”
Petrus straightened. Dareus was shorter than him, leaner, but he carried the weight of decades as a Sentinel mage on his shoulders—judgments passed, punishments meted out. His authority was palpable.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Dareus gave a curt nod. “See that you do.” He turned and spoke more loudly, so that Innis could hear. “From now on, you answer only to Justen.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS LATE afternoon when Jaumé reached Neuly. The village gates were shut. Armed men stood atop the wall.
He halted uncertainly at the fringe of the forest. Were the gates closed because the curse had reached the village?
He listened, straining his ears. No screams came from within the walls. He heard only the soft rain. Everything was quiet, peaceful.
Hunger forced him from the forest. He walked towards the gates, his gaze lifting to the men on the wall. Before he’d covered half the distance, one of them shouted: “Come no closer!”
Jaumé halted.
“Go away!” the man shouted.
“I don’t have the curse,” Jaumé called out. “I haven’t drunk—”
“Be gone!” A stone struck the ground, spraying mud and water.
Jaumé stepped back a pace. “Please—”
This time the stone almost struck him. He stumbled backwards.
“Be gone!” the man cried again.
Jaumé swallowed. “But I don’t have the curse.”
The men on top of the wall made no reply. Their faces were grim.
“Please—” Jaumé’s voice broke. “Please may I have some food?”
“We keep our food for our own. Now go!” Another stone accompanied the words.
Jaumé blinked back tears. He turned away from the village.
After half a mile, he came to a farm. Smoke rose from the chimney. Jaumé wiped his face. He walked down the path and knocked on the door. It swung open, revealing an empty kitchen. “Hello?”
No one answered him.
Jaumé stepped into the kitchen. A fire still smoldered in the hearth, but the larder had been hastily emptied. Spilled flour lay on the shelves and the floor. The storeroom was bare apart from a string of onions hanging in the farthest corner. It was full of smells—cheese, cured sausages—that made his mouth water.
He went outside, into the rain. The farmyard was eerily silent. The hen house was empty, and the pig pen. No dogs barked a warning at him.
The garden had been stripped—pumpkins cut from the vine, carrots pulled from the ground—but in a far corner Jaumé found a row of radishes that had been overlooked.
He squatted in the dirt, pulling up radishes and eating them.
When he was finished, he started walking again. West. Away.
CHAPTER NINE
DUSK WAS FALLING by the time they reached the new campsite. Sometime during the afternoon they’d passed from the royal forest into the unbroken tract of woodland that stretched to Osgaard’s eastern border. Nothing marked that boundary. The trees looked the same—oak and ash, rowan and yew. Innis saw no roads, no dwellings, nothing but trees and the occasional animal trail.
Petrus soared overhead, his pale-feathered breast tinted orange by the setting sun. The sky was hazy above the treetops, streaked with fiery bands of cloud.
“Are you having any difficulty holding the change?” Dareus asked.
Innis shook her head. The campsite was visible through the trees: tents, a fire, horses tethered. She glanced up, searching for Petrus, following him with her eyes for a moment. It was his easy confidence, his relaxed masculinity, that she needed to mimic. She took a deep breath, feeling her chest expand. I’m him.
“You have your story straight?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Exhaustion was etched on Dareus’s face beneath the soot and sweat. It had been a long afternoon. They’d ridden hard, slowing only to avoid bands of soldiers and huntsmen. Twice they’d passed through walls of fire laid by Cora, Dareus holding the flames at bay as they forced the horses through. Once, hounds had caught their scent and Dareus had started a fire himself.
“Gerit and Ebril can practice shifting into Justen tonight,” Dareus said. “Once the prince is asleep. By tomorrow they’ll be able to swap with you.”
Innis nodded.
People were visible ahead through the tree trunks: Cora. Ebril. Prince Harkeld. She heard Ebril whistling.
Innis watched as the prince walked across to the campfire, as he glanced up at the two hawks—Petrus and Gerit—circling overhead, as he looked away.
“Remember, you’re not a mage. React as if it’s all new.”
She nodded again.
“Be Justen.”
HORSEMEN CAME THROUGH the trees. Two riders, three horses. Harkeld stayed where he was,