LOGINConstanceDella led us off the road within the hour, into a narrow hunting trail that wound deeper into the trees, until we reached a half-collapsed shepherd's hut she claimed as her temporary camp. A small fire burned low inside, carefully banked to avoid drawing eyes from the road, and for the first time since we'd left Blackwood territory, I let myself sit and breathe without every muscle braced for danger."Tell us what you know," William said, settling beside me, his voice steady though I could feel the tension still coiled tight beneath it. "Everything. Who took her. Where they might be holding her."Della crouched by the fire, feeding it a careful handful of dry kindling before she answered. "I don't know who, exactly. I know what they wore, plain leathers, no crest, no colors, the kind of clothing men choose specifically so no one can trace them back to a household afterward." Her jaw tightened. "I know they moved efficiently. Trained. This wasn't a band of opportunistic raide
ConstanceWilliam moved first, pulling me behind him in one fluid motion, his body angling between me and the treeline where the sound had come from. Julian's blade was already out, low and ready, and Ysolde had gone utterly still beside the overturned cart, her head tilted, listening in a way that went beyond ordinary hearing."Something's there," she breathed. "Watching. It hasn't decided yet whether we're worth the risk of showing itself.""Or it's already decided," William murmured, "and it's simply waiting for the right moment."Nobody moved. The forest held its breath around us, moonlight fractured through bare branches, every shadow suddenly suspect. I could hear my own heartbeat too loud in my ears, could feel the cold seeping up through my boots from ground still frozen from the night before, and I made myself breathe slow, the way I'd taught myself to do in every dangerous room this world had ever put me in.A second branch snapped, closer this time, and a shape detached its
ConstanceThe forest beyond Blackwood territory's border looked nothing like I'd expected. I'd imagined danger announcing itself somehow, the trees darker, the air heavier, some visible sign that we'd crossed into land where three men had already died. Instead it simply looked like forest, moonlight filtering thin and silver through bare branches, the road beneath our feet rutted and ordinary, and somehow that ordinariness frightened me more than anything dramatic could have.William walked close beside me, his senses clearly stretched taut in a way that had nothing to do with performance now, his head tilting occasionally toward sounds the rest of us couldn't hear. Julian led at a steady pace just ahead, the map memorized well enough that he rarely needed to check it, though his hand stayed close to the hilt of a short blade he'd insisted on carrying despite Ysolde's warning that weapons drew exactly the kind of attention we were trying to avoid.Ysolde herself walked last, a plain g
ConstanceNobody spoke for a long moment after Julian's warning settled into the room. The map lay open between us, the eastern road drawn in careful ink, the place where the envoys had fallen marked with a small, unremarkable cross that felt far too casual for what it represented."Then we don't take the road," William said finally.Julian shook his head. "There isn't another route to the healer's village that doesn't add three extra days of travel through territory even less friendly to strangers than this one. And three extra days is three extra days Ferdinand has to notice you're missing, my lord, and start asking exactly the questions we can't afford him asking.""So we go through danger quickly," I said, "or we go around it slowly and risk everything unraveling here while we're gone.""Those are the choices," Julian confirmed grimly.William's jaw worked, the protective instinct in him visibly warring against the same cold calculation I'd watched him apply to every other impossi
ConstanceI found William pacing his chamber when I returned, the same restless energy he wore whenever waiting became harder than acting, and the moment he saw my face he crossed the room fast, his hands finding my shoulders."Tell me."I told him everything. The garden. Miriam's guilt-worn confession. The old practice buried fifty years ago and quietly resurrected. Ferdinand's father, the timing that lined up too precisely with my aunt's disappearance to be coincidence, even if Miriam herself refused to call it certainty. The eyes she'd recognized before she'd recognized anything else about me.William listened without interrupting, his jaw tightening with every new piece, until I finally ran out of words and the silence between us filled with everything neither of us knew how to say yet."Fifty years," he said finally."Miriam doesn't know for certain," I reminded him, though the reminder felt thin even as I said it. "She said herself, fragments and suspicion. Not proof.""It doesn
ConstanceI found my chance two days later, in the quiet hour between the morning meal and the household's afternoon business, when Lady Miriam kept to a small private garden tucked behind the east wing, tending roses that had no business surviving so late into autumn. Julian walked me there under the pretense of an errand, then made himself scarce at the garden's edge, close enough to intervene if needed, far enough to let the conversation breathe."Lady Constance." Miriam didn't look up from the rosebush she was pruning, though something in the set of her shoulders told me she'd known I was there before I'd said a word. "I wondered how long it would take you to seek me out.""You expected me.""I expected someone would, eventually." She set down her shears and turned to face me properly, sharp eyes assessing in a way that reminded me, uncomfortably, of Ferdinand's own scrutiny, though hers carried none of his cold calculation. "You spoke true rite at your binding. Not many young wom







