Bad enough that she’d gone all soft at the sight of a pig. Now Kyra’s feelings were threatening to overwhelm her because of a few stupid campfire memories, a ghost of a kiss in the night, and the sensation of invisible arms around her in the soft, misty rain.
It was all more than she could handle. She needed to get out of there.
Something else about the room bothered her too—something intimate about being in Fred’s space when he wasn’t there. Even if it was only a hotel room. She felt like she was violating his trust—taking more away with her than just the pig.
Kyra quickly locked the door and made her way down the hall to the back stairs.
The piece of silk from Ariana’s ruined wedding dress rested in Kyra’s pocket. She’d wait until Rosie woke up to pin it into her basket.
Outside, she slipped through the back gate of the inn, and turned south to avoid the crowds.
And came face-to-face with Hal. Dressed impeccably, as usual, his long rich velvet cloak swirling around him as he moved to block her way.
Her ex-fiancé must have seen her go into the hotel and had been waiting for her. It was only then Kyra realized that her glamour had started to wear off. If one was looking closely, as it was evident Hal had been, you could see both layers—the glamour and the reality of Kyra beneath it. She cursed her own carelessness and palmed a throwing needle with her free hand.
Except, the first words out of Hal’s mouth were so unexpected that Kyra paused.
“You’ve got the necklace,” he said.
The necklace had fallen out of the front of her shirt when Kyra had leaned down to scoop up Rosie. “I do. Why, is the floozy who you meant it for missing it?”
Hal looked hurt, his handsome face wrinkling. “Kyra, I bought it for you.”
Before Kyra could think of a response, Hal quickly moved, and Kyra looked down to discover the tip of a green-glowing poisoned sword at her throat.
“But that was before you became a criminal, my dear. I’m afraid, Kyra, that I can no longer offer you my hand in marriage.”
“I know,” Kyra said, exasperated. “I’m the one who left you. First.”
“I bought the necklace after you moved back to Wexford,” Hal said, ignoring her, the tip of his sword never wavering from her throat. “There was a new stall at the Saturday market, and I thought, maybe…” He reached out as though to touch the cord around her neck with his free hand, but stopped himself. “I was hoping we could get back together again.” He shook his head. “Before I learned who you really are. Now look at you. Stealing a pig. You’ve turned into a common thief.”
“Hal, this is my property.” Kyra gestured to the sleeping pig with her chin. “I’m just collecting it.”
Hal looked her in the eye. “I know why you tried to kill her, Kyra.”
Kyra stared at him, stunned. “You do?” How could he understand? Had she misjudged him?
“Of course.” He ran his free hand through his hair. “You were jealous.”
“Jealous.” Kyra stamped down the fury that threatened to bubble to the surface. The sword was so close to her neck, even a small movement could prick her and send its poison coursing through her body.
“Of me and Ariana.”
“What?”
“It makes sense when you look at the events.” He counted off on the fingers of his free hand. “One, she and I danced together by candlelight at the Imbolc Festival, which, by the way, everyone does—it didn’t mean anything! Two, you and I fought. Three, right after that, you moved out. And four, a couple weeks later, you’re throwing a poison dart at Ariana.”
Kyra couldn’t believe it. She and Hal had fought because Kyra had been worried about the princess—Ari hadn’t been herself since slashing her wedding dress. It was beyond strange that the princess was suddenly the life of the party—even dancing with Hal, whom she normally detested.
He cocked his head. “And you missed. I didn’t know you EVER missed.”
Kyra glared at him. “I’m aware of that.” The throwing needle she had been about to use moments before was dangling loosely in her hand. “The idea that I would murder my best friend because I was jealous is insane, Hal. Why would I be jealous? Ariana only put up with you because of me. I assured her that even though you sometimes seemed a bit stupid, you were really a brilliant potioner. But now I see that being a brilliant potioner has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you’re an idiot. Somehow you manage both.”
For a brief moment, Hal looked wounded. “We’ll see if the princess thinks I’m an idiot now that I’ve caught you.”
“Think so?” Kyra darted the Doze-tipped needle underhanded into Hal’s leg, quickly pulling back from his sword as he went down.
Still holding Rosie with one arm, Kyra bent over his sleeping body for the second time in a week. “My putting you to sleep is getting to be a habit,” she muttered. She felt a twinge of regret. He was heartbreakingly handsome. And they’d shared a lot. She considered leaving behind the necklace. It didn’t seem right to take it.
But its nighttime glow was too useful.
Kyra felt someone approaching from behind. Turning, she quickly smacked her thighs and blew sleeping potion at the person.
Ned’s round face. Her other ex-colleague sank into unconsciousness.
But not before he’d touched her shoulder.
She looked down and realized what he’d done as the mark glowed briefly red before fading to nothing.
He knew her reflexes, knew she’d turn as quickly as she had, and he’d had the foresight to reach out to touch her even as she was knocking him out.
She was tagged.
KYRA SPRINTED THROUGH the darkened forest at an all-out run.
She ran and ran and kept running, Rosie jostling in her arms, trying to put as much distance between herself and her pursuers as she could. She ran until tears were streaming down her face and her breath was coming in gasps.
This was nothing like being hunted before—it was a million times worse. They’d know exactly where she was. It would just be a matter of getting to her.
Her only hope now was that a big enough head start would make a difference.
Of course, they’d be able to travel twice as quickly on horseback as she could on foot.
Nothing could stop a potions tag. It could be confused by cloaking it in other magic, or by hiding amid a huge crowd of people, but that didn’t stop the tag; it only put it off the track for a moment. Eventually the tracker would be able to find his prey again.
The taggee never felt a thing, but the hand of the tracker would grow warmer and warmer the closer he got to his prey. By the time he found the tagged person, his hand would be burning and he’d do anything to touch the object of his hunt. That was the only thing that could stop a tag—direct, deliberate contact of the tracker with his marked quarry.
And maybe even worse, Kyra thought, was that Hal had just tried to break up with her. Like she hadn’t already cut things off before she’d moved back to Wexford!
Clearly Ariana had been right about him all along.
It had started the previous summer. She and Hal had been working on a new cloaking potion, a vast improvement on the potion Kyra and Ariana had used to sneak out of the castle. Ned had fallen asleep at his worktable by the window, his mouth open, an occasional snore rumbling out.
“This is it.” Kyra had let the last drop of the red elixir she was holding fall into the vial in front of them. She could feel Hal’s breathless reaction beside her as the liquid changed from muddy brown to transparent.
“Kyra,” he said. “I think we’ve done it.” He gently swirled the bottle around, then put little test drops on the ink-dipped pen in front of them.
The pen vanished.
Kyra dropped her head closer to the table. The air around where the pen should be shimmered a bit, but way down at one on the visibility scale. Negligible.
There was no sign of the pen itself. You’d never know it was there.
&nbs
p; Kyra let out a little yelp of excitement and was swept up in Hal’s arms. He swung her around, then set her on her feet.
“We,” he said, “are brilliant.” Then he leaned forward and kissed her smack on the mouth.
A friendly gesture in a moment of heightened excitement. Except…
“Kyra,” he’d said. “I love you.”
“That’s sweet, Hal.” Kyra reached up to pinch his cheek. “I love you too.”
“No, not as a friend. I really love you, Kyra. Working here beside you these past months, I’ve never been happier. I think we should get married.”
Kyra had almost fallen off her lab stool.
It had taken him months to convince her, and when she’d said yes—shortly before her sixteenth birthday and the silly underwear gift from Ariana—she’d thought she was sure. It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? And working well with someone, doing something you cared about—that was more or less love, wasn’t it?
Kyra tried to push away the memory of that moment. She knew now that she wasn’t in love with Hal, not by a long shot, but she missed the easy companionship she’d had with him and Ned. She’d been happy. And now—
If they caught her, the least that could happen would be imprisonment.
More likely she’d hang.
As the sun sank beneath the trees, Kyra saw a sparkle of water up ahead. She stopped and set Rosie and her pack beneath a tree, then got out her waterskins.
The bank down to the water was carpeted in browned pine needles, and their sharp scent revived Kyra, who felt like she almost couldn’t take one more step. She was tired and forlorn. No closer to the princess than she was three months ago. And now she was tagged. Things couldn’t get any worse for her.
At the edge of the stream she reached down to fill the first skin, the water icy over her hands. She watched the reflection of the trees on the water, the small yellow leaves twirling in the eddies.
A shriek burst out from Rosie.
Kyra turned, and there was Rosie being attacked by a wild dog. The pig squealed again.
Even as Kyra leaped up, shouting, the wild dog sank its teeth into Rosie and started shaking her back and forth.
“NO!” Kyra shouted, letting the waterskin fall to the ground and throwing a needle. “Drop her!”
She hit the wild dog square on the side. It fell to the ground, its jaws releasing Rosie. She tumbled to the earth and lay absolutely still. There were bloody puncture holes where the dog’s teeth had sunk into her belly.
The sight of the little wounded pig drove Kyra to her knees.
Cold fear gripped her heart, and all thoughts of her mission fled her mind.
She couldn’t lose Rosie.
Kyra touched a hand to Rosie’s chest. The pit-pat of a beating heart pulsed under her fingers. She tore off the hem of her shirt and wrapped it around the pig.
“Rosie, I’m so, so sorry.” Why hadn’t she brought a single healing potion with her? Her only friend in the entire world lay bleeding to death at her feet, and she was too exhausted to think clearly enough to come up with a way to keep Rosie alive. Kyra felt again like things could get no worse.
That’s when she heard the voices behind her. “She’s here. Close by.” Ned.
“Spread out the troops, Sergeant.” Hal’s voice was so cold, so sure of himself.
“You heard him!” a harsh man’s voice barked out. “Fan out!”
Kyra gingerly scooped up Rosie and ran as quickly and as quietly as she could in the opposite direction, tears streaming down her face, her body racked with fatigue.
It took a good long while before the voices faded. But Kyra didn’t think for a moment that she’d lost them. They were right on her trail.
She didn’t dare look down to see if Rosie was still with her. She convinced herself that she could feel the little pig breathing, but couldn’t bring herself to check.
She’d been jogging along for hours, feeling so tired it was an effort to keep her eyes on the trail and her legs moving, when the trail ended in the shallows of a wicked-looking bog. It appeared from nowhere and stretched in front of her as far as she could see, a swampy mess of fallen trees bearded with moss, and low-lying fog clinging to the water, and the stink of things decomposing in murk.
Kyra tried to pull herself up short at the marshy edge.
But she was unsteady on her feet from running for hours straight. And instead of stopping, she tripped over her own feet and tumbled directly into the mucky water.
Only it wasn’t mucky water at all. The ground beneath her looked exactly like regular dirt. It was regular dirt.
Kyra raised herself up, keeping Rosie tucked under her arm, and looked around. As she got to her feet, she could see the bog take form in the air, coalescing out of nothingness. She felt the cold cling of the fog, smelled the stench of rotting things, heard the lapping of the swamp water. Then she ducked her head down and watched it all vanish.
The bog was an illusion.
She stumbled forward, hunched over, working her way deeper into the bog glamour, knowing the magic of it would help confuse Ned’s tag.
Kyra had read about such large-scale illusions but never seen one: it took many magic workers to pull one off, and finding that many powerful people together was rare. Potioners’ schools, or witches’ covens, or—
Gypsies.
Kyra saw the glimmer of the caravans’ lanterns before she saw any people—their wagons were ringed around a large fire. She staggered toward the nearest wagon, but it only seemed to get farther and farther away the more steps she took, until finally she fell to her knees, the lantern light an ever-distant glow.
Of course they’d have other protection spells, she thought, realizing her confusion was another ward placed by the Gypsies on the caravan.
It was her last thought before she collapsed in exhaustion.
A SCENT OF INCENSE and honey was floating on the air.
Mmmm…honey. Kyra’s stomach growled in response. She was lying on her back on a soft pallet, and when she opened her eyes she was staring up at a brilliant multicolored cloth roof lit by sunshine. Images of red and gold butterflies flew among the flowers on the ceiling tapestry.
The warmth of the sun made her want to shut her eyes again and sink back into sleep. But then a thought darted into her brain and pricked her skin.
Rosie!
She sat up and looked around, but the pig was nowhere in sight.
Struggling to get out of bed, Kyra felt warm hands rest on top of her shoulders. “It’s okay,” a melodious voice said. “Your little friend is fine.”
Kyra turned and faced the woman who spoke. “Fine? But she was bleeding to death!”
“It’s been taken care of.” The old woman looked like a dragon, her skin wrinkled and scaly, her gaze glinty-eyed and wily.
“How?” Kyra asked, then knew the answer. “Potions.” Her insides relaxed. “You must be a potioner.”
The woman nodded. “I’m Nadya.” She handed a steaming mug to Kyra, and the honey smell intensified. “Drink this, and I’ll get her for you.”
The liquid was warm and sweet and filled her with a delicious buzzing. Kyra felt a dull shock when she realized she was actually too worn out to work out what potions could have been put in it. She just didn’t care.
The woman came around with a bundled-up Rosie. “She needs sleep after the healing she’s had.”
Kyra hugged the bundle close and was completely embarrassed when two tears plopped down on the sleeping pig. She brushed her eyes with one hand as Rosie snuggled in with a contented grunt. “Thank you so much. I thought I’d lost her.”
The woman’s amber eyes met Kyra’s olive ones. “It was my pleasure.”
Then, the pig clasped against her chest, Kyra fell back into a deep sleep.
Kyra woke the next morning with a feeling of panic running through her—she needed to set off again immediately. She turned over and discovered Nadya working at a table across the room, mixing up a brew
that smelled of mint and lavender.
Kyra shifted Rosie in her lap and sat up, stretching her arms above her head. “Nadya, I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done. If there’s anything I can do to repay you before we leave—”
“You aren’t leaving today,” the older woman said.
“But—”
“If you want your friend to heal, you will stay put. I’ve done what I can, but she needs more time.”
Kyra looked down at the little pig in her lap: eyes shut, Rosie let out a happy huff of breath and scrunched up tighter.
Kyra couldn’t leave her behind again.
“And if you, too, want to heal, you will rest. Here.” Nadya gave her a mug of the minty, lavender mixture, and without even questioning what it was, Kyra drank deep.
“Nadya,” Kyra said the next day, after she woke and felt fully herself for the first time in…days? No—months. “I have to leave.”
“Come with me,” Nadya commanded.
Kyra followed her out of the tent, Rosie napping in her arms. Around them, the encampment was alive with a quiet, happy industry. The men fixed wagons and scrubbed laundry in a nearby stream and talked, while a group of women prepared to go off into the woods to hunt berries and small game. The Gypsies’ small wooden homes were all on wheels, but they were set up like a village. There was a pleasant rhythm and flow to it all, and Kyra felt as though she and Rosie had been living there for years instead of mere days. The Gypsies had been driven out of Wexford in advance of the festival, Nadya told her, and they were camping here for a spell until they figured out where to go next.
Nadya sat down across from Kyra under an enormous tree at the edge of the camp.
“You don’t have to leave,” she said, crossing her legs in front of her and picking some sewing out of her bag. “You could come with us when we move north. A second potioner would be a blessing.”
So Nadya knew Kyra was a potioner—it was probably obvious from her potions bag. Kyra absently stroked Rosie’s snout, and the pig grunted in contentment. “There’s something I should tell you. There’s a tracking potion on me. There are people looking for me, and if I don’t leave soon, they’ll find me here.” The moment Hal and Ned figured out how to find her through the illusion of the bog, the whole tribe would be in danger for harboring a fugitive. The thought of the Gypsies wounded and torn away from the sun, cast into the cold and wet of the palace dungeon, sent chills through her.