Could anyone really travel so far that they might not find their way home again? I had never been farther out in the ocean than my knees, a freezing dip in the waters of the Safran Sea on a rare family excursion, where I chased my brothers on the beach and picked up seashells with … my father. The old memory gusted through me like a startling cold wind. So many other memories had piled on top of it that it was nearly extinguished. I was certain my father had no recollection of it at all. He had been a different man back then. I was different too.

Pauline and I made our way north along the narrow upper trail that paralleled the main road below. Ragged stripes of light squeezing through the trees played across our path. Besides the main road, there were dozens of narrow lanes like this one that wound through Terravin and the surrounding hillsides, each leading to unique discoveries. We cut down one of them to the center of town, and the Sacrista came into view, a large imposing structure for such a small hamlet. I surmised that the people of Terravin must be ardent in their devotion to the gods.

A graveyard bordered one side, riddled with markers so old they were only thin flat slabs of stone. Any adornments, words, or grand tributes had been washed away long ago, leaving their honored occupants lost to history, and yet candles of remembrance still glowed in red glass lanterns in front of a scattered few.

I watched Pauline’s gaze flutter across stone and candle. Even Otto slowed as we passed, his ears twitching as though he were being hailed by the residents within. A breeze skipped across the headstones, pulling at my loose tendrils, snaking them around my neck.

Gone … gone …

My flesh crawled. Fright closed my throat with sudden ferocity. Mikael. Something is wrong. Something is hopelessly and irretrievably wrong.

Fear seized me unexpectedly and fully. I forced myself to breathe and remember the facts: Mikael was only on patrol. Walther and Regan had both been on dozens of patrols, and sometimes they were late returning home due to weather, supplies, or any number of inconsequential things. Patrols were not dangerous. Sometimes there were skirmishes, but rarely did they even encounter a trespasser. The only injury either one of them had ever returned with was a crushed toe when a horse stepped on Regan’s bare foot.

Patrols were only a precaution, a way of asserting borders not to be crossed and a way to ensure no permanent settlements were established in the Cam Lanteux, a safety zone between kingdoms. They chased bands of barbarians back behind their own borders. Walther called it mere chest beating. He said the worse part of it was enduring the body odors of unwashed men. In truth, I wasn’t sure that the barbarians were a threat at all. Yes, savage by all the reports I had heard at court and from soldiers, but they’d been kept back behind borders for hundreds of years. How fierce could they really be?

Pauline’s true love was fine, I told myself, but the oppressive feeling lingered. I had never met Mikael. He wasn’t from Civica, had only been assigned there as part of a rotation of troops, and Pauline had followed court rules to the letter and been discreet—so discreet she never even mentioned him until just before we left. Now I feared that I might never meet this young man who loved her so and made her face glow when she spoke of him.

“Would you like to stop?” I blurted out much too loudly, startling her. I pulled back on Otto’s reins.

She stopped, anxious lines creaseing her forehead. “If you don’t mind. It will only take a moment.”

I nodded and she slid from Nove, pulling a coin from her saddlebag. She hurried into the Sacrista. A candle. A prayer. A hope. A flickering light burning for Mikael. A beacon to guide him safely to Terravin.

It would sustain her until the next time a warning breeze skipped over the bones of the long dead. Pauline was true to her word, as in all things, and when she returned a short time later, the rigid edge of worry that had hardened her face a few minutes earlier had softened. Pauline had given worry over to the gods. My own heart lightened.

We finished our trek to the main road and followed the directions Berdi gave us to Gwyneth’s small rented room above the apothecary. It was a tiny shop sandwiched between much larger stores on either side. A narrow staircase hugged one wall and led to a room on the second floor that I assumed was Gwyneth’s. It was set back from the rest of the structure and not much larger than an arm span across, surely with no running water or the basic comfort of a chamber closet. I was intensely curious about Gwyneth’s life outside of the tavern. She never spoke of it even when prodded, always giving vague responses and moving on to something else, which only served to spark my imagination. I had expected her to live in some place much more exotic or mysterious than a little room over a shop on a busy main road.

We slid from our donkeys, and I handed Otto’s reins to Pauline, telling her I’d run up the stairs to get Gwyneth, but suddenly she emerged from the shoemaker’s across the road with a child of no more than six or seven, a pretty little girl with dark strawberry curls falling past her shoulders and sprinkles of sun dust trailing across her nose and cheeks. She held a small wrapped package she clearly treasured, hugging it to her chest. “Thank you, Miss Gwyneth! I can’t wait to show Mama!”

She ran off and disappeared down another lane. “Good-bye, Simone!” Gwyneth called after her and continued to look in the direction the little girl had run long after she was gone. A faint smile creased her eyes, a gentleness that permeated her whole bearing. It was a tender side I had never seen in the usually jaded Gwyneth.

“She’s very pretty,” I called to alert her to our presence.