Page 87 of Secrets of Graves and Gold

No further sound reaches my ears. I swipe at my face, both chilled and flushed, and hustle onward.

The scourge sorcerers have come up with a plan even more awful than I could have guessed. And if we don’t get a move on, we’ll miss our chance to stop them.

It’s a good thing I didn’t opt to flee to Bryfeen, or there’d be no one to sound the alarm at all.

When I get closer to the Bright Bloom Café where we’ve been hiding since the early evening, I force myself to slow my pace so I don’t look odd to any night owls who happen to glance out their windows. I rap on the door in the pattern Voleska told us and dart inside the second it opens.

My men are leaning along the wall. Stavros and Rheave both sit up straighter at the sight of me, but Casimir and Alek drifted off with the late hour. At the tap of Voleska shutting the door behind me, Alek flinches and snaps back into wakefulness.

He’s let his hood drift back, and he doesn’t leap to retrieve it. In the past few hours, with their nonjudgmental reactions, he’s adjusted to the idea of the rebels seeing his scars.

I’d be more glad to see him relaxed about it if I wasn’t bearing such awful news.

Stavros takes in my expression with a brief twitch of his head. “You found out something.”

Casimir stirs awake at his voice. I swallow hard, waiting until he looks fully conscious before I report on what I heard.

“We need to head out,” I say quickly. “Now—I don’t know how much ground we need to make up when they might all be on horseback.” I turn to Voleska, too many worries colliding in my head. “You should try to pass on word to the king’s forces however you can—someone on the royal family’s side needs to know.”

Rheave springs to his feet. “What happened?”

I drag in a breath. “I heard a couple of the Order members talking. They’re gathering a ‘march’ somewhere down the Coliz-ward road—the last bunch of conspirators from Pima are joining them tomorrow. Apparently they’ve got enough magic between them to get past the army unnoticed… and then they’re going to strike straight at the king when he isn’t expecting it.”

Stavros curses under his breath.

Voleska’s eyes have widened. She glances around at us. “Do you know where that is? The royal family left Florian after the attack there, didn’t they?”

The former general grimaces. “I can make a fair guess, and I suppose we’ll be able to confirm it once we see what direction this ‘march’ heads in. What’s the most discreet route we can take to reach that road from here?”

As Voleska considers and offers a series of directions, Alek comes up beside me and takes my hand. “Are you all right? You look a little ill.”

I rub my face. “I’m fine. I’d imagine we could all use a little more sleep, but there isn’t time for that yet.”

Voleska motions to the rest of us. “Wait just a minute. We put together a few bags of supplies when we thought we might be sending you off to Bryfeen… When you decided not to take that route, I thought I’d make one for Rheave too.”

She aims a faintly apologetic smile at the daimon-man. “You’ll all need more than the clothes on your backs if you’re hiking across Silana.”

She slips through the inner door and returns with five packs. “There’s food and blankets and canteens—just the basics. It’s not really enough for a trip like this.”

“We’ll figure the rest out as we go,” Stavros says.

I grasp her arm. “Thank you. For everything. And please, pass on that warning if you can.”

She nods. “If we can manage to pass on word quickly enough, maybe they won’t even make it past the edge of the province.”

I glance around at my men. A silent sense of conviction passes between us.

We know what we have to do, and we’re going to make it happen together.

We shoulder our packs and rush out into the night.

By the time we’ve left Pima well behind us, my entire lower body is aching from hips to feet. My shoulders offer a periodic twinge under the pack’s straps for good measure.

Nothing shows on the road ahead of us except darkness. The moon is a thin crescent casting the faintest of glows on our surroundings.

The lack of light means it only takes a tiny bit of magic for me to thicken the shadows around us enough that we shouldn’t be spotted by sentries. We’ve already passed a couple of clusters of figures—most of them daimon, from what Rheave said—patrolling the lands just beyond the city.

Unfortunately, the extreme darkness also means that I’m only sure of where exactly the road is by noticing when I’ve suddenly stumbled off onto grass instead.

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