The prince plucked a hunting bow from a peg on his wall and slung it over his head so it fell across his chest. From behind the inglenook he took out another one. “Any experience with bow hunting?”

Hilda shook her head.

I lifted my chin. “I’m not a fair shot, but I’ve done a little to keep the hares from Jakobson’s gardens.”

The prince handed over the second bow. “Good enough. If the thought of remaining barred and clueless behind the walls drives you as mad as it drives me, then follow me, ladies. I’ve something to show you.”

I was in a damn tree house.

While our unsuspecting Stav Guards remained outside Thane’s chamber doors, the prince led me and Hilda through a passageway in the wall. He explained it was built half a century ago, a better way for kings and advisors to move about the palace unseen before the stone walls were securely in place.

The corridor opened to one of the numerous back gardens with towering oaks and maple trees. Tucked behind walls of thick leaves and branches was a small fort. Childish in many ways, but useful in the fact we were now high enough we could see over the wall and still keep concealed.

“Built this with Roark when we were stupid boys who wanted to be watchguards.”

Strange to think of Roark Ashwood as a boy, maybe smiling with the prince as they built their war tower.

Thane removed the bow from his shoulders and unearthed a quiver of bone arrows beneath a dusty tapestry. With a nod, he urged me to take one as he set his own arrow and aimed out a small oblong window. “Godsdammit.”

“What is it?”

Breath caught in my chest.

Beyond the walls, just where the wood began and Stonegate ended, pikes with bloody heads were aligned in front of a torchlit evergreen shrub. Arrows with blue and gold fletching had pierced through each skull.

They were the Stav Guard who patrolled the wood.

From this position, the clang of steel on steel sent a shudder down my spine. The guards from the revel flung blades at men in dark cloaks. The gleam of the white wolf on the Stav Guard flashed here and there.

“What a cunning queen Elisabet has become.” Thane tightened the bowstring again, his eye ticking as he tracked movement. “This is an act of war, but she will deny involvement since they fight ravagers down there. They’re considered rogues, not under her command.”

“You think the Draven queen commands them?” My voice was hardly steady, nothing more than a rough whisper.

“I do. Along with that bastard assassin of hers.”

Skul Drek. Hair lifted on my arms. Was the unkillable assassin out there?

“Once we fire,” Thane said, a touch of warning in his tone, “Dravens in those trees will fire back. They always have a few archers hidden in the dark. Watch your heads.”