Roark looked at me like he hadn’t truly seen me before. I never lied about what I feel for you, Lyra. Do you know that?

Perhaps it was true, but he’d been the man fated to capture me, destroy me. Then again, he’d saved me as a girl and loved me as a woman.

Both Roark and Skul Drek had become a united force to keep me alive.

Roark rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand. There is something else you must know about me—

“We’re not alone.” Emi shoved through the bower, blade in hand. Her pale hair was wild and tangled, and her stormy eyes were red and swollen. Did she cry for Yrsa? For Thane? For her cousin? Likely all of it. But there was the warrior gleam in her eyes now as she scanned the treetops. “We’re being watched.”

Roark stood, one hand on my arm. He urged me behind him. Emi tossed him his bearded ax. He caught the handle and rotated it once in his palm.

I saw nothing, heard nothing, until a twig snapped. Until dark figures split the mists. Shoulders, broadened with furs and cloaks, stepped into our hideaway. Some held blades with black-leather-wrapped hilts. Others kept arrows made of wood with raven-feather fletching trained on our hearts.

My heart stilled when half a dozen fara wolves entered the clearing, heads lowered, jagged teeth bared. Each wolf had runes painted on their fur and leather bands around their neck, as though they were common hounds.

“Saw you in the trees.” A man tossed back his hood, revealing similarly inked runes across his brow and a tight ridge of dark hair braided in a long plait, the sides of his hair shorn close to his scalp. “Been some time since I laid eyes on you. Finally saw it done, then?”

Roark stiffened, and nausea rose in my stomach. They were not Stav, but they did not dress as tattered as ravagers.

Emi let out a sharp gasp when two archers parted and a woman stepped between them.

She was beautifully frightening. Sharp features, dark lips, and amber hair wrapped in tight braids around her head. Blue eyes took in each of us as they swirled and thrashed like a cerulean tide. She laced her fingers together, the bloodred paint on her sharp fingernails a contrast to her dark gown and bear fur mantle across her shoulders.

Atop her head was a circlet in the shape of black ivy.

I did not need to see the warriors nearest to her genuflect to know her—Elisabet. The queen of Dravenmoor.

“I have awaited this day for so long,” the queen said, her grin pinned on Roark. “This is the melder, I presume?”

Roark stepped in front of me, his grip tightening on the ax handle.

Elisabet’s features hardened. “You still protect her? After all I did to keep you alive.”

She tried to keep Roark alive?