Claire shook her head, but she wasn’t sure if Sophie saw, as she had already grabbed the Stone Tine and was running to the stairs. “I don’t,” she called back. “But I think I know where the unicorn was. Come on, follow me! We don’t have much time.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

CHAPTER

24

“All right,” Nett said as they hurried into their Woven Root tent, constructed only a few feet away from the Hearing Hall. “Spill. What do you mean you know where the unicorn was?”

With a twist of his marimo, he sent its pearly light across the room, revealing four swinging hammocks, a tree stump table, and a beautiful rug with fringe that changed color with the seasons. The light also illuminated the confused expression on Sena’s face and the shocked one on Sophie’s.

The two of them and Nett had followed Claire out of the Seed Cellar, but Nadia and Thorn had remained, so that the alchemists could ask him questions about Estelle and her followers. Without a fully forged crown and the support of the guilds, they would need to scrape for every advantage.

“We have to go,” Claire said, opening up her Hollow Pack and throwing in a spare blanket. It was definitely getting colder at night. She also grabbed a warmer pair of boots and a few loose sheets of paper. The Stone Tine was a heavy weight in her tunic pocket.

“Hang on,” Sophie said, gently placing her hand on top of the bag. “Before you put everything in your pack, tell us what you’re thinking. Where do you think the unicorn was?”

“Woven Root,” Claire said, triumphantly. “I mean, where Woven Root was, when we first found Nadia and the others!”

She expected her friends to cheer, but instead, they only looked at her worriedly.

“Claire,” Sophie said, in an overly gentle voice, as though she were pretending to be Mom. “A unicorn wasn’t in Woven Root.”

Claire let her pack slide to the floor. She knew there would be no way to make Sophie budge until she understood.

“There was,” Claire said, putting every ounce of confidence she could into her voice. “Do you remember the night we tried to break into the chimera stable and escape?”

Sophie and Nett nodded. Sena didn’t, however, as she’d spent that particular night in the cells of Drowning Fortress, waiting for her execution, not knowing that they were on their way to rescue her.

“It was the Tiller snowdrop cookies that reminded me,” Claire said, taking care to say her words clearly even though she wanted to shout them as fast as she could and then ride off on a chimera to the old campsite. “When we were sneaking out, I saw snowdrops under a bush, right under some unicorn mane that had gotten stuck in the branches.”