He pulled away too soon, sparing her one final glance before sprinting down the stairs and jumping into the carriage. The driver snapped the reins as hard as he could and dust kicked up around the wheels as he left her stunned on the step.

She touched her lips with her free hand and opened the fingers of her other. A rough carving of a wooden shoe sat in her palm, half-finished.

“Dell,” she breathed.

There was no other explanation. She didn’t understand why he’d been there or how he hadn’t looked like himself, but his warning rang clear in her mind.

I’m going to do everything in my power to protect you. I promise you that.

What did she need protected from?

Only trust Edmund. She turned on her heel. The Belaen ambassador had a lot of explaining to do, beginning with—who was Dell Tenyson and what did he have to do with impending trouble in Madra?

Chapter Twenty

The carriage shook and quivered around Dell as it raced through the streets. The roof shimmered, winking in and out of view before disappearing entirely. The walls shrank, retracting until they were nothing more than cracked wooden beams rising knee-height.

Dell shook his head, trying to wrap his mind around what was happening as his heart hammered in his chest.

“The carriage…”

They slowed to a stop as Taron pulled into an empty alleyway.

“It disappeared,” Dell stammered.

Taron twisted around on the bench he sat on to look at Dell. “It was never there to begin with.” He dropped the reins and jumped from the bench, landing beside the mule who’d appeared as a giant horse only moments before.

How did one get used to magic?

Most people in Madra lived their entire lives never witnessing the power. Maybe it was easier that way. Seeing what magic-folk could do… it changed everything.

Dell climbed from the bed of the rickety mule cart. It was nothing more than rotting wood and rusting wheels now.

He brushed a hand over his face. “Do I look like myself?”

A shadow appeared at the end of the alley.

Taron grunted. “Everything now appears as it should. Time to go. You won’t be safe until you are aboard the ship. We leave in a few hours, once Edmund brings the Gaulean princess to us.”

Dell took a step back, Helena’s face firmly in his mind. But it wasn’t the masked face of the princess. He saw Len, the woman who’d befriended him, cared for him. The girl with dark hair, wild from tangling in the ocean breeze, whose frame disappeared among her brother’s clothes.

That girl was no princess.

But Len wasn’t real. Helena was.

And he still couldn’t leave her.

“I’m not coming with you.” He lifted his eyes to regard the big man stubbornly.