When Ayla looked up into the face of the person who’d caught her, she found her own eyes staring back.

“Storme.”

6

Crier had grown up studying the stars. But now, as her horse tore through the thick forest, the night sky was nothing but a shattering of black and silver through the branches. She was lost. Guideless. And weak.

She’d been riding for three days. The terror had slowly peaked and ebbed, turning to a sharp, cold thing stuck in her chest.

On the first day, she’d been haunted by the distant sound of hunting horns. Her father’s—no, he wasn’t her father anymore. Hesod’s guards calling out to her. He must have thought she was simply throwing a fit. Running away to make a point, but always with the intention of coming back.

He was wrong.

On the second day, there were no horns, and she was very nearly caught. She’d spent the night in a copse of trees, the most cover she could find in the hills. She hadn’t slept at all, but she knew the horse would need to rest. At least it was able to graze, and there were puddles on the ground from a recent rainfall. In the morning, Crier had stood at the edge of the trees, hidden in the shadows, staring out across the expanse of the hills. Ears pricked. Listening, watching, terrified. She’d seen the guards when they were maybe a league or so away—she saw them cresting a hill, movement where there had been no movement. Heart pounding, she’d leaped back onto the horse and run, and run, and run, thinking: How did they find me? How are they so close?

Then she’d realized.

Her heart was pounding.

Her chime.

She was such a fool. Of course, it was her chime—a silent signal, triggered by her own distress, synched with the chimes of the palace guards, that would always lead them straight to her location. Once a protective measure. Now her downfall. She’d ridden until she came across a stream wending its way between the hills, snakelike. Even in winter, white wildflowers blanketed the hills like snow. Crier dismounted, waded into the stream, and felt around for a rock with a sharp edge.

When she cut the chime out of her flesh, her violet blood dripped down her spine, down her arms, into the water. It hurt. It was difficult: the chime was in the back of her neck, so she couldn’t actually see where she was cutting, and pain made her hands clumsy. But she’d done it. Gasping, eyes stinging with tears, she’d done it. The chime—a tiny gold device, masterfully Made—found a new home in the bottom of the stream. And she was free.

Truly free.

On the third day, she began to feel the effects of heartstone withdrawal. She knew she had to get some, and soon. Conjuring a map of Rabu in her mind, flawlessly remembered, she tried to figure out exactly where she was. She knew by the sun that she’d been traveling roughly southwest. If she adjusted her course and rode due south, she was bound to hit a village. Those villages were mostly human, but there were always some Automae. Where there were Automae, there was heartstone.