“It’s an animal that lives underground. Doesn’t see too well.”

“Then the comparison is apt.” I climbed up onto the seat next to him. I’d never ridden on a carriage before, and despite my discomfort, I was excited about the experience. The coats of the horses were shiny, and the mud splattered against their legs did nothing to detract from their sleek beauty. They seemed entirely different creatures from the plodding draft animals that pulled wagons full of grain into Trollus.

Everything was different from the world I knew, the smells and sounds terrible and wonderful in their unfamiliarity. I felt crowded by the press of life all around me, and yet almost glad my vision kept the true scope of the space from overwhelming my senses.

Chris flicked the reins and made a sort of clicking sound, and the horses surged forward, their harnesses jingling with each step they took. “I’m a bit surprised Cécile let you go through with this,” he said.

“Let me?” The carriage bounced in the frozen ruts of the road, jarring my spine.

Chris snorted loudly and slouched down on the wooden seat, seeming perfectly comfortable. “Don’t bother pretending we’d be here if she hadn’t agreed to it.” He cast a sideways glance at me. “You did tell her where we were going, didn’t you?”

“Of course I told her.”

“And?”

“She understands the necessity.”

Chris chuckled. “Got an earful, I expect.”

“I’d forgotten how loud she can be when she’s angry,” I admitted, bracing a foot against the floorboards to keep my balance. “Souris hid under the bed, and I was tempted to join him.”

“And yet here we are.”

Here we were, trotting down the road toward Trollus and a meeting that I was both looking forward to and dreading. My freedom should have been an advantage I had over my father, but instead it seemed like the opposite. I felt like I had never had less control, and I didn’t like it. I was worried about what had happened in Trollus after I left, about the precarious position in which I’d left my friends and comrades. My father wouldn’t harm them out of turn, but if I did not act in a way he wanted, he wouldn’t hesitate to use them against me.

“Do you think he’ll help?”

I wiped my face dry with an arm, careful not jar my wrists. “I do.” I stared up at the vast mountain range to my right, my eyes drawn to our mountain, the sheer peak gleaming with gold in the sunlight. “He could not have predicted this turn of events, but make no mistake, he is pleased with what Cécile has done. To him, it is one very large and certain step toward the freedom of all our kind.”

The carriage broke free of the trees that had blocked the ocean from our view, but what stole my attention was the rocky slide blanketing the land between Forsaken Mountain and the coast. It seemed smaller than it had from within, incapable of containing the city that had been my world.