Through the night they stumbled. Snow yielded to stone, and stone yielded to gravel and thin, spiteful moss. The slopes rose and fell in sharp crags and shallow basins, bridge after rope bridge spanning the only way onward.

Finally they reached the trees, whip-thin pines clustered as if huddled for warmth. Black boughs choked the moonlight until they had naught to see by. She slept a few brief hours curled in Tavin’s arms, then made him trade the watch to her and rest, her head tucked beneath his chin. When the sun crested the horizon, they split cold, greasy strips of dried beef three ways and set off again.

By noon, if she looked back to Misgova’s summit, she could see Vulture riders picking their way down the pass.

They pushed on.

By midafternoon her bones gave out, run too dry to carry her and the teeth both. Tavin picked her up once more and didn’t set her down until the mountains grew too dark to continue.

She insisted on taking first watch. When he woke for the second, he asked for a Peacock glamour.

Through the dark, and through her tears, she gave him as close to the prince’s face as she could manage.

When she woke, only half a league remained betwixt them and the skinwitches.

They pushed on.

Briars knotted about the slopes, digging thorns into their arms. After the bramble trapped the prince a fourth time, Tavin led them clear of the forests, into plain sight but free of snares. They chased the rising sun east over rattling slides of slate and through a gnarling canyon spiked in great fingers of stone.

By noon, between heaving breaths and the scream of her three teeth, Fie could hear the faint clip of hoofbeats on stone.

Tavin tried to steer them from the open plains now, aiming for ravines or slopes ragged with boulders and outcroppings. The nails studding Fie’s soles near wore down to toothless nubs as they bit paths over barefaced rock.

Then, with the sun prodding the western horizon, the rough terrain wore out. The three of them stopped behind a boulder, weighing their choices: a broad shallow ravine below, or a stretch of shattered slate ahead. Tavin took an experimental step into the slide. A rock slid free and set off a small cascade. He looked over his shoulder. Fie followed his look and saw no Vultures, but that meant naught to her.

“The ravine won’t give us away,” she said.

“This is faster,” Tavin said shortly. “We just have to cross before they notice.”

“Fine.” The prince strode into the slide, not looking back.