“Has it occurred to you that there is one realm who has not fully allied with us?” Cass asked before Tone could carry on that ludicrous conversation. “Not only will I better get to know Elena on this journey, and there is a good chance Aelia will have reached The Enchantments by the time we arrive, therefore I’ll see my daughter, but also, I could make inroads with Ophelia. We have all the arms of Triton at our backs. Except the staffs of the Nadirii. I would have all arms laid down without any loss of life, Tone. And there is no guarantee of that. But the more I can weigh the side of a peaceful resolution to this mess, the better.”

They were exiting the forest to see the rolling moors through which cut the road to Notting Thicket. The road they’d been traveling.

The camp was gone.

The royal procession was mingling about their horses.

The band that would go to the Arbor were mingling about theirs.

True and some of his men were standing with Mars and Kyril.

And the women were returned and huddled together, talking at the edge of the forest that lined the other side of the moors.

Severus noted Cassius and his men’s arrival and broke from the women to move his way.

Cassius led his men toward True and Mars, as Antonius remarked, “So this is a diplomatic mission?”

“This is everything it needs to be, and in this time, every moment is everything it needs to be, or all will be lost.”

Cassius saw that Severus had started jogging, which meant he had something to say before they reached Mars and True, therefore Cassius stopped walking.

He also saw that Elena was no longer paying attention to her huddle but had her eyes on Rus.

He could not see her face well enough from his distance to know her thoughts, just that her thoughts were on the direction his man was heading.

“Need a moment, Cass,” Rus said when he arrived. “Alone.”

Cassius looked to Mac and Tone, who caught his expression and moved away.

Severus moved closer.

“Keen to be away, Rus, and need to speak to Mars and True. What’s this about?” Cassius prompted.

“She’s bound them together so they can talk to each other, even if they are at some distance,” Severus informed him. “A great cyclone overwhelmed them when she did. I’ve never seen anything like it. I thought they’d be swept to the skies. But when it was over, they just dropped to the earth like nothing happened.”

He would have liked to have seen that.

“She’s a witch, Rus. They can do shite like that.”

“She is also no longer enamored of Prince True.”

Cassius felt his body lock.

“She has realized, upon meeting you, that she never really was,” Rus went on.

Cassius now felt a strangeness in his throat, around which he forced, “Pardon?”