Once they stepped around the corner of the entrance block, the iron gates rose high above them, forged into the limestone walls that encircled the compound. Rail cart tracks intersected the entrance, leading from the luminium depository and harvest factory inside the grounds, and traveling out the gates toward the lumberyard, the farms, and the quarry. At the end of each day, laborers would load the carts and return with their spoils, but right now, the tracks offered nothing more than a guiding path for Kiva and Naari to follow.

With a wave to the guards up in the towers, Naari didn’t pause before venturing outside, and Kiva, while on edge, kept in step just behind her.

In Kiva’s ten years at Zalindov, she’d passed through the gates only a handful of times to treat prisoners who hadn’t been able to make it to the infirmary without medical attention. In each of those instances, she’d felt what she did now—a thrill at being beyond the central compound, so close to freedom, yet still so far away.

She wondered where her family was, how long until the rebels arrived to free her. Then she cast the thought from her mind, knowing there was nothing she could do to speed up the process. Today she had one goal, and she would give it her full attention.

“Guard Arell, a word?”

Kiva and Naari halted at the sound of Warden Rooke’s voice calling out to them, unmistakable even with the rain still drumming down. They turned to find him striding through the gates in their wake, heedless of the water bouncing off his leather uniform.

Wondering about his presence, Kiva watched the Warden jerk his head toward the stables just outside the prison entrance, indicating for them to seek shelter within. The smell of hay and horse assailed her nose as she stepped inside, the rain almost deafening as it beat down on the roof above them.

“You, stay,” Rooke told Kiva, before looking pointedly at Naari and walking to the far end of the stables, still within sight—and crossbow reach—but far enough away that Kiva couldn’t hear what they were saying.

Her curiosity was piqued, but she had no skill in reading lips, so she sighed and leaned against the nearest stall door, petting the face of a damp-looking horse when it poked its head out to investigate. Given the wet mud tangled in its mane, she assumed it had arrived recently, the rider perhaps a messenger delivering one of the numerous royal missives that were inconveniencing the Warden of late. That would certainly explain the dark look on his face as he spoke with Naari, who appeared nearly bored in return, her arms crossed over her chest.