She wished that she had stayed wolf now, so she could run and hide in a burrow to pant out the pain in privacy. It felt even harder to bear in human form, especially with Giles and Rosalind now both pushing their fingers around the wound. She gritted her teeth tightly together, breathing through the stabs.

Cloth ripped behind her. A moment later, she felt it being wrapped like a wide belt around her waist.

“Please tell me that didn’t come from anybody’s undergarments,” she mumbled into the moss.

“Only your undertunic—which was dirty enough.” Rosalind sighed. “We should’ve cleaned your wound, too, if we had a well out here.”

“There’s a stream,” Cordelia mumbled. “It’s not too far away.”

She didn’t move, though. Moving would hurt.

“Or …” Giles let out a deep breath as he stood. “We could just surrender to them and let their healers treat you. If we tell them that they have to—”

“No.” Cordelia pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, panting through the agony of the movement. A wild pulse beat against her throat; all her senses felt raw and overloaded. “You didn’t hear what they were talking about,” she said fiercely, “but I did—and I can tell you, they don’t mean us to survive. We’re only puppets to them, to keep their own dukes in power for as long as possible. Arden and Lune are planning to run the country themselves. They won’t listen to a word we say—and we’ll be dead long before we’re grown.”

“What?” Giles’s jaw dropped open. “But—”

“There’s no time to talk it over.” Rosalind jumped to her feet, her fists clenching and unclenching by her raggedly torn tunic. “Those knights are bound to circle back here eventually, once Giles’s magic runs out. Let’s get moving and find Cordy’s stream right now.”

Unfortunately, that stream wasn’t as close as it should have been. Or was it? Cordelia kept losing track of the space around her as she forced herself along the bumpy, mossy ground, balancing every other step on her sister’s long sword-stick and breathing through the pain. Time blurred around her, stretching off into unexpected directions.

Alys’s green eyes hardening in the quiet herb garden. “But if I know the houses of Arden and Lune …”

Black smoke sweeping around their windows …

Mother sinking to her knees …

“Look out!” Giles grabbed her free arm.

Cordelia shook off his hand with an irritable grunt. Rosalind was stronger, though, and she grabbed the collar of Cordelia’s gown, yanking her backward. Cordelia’s gaze finally cleared and skidded downward as she slipped on the muddy ground and …

There was the stream at last. She had nearly stepped into it.

“We need to clean out that wound, now,” said Giles.

Cordelia rolled her eyes. “I’m not delirious,” she said with dignity. “I was just thinking.”