If Cordelia had been in girl form, she would have laughed at that image. But she couldn’t speak through her horse muzzle, and after a long silence, Rosalind said, “Who do you think is going to attack us?”

“Oh, I don’t know. There are too many possibilities!” He laughed painfully against Cordelia’s mane, his shoulders shaking. “The dukes of Lune and Arden, maybe? They want to force one of us onto the throne just so they can run the kingdom for themselves. But if we’re unlucky enough to stumble across the duchess of Solenne or her allies, they’ll want us dead to get us out of the way of their own heir. Oh, and then there’s that wicked sorceress grandmother of ours who wants to trade us to the dukes in our own family!”

He let out a heavy sigh that ruffled against Cordelia’s skin. “Arden and Lune, at least, must know by now that we’ve left the forest. It’s not as if anyone else could have been those three children who came running out and got spotted by everyone along the way.”

Rosalind grunted. “That man who reported us to the soldiers thought we were demons.”

“Ha.” Drawing a deep breath, Giles straightened in his seat. “I don’t think the dukes will be so easily fooled.”

Grandmother wouldn’t be fooled, either, if she heard. Cordelia chewed over that thought unhappily as she trotted onward, dust kicking up around every step.

Grandmother hadn’t had any stables behind her cottage to hold a horse ready to ride. She certainly couldn’t catch up with them by foot.

But Cordelia remembered the blaze in those dark eyes—“I’ve had twelve years to learn from my mistakes.”

Even in horse form, she shivered hard.

Lady Elianora would never give up at her first setback … and next time, she wouldn’t be nearly so easy to surprise.

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

The attacks that Giles had predicted didn’t come that day, though, or the next.

Soldiers on horseback swept up and down the road four different times as they journeyed. The triplets found hiding places every time. They skirted around high-walled towns surrounded by massive, stinking piles of refuse and rivers polluted with the townsfolk’s leavings. Army camps sprawled across abandoned fields. The flags that flew above those camps shifted symbols and colors as the long days passed, but the devastation left behind was universal.

It was no wonder the land was crying out for mercy.

Colorful flags of boars, badgers, and falcons flew high in triumph above the latest field of dying crops. Cordelia bared her teeth when she saw them: the symbols of Lune’s and Arden’s rivals, the duchess of Solenne and her allies, who all wanted a different heir for the Raven Throne … and who would kill Cordelia and her triplets to achieve that goal.