SOLDIERS AHEAD!

She doubled over, her vision whiting out with pain as the combined voices smashed through her internal walls.

“Cordy!”

“What’s happening?”

“Stop,” she gasped. “Wait! We can’t. Go any farther. Soldiers! Waiting for us.”

Her head throbbed with agony. She clutched it with both hands, desperately filtering through all of the different, insistent visions.

“The mist,” she panted, “a wall of mist; they’re so close now … no, they’re waiting right in front of it. Lying in wait! They know we’re coming.”

“How could they possibly know that?” Rosalind demanded.

“Oh … I know the answer to that question.” Giles’s weary sigh ruffled against Cordy’s tangled hair. “Remember? The very first moment we met those farmers, Cordy asked them how to get to Raven’s Nest. The farmer who reported us to the soldiers must have told them about that, too.”

“So that’s where the real attack is waiting.” Rosalind smacked her sword-stick against one palm with a thwack! “They think we’re walking into a trap.”

“We almost did.” Giles’s voice tightened. “The real question is, how did Cordy know about it?”

She couldn’t answer. She could barely even breathe. Now that the land had forced its way back into her head, that old hook inside her chest was back as well. At home, it had only tugged her to escape her castle walls, to escape into the freedom and the wildness outside—but this time, it had a more specific goal in mind.

It yanked, again and again. A whimper of pain huffed through her throat.

Her right foot moved forward against her will.

Rosalind grabbed hold of her arm. “Wait up! You can’t fight them when you’re like this.”

“Who wants to fight trained soldiers at all?” Giles’s voice spiraled upward in disbelief. “We have to run and hide, like Connall told us. If it’s not safe for us to go to Raven’s Nest—”

“We have to!” Cordelia’s eyes flew open, but she could only glimpse the outlines of her triplets through a thick fog. Mist and flashes of weaponry filled her vision.

And beyond all those …

Raven’s Nest.

It was waiting. No, it was calling to her, promising every answer she had ever sought about her family, about their past, and about the whole broken kingdom that stretched around her.

They were so close. Almost there. The hook in her chest wouldn’t let her turn away now. Not for anything.

She could turn into a bird to fly straight there—no! She dug in her heels and glared at her triplets’ foggy silhouettes.

“We’re all going there together,” Cordelia said stubbornly. “You promised.”

“Argh!” Giles threw up his hands, shifting shadows in her vision. “How are we supposed to deal with armed soldiers?”