He held his dagger out at her, wide-eyed at the speed with which she had incapacitated his comrades.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, scowling at the fae clutching his arm and the other groaning from where he sat in the underbrush. She eyed the silver-haired fae and his dagger, her voice dripping with menace as she said, “Now, you can move your wagon, or I can move it for you. What do you choose?”

He swallowed, his hands trembling as he sheathed his dagger. Bravado gone, the two injured men rose and darted back to the wagon.

Bri nodded. “Good.”

She mounted her horse, who’d been hastily grazing in the scrub. Perhaps when this horse was too exhausted to keep up with her grueling pace, stealing a new horse in the next town was better than trying to buy one. She couldn’t stop and she didn’t want her recognizable face to start a fight in every town she passed. The forests in the rain shadow of the High Mountains were home to mostly Western humans and witches. They barely gave a second glance, but as the forests turned to sprawling savanna, more fae towns popped up along the road to Swifthill. The closer she got to the capital, the more her presence would draw unwanted attention.

The sound of Delta’s pleading voice rattled through her mind. I need your help, Bri, please. She would have bet a mountain of gold that Delta would never utter those words. The attack on the Western Court palace must have been devastating. How many traitors had infiltrated Queen Thorne’s court? Bri would need to be wary of them all.

As the wagon rolled out of the bottleneck, clearing her path, she braced for what was to come. She would fight her way through the capital to get to Delta if she had to. The Queen’s assassins had never been found, and the Princess barely survived the attack. Bri needed to reach the palace before the traitors came back to finish what they started.

* * *

She was ready for this journey to be over and to wash off the stink of horse, but the sight of her birthplace was no relief. The landscape morphed from forests blanketed in frost to arid red soil with spiky shrubs. The sun baked down, fighting away the winter chill. Cloak discarded, she urged her weary horse onward toward the high sandstone walls and cursed herself for coming. She reminded herself once more of who she was to these people. Briata Catullus was an enemy, banished on the first day of her life.

A towering bronzed gate guarded the main road into Swifthill. She peered between the gaps in the meshwork grating, looking out toward the city beyond. Roofs like mushroom caps dotted the skyline, starting smaller and growing larger toward the center in concentric rings. The white clay rooftops were decorated in whorls of silver and gold paint, patterned with the symbols of each household. Beyond the city walls, high on the cliffside, sat the palace.