“No,” he murmurs close to my ear. “I can choose how the light bends and make it so that we can see each other even while we remain hidden to others.” His magic finds new ways to impress me every day.

“Let’s walk inside carefully. Take stock of the situation and see if we can find where they’re keeping them before we launch an assault. Follow me.” Slowly, we make our way through the rows of tents, stopping and starting every few steps to avoid crashing into someone. It’s agonizingly slow, and I want to just aerstep us inside the house. But without knowing the layout, the risk that I would drop us right on top of Krantz is too great. When we finally make it to the front door, we pause for a moment to let a human man walk through it before quickly following him, so we don’t have to reopen and close the swinging door. I take a deep breath on the other side, steeling my nerves.

Once inside, the manor buzzes with activity, making it even more difficult to stay unnoticed. Despite being invisible, if someone walks into us, we’ll be just as exposed as if we’d waltzed in. Hugging the walls, we slowly inch down the hallway. Rebels polish weapons and inspect supplies in almost every room. A human woman walks around dishing out porridge from a steaming pot, and young women and females run around gathering laundry and picking up discarded dishes. Of course Krantz would have the same backwards views about females as Mazus.

As we follow a pretty young human woman, no older than twenty-one, carrying laundry, she stops abruptly, and I almost crash into the back of her. A male has walked out of a room ahead of us, and the terror I see on the woman’s face makes me angry on her behalf. She tries to turn, but the male spots her, a menacing smile breaking out across his face.

“Hazel,” he murmurs low as he stalks toward her. I take a few steps back, knowing we should turn and leave but not able to. To his credit, Thorne stays by my side, letting me lead our recon mission.