Slipping off the strap, I kicked hard, desperation giving me strength. Then magic wrapped around my waist, jerking me up into the air. “I’ve got you,” Martin said, then there was rock beneath my bottom as he pulled me through the illusion and into the tunnel.

“Wait,” I choked. “The guard.”

We leaned back through the opening, but there was only blackness and silence. Martin sent a wisp of light over the surface of the lake and it reflected off the glossy surface. The water was frozen solid, all trace of both guard and leviathan gone.

Winter had accomplished what she intended.

At the far end, lights from the other guards bobbed into view, drawn by the noise.

“We need to go,” Martin said, and he dragged me through the narrow passage in the rocks, and out into the open. We were on the rock fall, but beneath the wooden bridge that ran over top. Despite the cover the planks provided, Martin had one arm pressed against his eyes, the other raised as though he could ward off the midday sun.

“I’m going to freeze to death if you don’t do something,” I stuttered out through my clattering teeth, unable to move from where I lay. Everything was numb, the act of breathing all I could manage.

Magic enveloped me like a warm blanket, and with it came a wave of sleepiness that I knew I needed to fight. But it was so hard. Too hard, and before I knew it, I’d drifted off.

I awoke to find myself suspended in the air, my body warm from the press of magic. “Where are we?” I muttered.

“On the way to Trianon,” Martin said, squinting at me with teary bloodshot eyes. “I’ve been avoiding the road, just in case.”

“Put me down.” My clothes were mostly dry and, though I was exhausted, I no longer felt on the brink of death. I retied the lace on one of my boots, then started walking. We needed to get to Trianon with the information on Angoulême’s location. And I needed to tell Tristan that his father had defended me from the sluag, had let me go. That he was going to help with the Winter Queen. That Tristan needed to stay where he was.

“Wrong way,” Martin said, tugging on my arm.

I blinked and looked around, feeling disoriented. “But Tristan…”

Wasn’t in Trianon.

“Oh, no,” I whispered. “He’s on his way to Trollus.” But he had to have passed us on his way, and I could think of no good reason why he wouldn’t have stopped when he knew I was all right. Unless it wasn’t his choice.

“We have to go back,” I said, dragging on Martin’s arm.

“But Thibault told us to go to Trianon.”

I fixed him with a glare that made clear exactly what I thought of that proposition, and then I broke into a run.