Yoris grabbed him by the collar. Shockingly fast, shockingly deft. “You told people about the Gift? You told the traitor about the Gift?”

Vivia charged the old man. She had no water at her disposal, but she had muscles and she had rage. Yet no sooner had she gotten her bound arms around his neck and prepared herself for a choke hold, than four blades swished free. And four crossbows took aim.

Vivia froze, her arm still pressed into Yoris’s windpipe—and his hands fastened on Cam’s collar. Cam—whose skin had paled, leaving the dappled spots as white as the moon above—had closed his eyes.

“Release me,” Yoris growled.

“Not until you release him.”

“You can’t win this fight, Princess.”

“I can if my only aim is to take you down.”

A pause. The four hooded hunters kept their weapons drawn and ready. Yoris meanwhile seemed to chew over Vivia’s words. She could practically hear him thinking. Then he laughed. A rowdy sound that clashed through the forest and bounced off dead trees.

“Lower your weapons,” he ordered, loosing Cam. The boy rocked back two steps. His own four-fingered hand moved to his throat, to his collar.

And Vivia finally eased her arm from Yoris’s neck—though not before murmuring, “If you hurt him, I will break you, Yoris, and then you will understand why my father is so afraid of me.”

Yoris said nothing as he pulled away from Vivia, and he made no objection when she moved to Cam or examined the boy all over. “Are you all right?”

Cam nodded, a spark in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “My loyalty ain’t fickle,” he whispered.

And Vivia forced a tiny smile. “I know, Cam.” She squeezed his shoulder. “I know.”

Then she turned back to Yoris and motioned for him to once more lead the way.

They walked on. Until blisters had formed on Vivia’s toes and her throat was so dry, she couldn’t swallow without pain. They walked on until the sun began to rise and the Origin Well of Nubrevna finally came into view. It looked exactly as Vivia remembered, silhouetted against a pink sky: a high hill in the land with two pointed peaks on either side. A fox, she’d always thought. Like me.

Her heart creaked open ever so slightly at that thought. At her mother’s voice murmuring, Little Fox, this water knows us. This water chose us. She’d come to the Well with her mother only once, not long before Jana’s death. Not long before everything had changed, and Merik had been sent south while Vivia had been kept in the capital with a thousand reminders of her mother.