“Pfft,” the cynical boy snorted again, waving a shadowed arm. “You can’t do a thing.”

But even as Alba despaired, she felt a small damp palm slide into her hand. She glanced down. The little boy leaned into her.

More bodies shifted in the darkness. The smaller children settled themselves around her. One held a corner of her tunic. Another put a hand on her elbow. A third laid a set of sticky fingers across her foot.

“Do you know our future?” a soft voice asked. “Can you see?”

Alba peered through the dark. “I—” She paused, not wanting to lie. She squeezed the hand she was holding. “I will do everything I can to see you returned to your families.”

The journey in the wagon was long. Under the canvas, the air grew heavier. The children, fatigued from fear and discomfort, drifted to sleep as night fell.

Alba did not sleep. Instead, being careful not to disturb the heads resting against her and the hands still clinging to her, she leaned as close as she could to the canvas. Through a gap, she watched the moonlit world pass by.

Would she really be able to persuade the king to let them go? She had thought so, but now, feeling the small, damp hand in her own, the question seemed more desperate.

Still. She was hopeful. She had seen her. At the market—she’d seen the heir. She was certain of it.

It wasn’t like a vision, Alba thought. It wasn’t like the whisperings in the cave or even the dream when she’d been swept through the waters to see the twins abandoned, but still she’d known the girl, recognized her—slight and wild-haired and wild-eyed. She’d been clutching a pelt, and that, too, seemed part of a truth Alba had already known. And the shepherd with the borrowed lampblack had been beside Alba pulling at the guard, and the shepherd’s startled wife had been restraining the girl, and the memory of the dusty toes hiding beneath the fleece, and the memory of the shepherd and his sheep when she’d seen the babes abandoned—it had all rushed through Alba at once. The shepherd, the babe, the abandonment—this girl. All those years of searching for knowledge of the twins, and there was the girl before her.

And there, too, had been the opportunity to save her at last. It had been not so much a decision as an understanding—immediate, all-encompassing: She must let the guard take her to keep the girl safe. Alba hadn’t even considered; she’d been ready to struggle, to run away from the guard and the market, but then she’d simply allowed him to take her. How could she do anything else?

But what of the twin? Alba, frowning, glanced at the sleeping heads about her. Where was the sibling? That was perhaps the one thing about the heir still worrying her. No, that was not the only worry. She was worried, too, about the girl’s father, the shepherd himself. He’d fallen trying to help her, and when she’d knelt by his side, he’d had the strangest look on his face. Twisted, distorted—it had seemed as though she was seeing him deep underwater. When she’d reached for him, he’d felt a long, cold way away. His lip had trembled; he’d tried to speak. Hurry, hurry, he might have said, or perhaps, I remember.