Elaris Ashwyn had carried the secret for eleven years, and tonight it nearly spilled out to a stranger. She caught herself just in time, closing her mouth over the words. The old woman by the fire had asked only where Elaris came from. Elaris said nothing true. She never did. She pulled her hood lower, hiding the purple hair and silver eyes that marked her half-elf blood, and moved on into the trees. She walked until the campfire light died behind her. Then she stopped and pressed her hand to her chest. Beneath her shirt hung a silver chain. On it swung a ring set with violet stones, one word carved inside the band: Ashwyn. Her name. Her real one. The name of a royal house that thought her dead, and a house she had run from before she understood what she was running toward. She had never spoken it aloud to anyone. The weight of it pressed harder every day. She wanted, just once, to say the truth to someone and watch them not flinch. But trust was a knife she had felt turned on her too often. So she stayed alone, and the secret rotted inside her like a splinter under the skin. A raven dropped from the dark and landed on her shoulder. Obsidian. Black feathers, violet eyes, the only creature she let close. He nipped her ear and made a low sound. "I nearly told her," Elaris whispered. "A woman I met an hour ago." Obsidian tilted his head. He could not answer. That was the trouble. She could confess anything to him and change nothing. Obsidian took off suddenly, wings beating toward a stand of glowing red flowers. Elaris followed, dagger already in her hand. Among the blossoms crouched a small figure dressed in leaves and moss, no taller than her knee. A forest sprite. It was tangled in a hunter's snare wire, one leg caught tight. The sprite looked up at her with sparkling eyes and did not scream. It only reached toward the wire and then toward her, asking. Elaris knelt. She sawed through the snare with her blade until the wire snapped. The sprite pulled its leg free and rubbed it. Then it did something no person had done in years. It touched her hand, and warmth spread up her arm like sunlight. In her mind she felt the sprite ask, without words: Who are you? Elaris froze. The question was the same the old woman had asked. But this creature owed nothing to any king or court. It could not sell her. It only wanted to know. "Elaris," she said. Then, before her fear could stop her, she lifted the ring from her chest and showed it. "Ashwyn. I was born a princess." The words left her body. Nothing broke. The sprite smiled and squeezed her hand. For the first time, Elaris had said it aloud, and the world had not ended.

The sprite slipped back into the red blossoms and vanished. Elaris stayed kneeling among the flowers, her hand still warm where it had touched her. She had spoken her name at last. Now the silence felt worse than before. One creature had heard her truth, then left. She wanted a person. Someone who could answer. But she had nowhere to go where a half-elf with purple hair would be let through a door. Obsidian lifted off her shoulder and flew low through the trees. Elaris followed. The raven led her to the edge of the flower field, where a man knelt over a spread of orange blossoms that blazed like coals. He worked fast, cutting stems and pushing them into a leather pouch. Black armor. Silver hair falling past a dark hood. He had not heard her. Elaris drew a dagger and stepped closer. He turned before she finished the motion. Ice-blue eyes fixed on her blade, then her hair, then her ears. His own were pointed like hers. "You move loud for a rogue," he said. He did not reach for a weapon. "Put it away. I want the flowers, not you." "Nobody comes this deep for flowers," Elaris said. "I do what I'm told." His jaw tightened. "These bloom one night a year. My master wants them." He said the word master like it burned. "Ren Westfall. And I already regret giving you a name." Elaris kept the dagger up. But she watched his face, and she knew that look. She had worn it in every mirror for eleven years. He served someone he hated. He hid what he was. "You're fae," she said. "Under armor. Under a hood. Pretending to be something colder than you are." Ren went still. "And you're a half-elf alone in a wood at night, hiding your face from the world. We're both good at hiding, then." The words landed like a hand on the splinter under her skin. Here, finally, was a person who might not flinch. Someone chained the same way she was. Her mouth opened. The ring hung heavy against her chest. She could show it. She could say Ashwyn and watch his eyes. She closed her mouth. Trust was still a knife, and she had known him for one minute. Instead she lowered the dagger. "Take your flowers," she said. "I never saw you." Ren studied her a long moment. Then he tied his pouch and stood. "There's a crossing two days east. Travelers of every blood pass through. No one asks what you are." He pulled his hood forward. "You looked like someone with nowhere to be." He walked into the dark before she could answer. Elaris stayed among the blooms, and for once she had a road and a name that was not her own. She would follow him. She had found someone worth the risk. She just was not ready to take it yet.

Elaris followed Ren east through the trees. He walked ahead, silent, his black armor swallowing the morning light. Obsidian rode her shoulder and watched him with violet eyes. Two days of travel stretched before her. Two days beside a man she had chosen to trust before she knew if that trust was safe. He served a master. She needed to know where his loyalty ended. She made a plan by midday. She would tell him a lie and see if he carried it back. Something a spy would want. Something that would cost her if he sold it. They stopped at a roadside inn near dusk. The sign hung crooked over a sagging porch. An old woman met them at the door and waved them in like family. Her husband ladled stew without asking their names. "Rooms are cheap and beds are warm," the old woman said. "Keep the peace and you're welcome." Elaris ate slowly across the table from Ren. She set the hook. "There's a woman I'm running from," she said. "She thinks I stole a ring off a noble house. If word reaches the eastern roads, I'm finished." She watched his face. "Your master pays for news like that." Ren set down his spoon. "You're testing me." The words landed flat. She said nothing. "You want to know if I'd sell you." He leaned back. "I would, once. I've sold worse for less. That's what he made me." His jaw tightened around the word he never named kindly. "But I gave you a road instead of a knife. You still think I'm his." "I don't know what you are," Elaris said. "That's the problem." Ren reached to his belt. She tensed. He drew a folded paper and dropped it between them. It was a contract, dark ink on old skin, sealed with a mark she did not know. His name ran across the bottom in a child's hand. "My father signed me to him when I was a boy," Ren said. "That's the leash. I can't cut it. But I can choose who I bleed for while I wear it." He met her eyes. "I'm not walking you east to trap you. I'm walking east because I'd rather help you than obey him one more day." Elaris stared at the child's signature. No spy showed his chains. She had baited him with a false theft, and he had answered with the truest thing he owned. "There's no stolen ring," she said quietly. "I made it up." "I know." A tired smile. "You're a bad liar when it matters." Elaris folded the contract and pushed it back to him. Her hand did not shake. She had her answer now. His loyalty was his own, and he had spent it on her. The ring against her chest felt lighter. Not tonight. But soon, she thought, she might say her real name to him. And for the first time, she wanted to.

They reached the river town near noon. The market crowded the bank, stalls loud with fishermen and buyers. Elaris walked close to Ren through the press. She had decided something in the night. She wanted to seal what stood between them. Trust given deserved trust returned. But she owned nothing to offer him. Every coin, every blade, every scrap she carried was borrowed or bare. The only thing that was truly hers hung against her chest, and its band bore her name. To give it was to hand a stranger her secret. So she carried the wish and no way to spend it. She stopped at a fishmonger's stall to buy their meal. The old man looked up from his knife. His hands went still. He stared at her face, then past her at Ren, and the color left him. "Ashwyn," he said, low. Not a question. Elaris's hand flew to her chest. Ren stepped half in front of her. "I buried my wife eleven years back," the old man said. "She served your mother. Combed your hair when you were small." His eyes moved to Ren. "And you. My boy Elijah worked your father's stables. Mucked the stalls while you rode." He set the knife down. "I know both your faces. I've mourned both your houses." Elaris's throat closed. Eleven years of hiding, and one old man had named her in a breath. She waited for him to shout it to the crowd. He only wiped his hands on his apron. "I won't tell," he said. "Who'd I tell? Everyone I'd tell is dead." He pushed two wrapped fish across the plank. "No charge. For the girl my wife loved." Elaris took the food with numb fingers. Then she understood what she had been given. This man already knew. Her name held no danger from him. And it held no danger from Ren either. She had proven that. She stepped away from the crowd and drew Ren behind a stack of empty crates. She lifted the chain over her head. The ring turned in the light, violet stones set in silver leaves. She had never taken it off before another soul. "You showed me your chains," she said. "I want to show you mine." She pressed the ring into his palm and closed his fingers around it. "Read the inside." Ren tilted the band. She watched him find the name cut into the metal. His icy eyes lifted to hers. "Ashwyn," he said quietly. "Elaris Ashwyn. I was born a princess." The words came steady. "That's mine to give. Now it's yours to keep." Ren closed his hand around the ring. He did not flinch, did not bow, did not sell it in his eyes. He held it like something he'd guard with his life. "Then I'll keep it," he said, and gave it back. The secret was out of her chest now, spoken by choice for the first time to a person who could ruin her. And she had chosen to trust that he wouldn't.

That night they camped past the river town, in a hollow ringed by pines. Elaris had trusted Ren with her name. Now she saw what could take him from her. A black mark curled across his collarbone, thin as ink. It had not moved all day. Then, as he stirred the fire, it pulsed once. Ren dropped the stick. His hand went to his chest. "What is that?" Elaris crossed to him. "The contract," he said. His jaw tightened. "My master signs it awake when he wants me. If he summons, I go. My legs walk without me." Elaris knelt in front of him. "Then we cut it now, before he calls." "You can't cut it. My father sold my life into that ink." Ren's icy eyes held hers. "If it drags me back, I might not come back myself." She would not lose the one person who knew her name. She pulled his collar wide and studied the mark. It was a binding, drawn in fae script. She had freed a sprite from a snare once. She knew snares had knots, and knots had ends. "Show me where it starts," she said. Ren traced the line to a small closed loop near his shoulder. "There. The anchor." Elaris drew one dagger. She would not slice him. She pressed the flat of the blade to the anchor and spoke her true name aloud, the name she had guarded eleven years. "Elaris Ashwyn holds this. Not the king." The mark flared white. Ren gasped and gripped her wrist. The ink writhed under the steel, fighting her. His arm jerked toward the dark trees, pulled by something she could not see. She threw her weight against him and held. "Stay," she said. "You gave me your word. Keep it here." The pulling stopped. The mark did not vanish. It shrank instead, drawing tight around the anchor loop, then went still and cold. Ren slumped forward against her shoulder, breathing hard. "He called," Ren said. "I felt him call. And I didn't go." "You didn't go." Elaris pulled back to see his face. "Never before," he said. "The contract is still on me. But it held me tonight, and I stayed." His hand found the spot where the ink lay quiet. "He'll know something blocked him. He'll come looking for the reason." Elaris sat back on her heels. She had bought Ren a night, maybe more. She had not freed him. The king would hunt the thing that broke his leash, and the thing was her name spoken over his blood. She had spent her deepest secret to keep her ally, and now that secret had a scent the king could follow. "Then we don't wait for him here," she said. She sheathed the dagger. "We reach the crossing before he does." Ren nodded. For the first time, he sat by a fire and did not watch the trees for his master.

They walked hard for two days, and now the crossing lay one night away. Elaris made camp under a low ridge. Ren sat across the fire, quieter than usual. She had spent her name to keep him. She had freed a sprite, tricked him, trusted him. But she realized she had never once asked what he wanted for himself. "When the crossing is behind us," she said, "where do you go?" Ren poked the fire. "I've never thought that far. I do jobs. I obey. That's all I've had." "That's not what I asked." She leaned toward him. "What do you want, Ren?" He went still. The question seemed to hurt him more than the mark on his chest. "No one has asked me that," he said. "Not once." His icy eyes met hers. "I want to choose one thing that's mine. I want to stop being a blade someone else swings." Elaris looked at him and felt something shift in her chest. It scared her more than the king's hunt. She looked away first. They slept. In her dream, Ren stood in the dark trees. The mark on his chest glowed white. He turned and walked away from her, pulled by an invisible hand. She ran after him. She grabbed his arm. It was cold as stone. When she spun him around, his icy eyes were empty, and he did not know her name or his own. "Ren," she screamed. He said nothing. The dark swallowed him. Elaris woke with her hand out, reaching. The fire had burned to coals. Ren sat awake, watching her. "You called my name," he said softly. "In your sleep." Her heart pounded. She could lie. She had lied to him before. But she had traded lies for trust, and trust was the only thing that had ever kept her safe. "I dreamed the contract took you," she said. "You forgot who you were. You forgot me." Her voice caught. "I didn't just want to keep an ally, Ren. I don't want to lose you." The words hung between them. She had never said such a thing to anyone. Ren crossed to her side of the fire. He took her hand, the one that had reached for him in the dark. "You broke his hold on me," he said. "No one has ever fought for me before. I won't forget you. I don't care what the ink does." She let herself lean into him. For one moment she was not a hidden princess or a scared runaway. She was just a girl who had let someone in. Then the coals hissed. Far off, a horn sounded through the trees. Low. Hunting. Ren's head snapped up. "That's his rider," he said. "He tracked the scent faster than I thought." Elaris stood, her hand still in his. She had let herself love him. Now the king was one night behind, and she had more to lose than ever.

The horn sounded again, closer now. Elaris kicked dirt over the coals. Ren stood beside her, one hand on the mark under his armor. She trusted Ren with her life. But she had never trusted his power. She had watched him bend under the contract, watched it drag at him like a hook. She did not know what he could do when he chose to fight it. Without that, she could not make a plan that leaned on him. "How far can you push it?" she asked. "The mark. When you resist. What does it let you do?" Ren's jaw tightened. "I don't know. I've never fought it long enough to find out." "Then we run," she said. "And hope the crossing comes first." They ran through wet trees. Branches tore at her arms. Behind them, hooves crashed through brush. Then a rider broke from the dark and cut them off. He swung down before his horse had stopped. Colt Blackwood. The king's hunter. His orange eyes found Ren first, then her. A thin scar cut across his cheek. He smiled like a man who had already won. "The blade runs off," Colt said. He drew a long knife. "And someone spoke a name they shouldn't. I can smell it on you both." Ren moved between Elaris and the hunter. His body went rigid. The mark flared white under his armor, bright enough to shine through the black plate. He gasped. His knees buckled. The contract was pulling him back toward its master. "Ren," Elaris said. She grabbed his arm. It was cold as stone, just like her dream. "Fight it. I broke his hold once. You can break it now." His hands shook. He forced one dagger free. Then the other. His breath came ragged. He looked at Elaris, and his icy eyes were still his own. "I choose this," he said. "I choose her." The white light snapped out. Ren surged forward. He moved faster than she had ever seen anything move, a blur across the dark ground. Colt slashed. Ren was already gone, already behind him. His dagger struck the hunter's knife hand. Colt roared and dropped the blade. Ren's boot took his knee. The hunter went down hard. Elaris stared. She had never seen the power freed. It was frightening. It was more than she had guessed. And it was on her side. Colt clutched his wrist, panting. "He'll send others," he spat. "You can't outrun a name." Ren pressed a dagger to the hunter's throat. He looked to Elaris, waiting. Asking. The choice was hers, and she gave it to him. "Leave him," she said. "We ride. Now." They took the hunter's horse. As they rode for the crossing, Elaris held tight to Ren's waist. She knew now what he could do. She could build a plan around it. But Colt's words rode with her. The king knew her name. He would not stop.

They crossed the border two days later. The mixed-blood crossing let them through without a second look. Elaris expected relief. Instead she watched Ren rub his chest through his shirt, where the mark still burned. The crossing had saved their bodies. It had not saved him. As long as that mark tied him to the king, her spoken name kept him hunted. She knew now she had to cut the thread for good. That night they camped by a stream. Elaris turned Ren toward the firelight and pulled his collar aside. The mark glowed faint under his skin, a knot of black lines. "When I said my name over your blood, it weakened," she said. "It didn't break. Why?" "Because a name only bends a contract," Ren said. "It doesn't end one. The blood binds me to the king. My blood." Elaris drew one dagger. "Then we give the blood something else to answer to." Ren caught her wrist. "You don't know what that does." "No," she said. "But I'm done running from your name every time the wind shifts." She reached under her shirt and lifted the silver chain over her head. The ring hung from it, violet stones catching the fire. She had guarded it for eleven years. Now she pressed it into his hand. "Ashwyn," she read aloud, tracing the word inside the band. "That's mine. I'm giving it to you, not lending it. If your blood needs a master, let it be me." Ren's icy eyes went still. Overhead, Obsidian shifted on a branch, violet eyes reflecting the flames. The raven did not caw. It only watched. Elaris cut her own palm. Then his. She pressed their hands together over the ring, and spoke her true name a second time, low and clear. The mark flared white. Ren gasped and bent double. Black lines crawled across his chest, fighting. Elaris held his hand hard and did not let go. "You chose me," she said. "Choose it again." "I choose you," Ren said through his teeth. The mark burned brighter, then cracked. A thin line of black smoke rose from his skin and drifted apart. When Elaris looked again, the knot of lines was gone. Only a pale scar remained, shaped like nothing. Ren touched it. He breathed. He waited for the pull he had felt his whole life. It did not come. "He's not there," he whispered. "I can't feel him." "Then he can't call you back." Elaris pressed the ring into his palm and folded his fingers over it. "And your blood answers to a name he'll never own." But she saw the truth even as she said it. The smoke had carried her scent up into the dark. Obsidian lifted off the branch, restless, circling. The mark was broken. Ren was free. And somewhere behind them, the king now knew exactly where his broken weapon had gone.

Elaris woke at first light. Ren still slept by the dead fire, one hand curled where the mark used to burn. She watched him breathe easy for the first time in days. Then she took out a scrap of paper and wrote: Rest. I'll be back before dark. She left it under his blade where he'd find it. The raven dropped from a branch and flew ahead, leading her. She had freed him. That was the trouble. All night she'd turned it over. Ren stayed at her side now. He looked at her softly. But she couldn't tell if he wanted her, or only owed her. Gratitude and love wore the same face. She needed someone who could see the difference. So she followed the raven up the ridge to the oracles' cabin. The cabin leaned under moss and hanging charms. She climbed the porch and knocked. The door swung open on its own. Two fae women waited inside. The taller one had gray hair snarled with twigs and leaves, her clothes worn to rags. She looked Elaris over with hard purple eyes and did not smile. "Mirael Thornwhisper," she said, like a warning. The other sat by the hearth, thin, scarred, wrapped in a torn red scarf. "Celestria Moonshadow," she said quietly. "You've walked a long way to ask about a man." Elaris didn't flinch. "I broke a contract that bound him. Now he stays with me. I need to know if his heart is his own, or just a debt he's paying." Celestria closed her eyes. When she opened them, sorrow filled her face. "We can't read another's heart. Not his. That answer he must give you himself, with his own mouth." "Then I've come for nothing." "No." Mirael stepped close and gripped Elaris's chin, turning her toward the light. "You ask the wrong question. You fear his gratitude because you don't believe you're worth true love. That is your wound, not his." She tapped Elaris's chest, over the ring on its chain. "You hid your name eleven years. You still think the girl behind it is worthless." Elaris pulled back. Her throat tightened. "That's not—" "It is," Celestria said gently. "Stop weighing his feelings. Weigh your own worth. Only then can you believe anyone chooses you freely." Mirael pressed something into her palm. A dried bloom, blood-red. "You carry a name older than you know. Ashwyn was not always hunted. Ask why your house fell. Ask who wanted the last princess forgotten. The answers wait east, past the water." Elaris looked at the flower, then the two ragged oracles. "You won't tell me if he loves me." "We told you what matters more," Mirael said. "Go home. Ask him plainly. And believe the answer." Elaris walked back down the ridge as the sun sank. She had no proof of Ren's heart. But she carried a harder truth now, and new questions with teeth. Tonight she would ask him. And she would let herself believe.

Elaris reached camp after dark. Ren sat awake by a new fire. She showed him the dried bloom the oracle had pressed into her hand, blood-red and older than any flower she knew. "They said my house didn't just fall," she told him. "Someone wanted the last princess forgotten. The answers wait east, past water." She turned the bloom in her fingers. "But it means nothing to me. I don't know what it is or where it points." Ren studied it. "Someone who remembers House Ashwyn would know." He said it plainly, and she understood. She knew only one man like that. At first light they went to the riverside market. Stalls crowded the water's edge, loud with merchants and gulls. Elaris kept her hood low. She found the old fishmonger at his usual place, gutting a silver fish with a worn knife. Garrick Finley had known her family. When he first saw her weeks ago, he'd spoken her true name and then swore to keep it. That silence was why she trusted him now. He looked up. His eyes moved from Elaris to Ren, then back. "Princess," he said, low, wiping his hands. "You shouldn't linger here." Elaris held out the bloom. "Do you know this flower?" Garrick went still. The knife slipped from his grip and clattered on the wet planks. He picked up the bloom carefully, as if it might burn him. "Where did you get this?" "An oracle. She said it points to why my house fell." He glanced around, then leaned close. "A Fireheart Bloom. They grow one place only. The mountain gardens of the old crown, far east across the great water. Your grandmother wore these at court." His voice dropped further. "Child, House Ashwyn didn't fall to war. Your own kin sold you out. The regent who claimed the throne wanted every heir dead. They burned the records. They burned the name. You weren't hidden by accident. Someone paid to make you disappear." Elaris gripped the stall's edge. "Who?" "That I won't say here." Garrick pressed the bloom back into her palm and closed her fingers over it. "But the gardens where these grow still stand. Reach them and you'll find the truth carved in stone. Cross the great water east. Ask no one else the way. Trust no face you don't already know." A merchant two stalls down turned toward them. Garrick straightened fast and raised his voice. "No, we've no eel today. Try the next row." He gave Elaris the smallest nod. She pulled Ren away through the crowd. Outside the market she stopped and opened her hand. The bloom was hers now, and it had a name and a place. "East, across the great water," she said. "He gave me a road." She looked at Ren, the one person who already knew who she was. "I'm not going alone this time. I want you with me. All the way." Ren nodded. "All the way."

They left the market and followed the river toward the ferry crossing. Elaris walked fast, the bloom folded in her fist. But a mile from camp, Obsidian dropped from a branch and cried once, sharp. The raven had never made that sound. Elaris stopped and looked back at the water. A thin gray haze hung over the reeds where they had knelt to fill their skins. Not fog. It clung to the ground and moved against the wind, always toward them. "They found the trail," Ren said. He drew his hood back and studied the haze. "That's not weather. That's a scent-mark. The king's trackers use it to lock a name." Elaris's stomach dropped. When she broke Ren's contract, she spoke her true name aloud. The name carried a scent now, and the king could follow it. Every hour near the water pressed her name deeper into the mud. "If we stay by the river, we leave a road straight to us." "Then we don't stay," Ren said. But he frowned at the haze. "They already have this stretch. Run east along the bank and we run inside our own trail." Elaris knelt and pressed her palm to the wet ground. The scent lived in the mud, in the water they had touched. She thought of Garrick's warning. Trust no face you don't already know. She looked at the one face she did. "Cut me," she said. Ren went still. "What?" "The scent is my name in my blood. If I bleed it into the current, the river carries it downstream. Away from us. Away from east." She drew one dagger and held it out, hilt first. "They'll chase the water, not the road." Ren took the blade. His hand did not shake, but he waited a breath. "This could pull them faster." "It pulls them wrong. That's enough." She held her wrist over the shallows. He drew the edge across her forearm, shallow and clean. Blood ran into the river and spread pale in the fast water. The gray haze shivered. Then it bent, low along the bank, and slid downstream after the blood. It thinned as it chased the current away from them. They watched it go. The reeds near their feet cleared. The air smelled of mud and nothing else. "It worked," Ren said, quiet. Elaris pressed a strip of cloth to her arm. Her name was in that water now, running west, false. But her true trail turned east, dry, over stone the river couldn't touch. "Off the bank," she said. "We climb to hard ground and stay dry until the ferry." Ren wrapped her wrist tight and pulled her up. She let him. A day ago she would have bound it herself. "You didn't hesitate," he said. "Handing me a knife." "No," she said. "I didn't." And that, more than the blood, was what she carried up the slope.

They climbed off the bank and left the river behind them. The stone ground held no water, so it held no trail. But by midday Elaris stopped and stared at the empty land ahead. Bare rock stretched east, cut by dry gullies and low ridges. She had never walked this way. Neither had Ren. The ferry lay somewhere past it, but she saw no road, no marker, no sign of the great water. "You don't know this ground either," she said. It wasn't a question. Ren shook his head. "The king's maps ended at the river. Past this I only heard rumors." He crouched and pressed a hand to the stone, as if the rock might tell him something. It told him nothing. "We could pick a line and hope." "Hope walks us into a cliff or a dead gully." Elaris turned in place. The sun told her east, but east held a hundred dead ends. She thought of Garrick's warning. Trust no face you don't already know. Out here there were no faces at all. That was almost worse. Obsidian dropped from the sky and landed on a spur of rock ahead of them. The raven croaked once, then flew a short way east and waited. He flew again, and waited again. Elaris watched him. The bird had led her to the sprite in the snare. He had cried warning at the river. Now he flew a path and looked back to see if she followed. "He's picked a line," Elaris said. Ren frowned. "A bird's line." "He found the sprite when I couldn't. He heard the trackers before you did." She started after the raven. "He can see the water from up there. We can't see past the next ridge." They followed. Obsidian led them along a shelf of dry rock that bent between two ridges. The path never climbed too steep. It never dropped into a gully. Twice Elaris would have chosen wrong and hit a wall of stone. Each time the raven had already turned them away from it. By dusk they crested a low rise. Below them the land fell toward a wide gray shine that stretched to the sky. The great water. A thin trail of smoke rose near the shore where a ferry landing sat among the rocks. Elaris let out a breath she had held for miles. "There. That's the crossing." Ren stood beside her and watched the water. "You trusted a bird to carry us blind across ground neither of us knew." "I trusted what I've seen him do." She looked at Ren, then at the raven perched on the rise. Eleven years she had trusted nothing living. Now she counted two. "We reach the ferry by morning. Then we cross, and I find out who buried my family." The unknown east was behind them. The great water lay ahead, and past it, the truth.