I ran for the rope that we’d rappelled down, the flicker-pounding of the giant mournling’s feet drumming ever nearer. Bansaerin had shuddered when he mentioned the mournlings’ size, had called them monsters. Regular mournlings—as strange as it was to categorize them in that way—were monsters in and of themselves. But a giant mournling?

  I tried to focus on the task at hand, fleeing the caves, but I couldn’t help glancing over my shoulder as we fled. In the distance, I caught a flash of hulking shadow behind us in the winding tunnels. “There’s one pursuing us,” I called back to Hytham.

  “Keep running,” he urged. “We’ll fight it off if we have to.”

  I pressed my hand against my side where Hytham had healed me. That amount of power—was this what the Order offered the Hume? I had never heard of the priests performing healing works for Shakerton. Wasn’t that the kind of thing they would have wanted others to know?

  The hulking shadow drew steadily closer, and all questions fell behind our flying footsteps.

  “I’ll boost you,” Hytham panted as we neared the rope. He slid to a stop in front of me and knelt, his hands cupped together in front of his knee.

  The last time I had done something like this . . . my thoughts blurred. Had I done something like this since the Hume had taken Iredella? Maybe once or twice with the Nightblades?

  “Draeza!”

  I shook my head and hands, tossing off the nervous energy. I could do this.

  I sprinted toward Hytham, my gaze darting between his hands and the rope.

  “Gah-ah!” I yelled as I pushed off of Hytham’s cupped hands, just before he started to boost me up. I scrabbled at the rock, my left hand missing the rope. “Oof.” I caught it with my right and grasped firm. My feet scraped the cliff face as I tried to find a hold. Scrape, scrape, then solid rock. I sighed and swung my left hand up, tightening my grip and tugging myself up the rope.

  “Brace yourself,” Hytham called up from below. I stopped in my ascent and leaned my shoulder into the wall of rock, holding as steady as I could.

  I hadn’t meant to, but I looked behind us, back toward the drumming of legs. Many legs.

  And a shadow that rose and crested as a wave on one side of the caves then the other.

  I gasped, shuddering at the sight. Twelve gleaming orbs shone, a brilliant blue. Behind them, scuttling, hairy legs.

  The rope tugged beneath my grasp and threw my balance. I clung tighter, my shoulder pressing uncomfortably against the cave. “Hytham . . .”

  “Climb.” The rumble of command in his voice shook me from my horrified stupor.

  We were being pursued by a giant spider, one that wouldn’t be impeded by a sheer wall of rock like we were.

  My breath rattled in my ears as I followed Hytham’s order. Bansaerin’s voice echoed in my head from drills in the woods. Your strength lies in the moment. Trust yourself, trust your body. You know how to survive.

  “It’s coming closer!” The twinge of fear in Hytham’s voice made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Though the chill of the cave water still clung to me and my clothes, I couldn’t feel it.

  “We’re almost there,” I called back. Hume sight wasn’t as sharp as ours was. He’d see only a giant shadow.

  I glanced back. “Gah!” Perhaps not.

  The giant spider-mournling appeared at the base of the cave below us. The lower half of its abdomen was swollen, I shuddered to think with what. It chittered, clicking its pincers together as it had to scuttle backward in order to pivot its body to follow us. There was a milky scratch on the side of its face—one of its eyes had been gouged out. It originally possessed thirteen.

  I gritted my teeth and heaved myself over the top of the cliff. Under normal circumstances, I would have rolled onto my back, panting. But we were running out of time.

  “In Broccus’s name—”

  Hytham had paused just out of reach and was staring down at the spider.

  “Come on!”

  His gaze shot up to meet mine. A puzzled line flashed between his brows and then was gone. He shook his head and with one last great tug, pulled his shoulders up even with the edge of the rock.

  I caught my hand beneath his shoulder and helped pull him to the top. How he managed any degree of athleticism in all that armor, I couldn’t fathom.

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  He parted his lips to speak.

  “Run.” I was far too aware of exactly how the mournling’s narrow spike legs had indented the forest floor, leaving behind the strange circles we’d seen, and sprinted back the way we’d come. If it caught us before we made our way out, much less if it could escape through the narrow opening we’d come through, we’d learn even more than that, like how it had sent body parts flying across a clearing.

  Hytham’s armor clanged behind me, his breath an equal panting with mine.

  The mournling screeched behind us, its front legs gaining the lip of the cavern.

  I yelped as the weight of its eyes fell upon me. My feet faltered.

  Hytham caught me around the waist and tugged me onward.

  The creature trilled its victory, even faster across the open ground of the cave than it had been in the caverns below.

  I leapt through the opening, Hytham just behind me.

  A flurry of legs exploded after us, clawing and scratching, trying to hook onto us, but the creature’s bulk was too great for it to make it through the narrow cave mouth.

  “Aah.” I crumpled forward, catching my hands against my knees. I exhaled heavily, breathing in the chilly damp of the forest rather than the musty closeness of the caves. “We did it.”

  Hytham was smiling at me. “We did.”

  “Brreeee!” the spider-mourning cried, trying once more to thrust itself through the narrow opening but to no avail. It scurried backwards, and the drumming of its legs retreated.

  We both jumped. “It’s going to try to catch us in the forest, isn’t it?” I murmured, still breathless.

  “It can try, but it won’t find us here.” Hytham gestured toward the water.

  I huffed out the last of the horror of the caves, certain the mournling would return to haunt me in my sleep. But so long as it remained in the realm of dreams, I would be alright. “No, it won’t.” I straightened, nodded to Hytham, and we began our retreat to the river.

  By the water, the winds picked up, the heralds of the coming of truenight. “Here.” Hytham swung his cloak off his shoulders and draped it around me as we surveyed the river. “It’s damp, still, but it’s warmer than what you have.”

  I wiggled my shoulders into its heat, wrapping it tighter around me. “Thank you,” I murmured. How many times would this Hume surprise me with his kindness?

  He grinned back at me. “Do you know another way across the river?” Our vine-rope hung, a thin shadow against the black-barked trees on the opposite side of the river.

  “If we hurry, we might be able to find our way over rocks upstream.” There hadn’t been time when the sheriff’s life and, by extension, Bansaerin’s, hung in the balance.

  I shivered in spite of the warmth of Hytham’s cloak. What did the sheriff’s death mean for Bansaerin’s chances? All we had found was a small piece of the sheriff’s armored ensemble. Would that be enough to convince the herald of Bansaerin’s innocence, especially as he knew already Bansaerin wasn’t truly at fault?

  Hytham glanced down at me more often as we neared the boulders, but he didn’t say anything to pull me from my reverie. Maybe he was pondering something similar as well—his own fate at the herald’s hands, perhaps, given the untimely demise of his predecessor.

  He held a hand out for me as we cleared the final boulder. My boots sank into the damp silt on the opposite riverbank. The sheriff had told me that the herald was my way to my sister. He was the one who held the chains that bound Bansaerin.

  I mulled over any possible intersections between the two I could think of as I led the way down the riverbank back to our original site of crossing. Dusk fell heavy all around us. I was getting nowhere on my own. “Outside of delivering the edict from the baron, do you know why the herald came all the way up here?”

  Hytham’s lips scrunched together and to the side.

  “The spirit mentioned an artifact,” I prompted. “Has he said anything along those lines?” My thoughts skittered away from me, tracing spiderwebs of possibility. If I pursued this, would the herald ask me to choose between saving both Bansaerin and my sister and sacrificing the Seed? How were we to survive in the north without it? How could I survive knowing I had given the pair of them up?

  “Hmm, now that you mention it, I recall him saying something about ruins. Others have talked about him visiting ancient sites from the Bright Age. A not uncommon practice depending on each herald’s interests. From what I’ve heard, they can even be sites of pilgrimage.”

  The breath of hope caught in my chest. While Hytham told me of the different pilgrimage sites in honor of Broccus and we followed the spider-mournling’s strange trail back through the woods, a plan began to take shape. If the herald was looking for the Seed, all I had to do was offer to help him find the isla. There was no cause for revealing that the Seed had already been found.

  I sighed as Gwinny’s impatient wicker bounded toward me through the trees. She was safe and Bansaerin would be soon too.

  I’d find a way to pull Iredella into my plan after I talked to the herald. Finally, some leverage.

  Hytham and I both avoided the carnage spread before us as we returned to the clearing. I dodged the entrails and patches of blood-soaked leaves and ran to Gwinny’s side, resting my head against the braids along her mane. She stamped her return greeting, just as relieved to see me as I was to be reunited with her.

  When I turned about, Hytham was watching the pair of us. His smile faltered when he met my gaze. “Erm, I was just—” He sighed. “I know we haven’t exactly found the means to win your friend’s freedom.” He held up the gemstone-encrusted clasp from the sheriff’s armor. “But I do think we’ve made a start. And, well, I feel more hopeful about my own fate than I have for some days.”

  “I’m glad.” My thoughts returned to Bansaerin, beaten and broken of spirit in his cell. “Will you—” I stopped myself short, clutching and unclenching Gwinny’s reins. I bit my bottom lip and looked up at Hytham who was watching me closely, an expectant glow upon his face. “I know there may not be a great deal you can do, but if you could look in on Bansaerin for me, make sure he isn’t hurt. Tell him . . .” I struggled to find the words. “If you can, and no one will hear you, will you tell him I’ll be back tomorrow?”

  The growing shadows hid the intricacies of Hytham’s expression, but he settled into one of resolve. “I will do what I can for thy friend,” he assured me, returning to the Hume tongue.

  I released the breath I hadn’t meant to be holding. Though I didn’t relish the thought of traversing the woods this close to truedark, I was halfway back to the clan. I couldn’t deliver the rescue message to Bansaerin tonight. He’d be furious with me for any plan that didn’t involve returning to the clan for truenight. Risking the evening, alone, in a Hume settlement? Never.

  I smiled to myself, nodding to Hytham as we mounted our horses and prepared to part ways. On the morrow, I’d make my bargain with his herald and find out how he was connected to my sister.

  “Ride well, Draeza. I shall look forward to seeing thee tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” I answered. I nudged Gwinny with my heel, and we were off, heading straight for home.