All thoughts of Otto and the warning he’d tried to give had fled from Crow’s mind as he rode on Baine’s back through the trees. His heart thudded against his ribs, and his eyes swept over every bush and stone he passed in search of the missing princess. He didn’t know how much time had passed since he’d seen her take a sword to the midriff, and he didn’t know what he was going to do if he found her bleeding out somewhere, alone, on the forest floor. If she lost her life on this trip, it would have been his fault. After all, he was the one who’d insisted she should come with him to Younis, had convinced Albin to let her be one of his guards, and had let himself get too relaxed to notice the mercenaries on their tail. If he’d just let his father organize his entourage like he’d wanted to, then maybe—

“Collin, over here!”

His spiraling thoughts were interrupted jarringly by the sound of Rayner’s shout. Veering his mount to the left, he didn’t even give himself the time to call back a response before he hurried toward the source and found the knight dropping to his knees beside the fallen princess in a small clearing. Since she’d disappeared, she must have toppled from her horse’s back while it was still running, he pieced together as he jumped down from his own steed to rush to her side. The other horse was nowhere to be seen.

“Naida!” Barking her name, he dropped down next to her, his eyes sweeping from her pale face down to the gaping, bloody gash in her side. The mercenary’s weapon had cut deep, and he could feel the color drain from his skin as he stared at the gruesome wound. Suddenly, he felt lightheaded, and he forced himself to look away, swallowing hard. Even though he’d known she would be injured when he found her, he hadn’t braced himself to actually see her with a chunk of flesh taken out of her midriff. The sight was dizzying.

“Collin?” Weakly, his half-sister opened her eyes and made an attempt to lift her head off the grass.

“Don’t move, princess,” Rayner jumped in quickly, pressing his hands down over her gash to slow the bleeding.

She groaned and squeezed her eyes shut again. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

Crow and Rayner exchanged a glance, but when no one answered her out loud, Naida spoke again, more nervously this time: “A-am I going to die?”

“No,” Crow said reflexively. Turning back to her, he was careful to avoid looking directly at her side. “You’re going to be fine. We just need to get you to the next town, and they should have a physician who can patch you up.”

“Actually… I have supplies in my saddlebag here,” Rayner posed, lifting his gaze to meet Crow’s with a frown. He leaned back slightly, lifting some of the pressure off the princess’s wound, and dark red blood seeped between his fingers. He grimaced. “I can get them now, but Collin, you’ll need to take my place here to keep her from losing any more blood.”

“Me?” The word slipped out before Crow could catch himself. Clearing his throat, he glanced at the knight’s waiting horse at the edge of the clearing. “Shouldn’t I get the things you need while you keep applying pressure?”

“Do you know what you’re looking for?” Rayner knitted his brows.

“Well…”

“Come around to this side.”

Rayner gestured at the empty space beside him with a nod of his head. The former thief glanced there hesitantly for a moment but followed the order. If his sister’s life depended on his involvement in her treatment, he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. So, when Otto’s son leaned to the side to give him room to come in next to him, Crow took a steeling breath and rocked up on his knees to position his hands over the princess’s side, pressing them down as soon as the other man pulled away to stand. Instantly, he felt a shiver zip up his spine as her blood coated his palms, sickly warm and viscous, and he winced as she whimpered in pain.

“Just stay still,” he murmured, half to himself, as Rayner hurried off to dig in his saddlebags. “You’ll be alright soon.”

“Are you sure?” Naida looked up at him through squinted eyes.

He nodded, turning back to meet her gaze with a forced half-smile on his lips. “You will. A wound like this… It’s like a rite of passage. Every knight gets one at some point in her life. And when we get back to Brerra, you’ll get to tell everyone at the castle about how you fought a mercenary in Younis and survived.” As he spoke his smile turned slightly more playful. It was easier not to think about the gash in his sister’s side when he kept himself talking, and he could see her light up a little as well.

“Yeah. Right,” her lips curved upward, though he could see her throat move in a nervous swallow. “And father will see I was ready to handle a real job as a knight.”

“Exactly, so that’s why you need to just lie still and let Rayner patch you up, okay?”

“Okay.”

Giving the princess a break from conversation, Crow lapsed into silence and looked up to count trees until the other man returned with the supplies he needed to close her wound. When he came back, Rayner knelt to take his spot, and the viceroy gladly got up to give them space. He removed himself from the vicinity to pace along the edge of the clearing, doing his best not to feel squeamish as Naida occasionally moaned and whimpered through the painful treatment. His hands felt sticky from her blood, but he hadn’t quite calmed down enough to take the time to clean them off, so he just tried to ignore the feeling as he walked along the tree line.

After a minute or so, he noticed movement in the distance, coming from the same direction as he and Rayner had earlier. Stopping in place, the former thief watched until he recognized the faces of Preston and Percival riding with the rest of the Younisians in tow. “Over here!” he called, waving a hand to flag them down. “We found her!”

The other men noticed him and hurried over on horseback. Without waiting, Percival dropped to the ground and jogged—or rather, limped hastily—over to Rayner to ask if there was any way he could offer assistance, while Preston hung back by Crow’s side, watching the scene with a scrunched face. “Is she going to be alright?”

“I don’t know yet,” Crow murmured, avoiding his servant’s eyes. “She’s coherent enough to talk, but she’s lost a lot of blood.”

Preston nodded. For a few beats, they both fell quiet. Then, his servant spoke up again.

“Do you need help getting cleaned up?”

Crow blinked and glanced down at himself. He hadn’t noticed it before, but while he’d been keeping the princess from bleeding out on the forest floor, the red stains had reached more than just the palms of his hands. Reluctantly, he let his attendant scrub the drying blood off his skin and clothing until Rayner announced that Naida was stable enough to transport, and they all pitched in to create a makeshift sling between two horses, which was then used to carry her into the next town ahead of them.

Along the way, Crow and Percival offered their limited knowledge about the mercenaries to the Younisian knights, who planned to pass word along to the other nearby guards in the hopes that they could catch the ones who had escaped. The knights also assured them that they would increase their security measures along the major roadways to the capital, so they could rest easy knowing that they would be safe from ambushes for the rest of their journey.

Crow wasn’t convinced they would be able to hold the mercenaries off forever, but he thanked them for their vigilance before he parted ways with the rest of his group to settle in at an inn.

For good measure, Rayner ventured out into the village to look for a physician to evaluate Naida’s condition while the viceroy and his entourage brought her up the stairs in her makeshift sling to their shared room for the night. Once she was lying on the bed closest to the door, Crow sat down heavily on one of the free cots near the back and stripped off his surcoat and undershirt to assess the damage from his earlier fall off Baine. His side hadn’t stopped aching since the adrenaline of the fight had worn off.

And the pain made sense to him when he saw the mottled green bruise that had taken up residence on his ribcage. He brushed it gingerly with his fingertips and hissed at the tenderness.

“That looks painful.”

Lifting his gaze, the former thief found Percival standing over him with furrowed brows. With Preston sitting in Naida’s company, the knight had stepped away from her to make good on the promise he’d made in the woods before. “If you’d like it, there’s a salve in the medical supplies that should take the edge off.”

“Please,” Crow nodded. Exhaling slowly, he leaned back on the palm of a hand while the knight dug in a leather bag until he retrieved a small sealed jar. Percival handed it off to him, and he twisted the lid off with a word of thanks, applying a dab of the cream inside to his bruise.

For a minute or so, they sat quietly. The only sound in the room was that of Naida and Preston having a hushed conversation at her cot. Percival watched the viceroy treat his own wound, reclining against the bed across from him with his hands clasped loosely in his lap. His lips were pursed and his eyes thoughtful, and when Crow was done with the salve, the knight looked up to catch his gaze. “So… about Otto.”

Crow paused in the middle of setting the jar down beside him. “Right,” he mused. Now that things had calmed down and Rayner wasn’t with them, it was the perfect time to discuss the other man’s father. Glancing at Preston, who had looked up at the sound of Otto’s name, he frowned as he thought back over the run-in he’d had with the baron in the woods. “Not long after the mercenaries attacked us, I noticed him standing off in the distance, watching,” he started, turning back to Percival. “I don’t know exactly what he was doing there, but I didn’t want to let him get away from us again, so I went after him.

“He tried to run, but I caught up to him and tried to make him tell me what was going on… I didn’t get much out of him before one of those men showed up and put an arrow through his head though.” He wrinkled his nose at the mental image. “All I managed to wring out of him was that he claimed he was being forced to help someone and that there was some sort of change to their plans.”

“What does that mean?” Percival asked.

“He said something about a different trap for someone before the king chose to send me to Younis instead of Gorm. Apparently when that changed, I became the target instead.” Crow studied a crack in the wall to his right idly. “It sounds to me like whoever was pulling the strings behind this attack really doesn’t want our two kingdoms to be negotiating right now.”

“But this war has been hard on everyone,” Preston suddenly spoke up from across the room, wearing a perplexed expression. “Why would anyone, Brerratic or Younisian, want to stop us from ending it?”

Crow lifted his hands in a broad shrug. “Beats me, but whoever it is was apparently desperate enough to blackmail Otto into helping by threatening his family. He said that if he refused to do what they wanted, Rayner and his wife would have been killed.” He paused as another piece of the conversation came back to him. “And he also said he wasn’t the only one they’re using. There was someone else in the castle that was relaying orders to him… I think it’s someone close to the king.”

“That isn’t good,” Percival exhaled anxiously. “If there’s a traitor among King Albin’s circle, he needs to be made aware of it before they do any more damage.”

“But how?” Preston shook his head. “It’s not like we can just send him a letter. If this person has informants, they’ll intercept it for sure.”

“We just need to wrap up this trip and get back to the castle as quickly as we can,” Crow said, glancing at Naida, who seemed to have fallen asleep at some point during their conversation. “For now, we focus on getting to the Younisian king, negotiating for a truce, and keeping a lookout for mercenaries until we’re safe in our own land again. Ending the war is top priority.”

“Agreed,” Percival nodded, standing up from his bed. “And on that note, I will wait up for Rayner and the physician, so the two of you should get some rest. I have a feeling we’re going to have a long ride tomorrow.”

“Probably,” Crow sighed, turning to lay down on his cot. Taking the knight’s advice, he and Preston both settled in for bed, and Percival put out the oil lamps everywhere in the room except near Naida, so the physician could see her when he arrived.

As the room darkened, the former thief closed his eyes and rolled over to face the back wall, shifting to make himself comfortable on the thin mat underneath him. Now that they’d been attacked once, he didn’t know what to expect for the rest of the journey. He just hoped the mercenaries were only after him and that Penelope was safe in the outer villages. Pulling the sheet up over his head, he sent a prayer to any god that would listen that she would be left alone and that he and his group would make it to the Younisian palace without any more ambushes.