The work was tedious and time-consuming. Every moment I spent creating this false trail was another moment Isabeau rode deeper into danger, another moment she pulled farther away from me. But it was necessary. Without this precaution, Gaspard would find her within hours.
I dismounted at the water’s edge, studying my work with a critical eye. It looked as though multiple riders had met at this spot, perhaps a patrol or a hunting party, before splitting off in different directions. Good. Let Gaspard waste precious time trying to determine which set of tracks to follow.
As I stood there, chest heaving slightly from exertion, I imagined Gaspard’s face when he arrived at this spot. The perfect mask of courtly manners would slip, revealing the predator beneath. He would recognize the deception immediately—he was too skilled not to—but it would still cost him time to untangle the true trail from the false ones. Time Isabeau needed. Time I needed to reach her first.
My thoughts turned darker as I mounted up again. What had Gaspard done to her in Thorndale? She’d never spoken of it directly, but I’d seen the shadows in her eyes when his name was mentioned, had watched her hands tremble at dinner. Whatever horrors she’d endured at his hands had been enough to drive her into the Forbidden Forest rather than remain under his power.
“Magic,” I murmured, remembering my father’s words.Witch,they’d called her. As if having power different from their own was sufficient reason to hunt her down and burn her alive.
I’d never believed in magic to be evil even before finding Isabeau in that dungeon. Had dismissed the stories of witches and curses as peasant superstitions, useful for controlling the masses but meaningless to educated men like myself. I had witnessed Isabeau heal Thibaut from a poisoning that should have been fatal. She could’ve let him die, could’ve used her powers to leave my side sooner. So did she stay once she unlocked her gift? That’s what made my heart flutter a bit.
Though, perhaps there was more truth to her talk of beasts and curses than I’d been willing to admit. Perhaps the magic my father feared was real after all, but it didn’t come from her. Never her.
I turned my stallion’s head toward the forest looming in the distance. Dark and foreboding, its trees twisted into unnatural shapes as if shaped by malevolent hands. The Forbidden Forest had claimed countless lives over the centuries. Those who entered rarely returned, and those who did were never the same.
And that was precisely where Isabeau was headed. Where I must follow.
A shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the morning chill. I was a warrior, trained in combat since boyhood. I had led men into battle, had faced opponents twice my size without flinching. But the forest ahead inspired a primal fear I couldn’t entirely suppress. I’d killed one monster before being chased by a pack of them.
What else waited in those shadows? What beasts had left those marks on Isabeau’s shoulder? And why was she so desperate to return to them?
Questions I couldn’t answer from here. Questions that wouldn’t matter if Gaspard found her first.
I dug my heels into my stallion’s flanks, urging him into a gallop toward the forest’s edge. The wind whipped past my face, cold enough to sting my eyes and bring unwelcome moisturethat I blinked away impatiently. Not tears. Just the wind. Second sons of kings didn’t cry, not even when they betrayed everything they’d been raised to uphold.
The distance melted beneath my mount’s powerful strides. Isabeau had a head start, but she’d also rested beneath that bridge. I’d been riding through the night, pushing myself and my stallion to our limits. With luck, I would catch her before she penetrated too deeply into the forest’s dangers.
With each hoofbeat, the trees grew larger, more menacing. The morning light seemed unable to penetrate the canopy, as if darkness itself had claimed permanent residence beneath those twisted branches. Legends spoke of people who entered the Forbidden Forest during daylight only to find themselves in eternal night once within its borders.
I didn’t know if I believed those stories, but I wasn’t eager to test them either. Yet I would. For her.
The first twisted trees were now just minutes away, their gnarled limbs reaching toward me like arthritic fingers. I leaned lower over my stallion’s neck, urging more speed even as fatigue burned through my muscles. Somewhere ahead, Isabeau rode toward whatever fate awaited her in that accursed place. Somewhere behind, Gaspard and perhaps others followed, intent on a hunt that would end in her death.
Between those two terrible possibilities, I rode. Not quite hero, not quite villain. Just a man who had finally found something worth fighting for beyond duty and crown.
As the first shadows of the forest fell across my face, I made a silent promise to the woman I pursued. I would find her. I would protect her. And this time, I would listen to her truth, however strange it might seem to my rational mind.
The Forbidden Forest swallowed me whole, darkness descending like a curtain as I passed beyond the boundary of civilized lands. There was no turning back now. For either of us.
fifty
Isabeau
The hoofbeats echoed through the forest behind me like a funeral march, steady and determined in their pursuit. I knew those rhythms, recognized that cadence of royal breeding and stubborn will. My shoulders tightened beneath the borrowed cloak, fingers clenching around reins that had long since rubbed my palms raw.
Of course he’d come. The second son of Durand, Prince Alain Legrand, couldn’t bear to let his pretty pet wander off alone intothe darkness. Not when he’d declared me his so decisively in that tower room, his voice dripping with the same possessiveness that had colored Gaspard’s every word.
I urged the mare faster, but she was as tired as I was, her strides already labored from hours of pushing through the forest’s uneven terrain. My thighs burned from gripping her sides, my back a roadmap of knots and bruises from the hard saddle. The amber stone pulsed in my pocket, warm against my hip like a silent heartbeat urging me forward. Forward to the beasts. Forward to my purpose.
But the hoofbeats grew louder, closing the distance I’d fought so hard to put between us. The raven circled overhead, its wings cutting dark patterns against the filtered sunlight that barely penetrated the forest canopy. It called once, sharp and urgent, as if warning me of the futility of my flight.
“I know,” I whispered to it, my voice rough from disuse. “But I have to try.”
My mare stumbled slightly on a protruding tree root, and I bit back a cry as the jarring motion sent pain shooting through my already battered body. I was still weak from the poison, from weeks of confinement in that gilded prison but it now mixed with being saddle sore. The forest around me blurred at the edges, exhaustion threatening to claim me entirely. I’d pushed too hard, rode too long without sufficient rest.
And now he’d found me.
The sound of rushing water grew louder to my left. The river curving back toward our path was the same one running along my village, but this split off as a fork to run in the woods. Its silver ribbon visible through gaps in the trees. I guided the mare closer to the water’s edge, half-formed plans of using the current to throw off my pursuer flitting through my mind. But it was too late.