We broke camp before the sun fully cleared the mountains, packing quickly, neither of us saying much.
The horses were skittish that morning, ears twitching at every small sound in the trees. Storm kept tossing his head, like he could sense something I could not.
"He does that when something is wrong," Seraphina said, watching him carefully. "He did it right before the bandits too."
My stomach tightened. "Great timing for him to start again."
We mounted up anyway, no other choice, the road narrowing ahead of us as it climbed higher into the foothills. Mist clung low to the ground, thick enough that I could barely see past the horse’s ears some stretches.
I checked the system out of habit. Eighty two days. Something hours. The number felt smaller every time I looked at it now, like it was accelerating toward something instead of just counting down evenly.
"New warning," the screen read. "Search parties dispatched by Duke Blackwood have entered the northern road. Estimated distance, unknown. Recommendation, avoid main routes where possible."
I read it twice before saying anything.
"My father sent people after us."
Seraphina glanced over. "How many."
"It does not say. Just that they are on the northern road. Somewhere behind us, or ahead, I cannot tell."
She frowned, pulling her horse closer to mine. "Then we should leave the main road. There is a smaller trail through the tree line, longer, but less likely anyone would think to search it."
"You know this area."
"My family used to hunt in these mountains, years ago. Before things got complicated." She said it lightly, but something in her voice suggested there was more to that sentence than she was giving me right now.
We turned off the main road within the hour, cutting through dense trees on a barely visible trail, branches scraping against my sleeves, the mist making everything feel closer than it actually was.
The quiet pressed in around us differently out here. No birds. No wind moving through the leaves. Just our horses’ hooves against damp earth and my own breathing, too loud in my own ears.
"This is worse than the main road," I muttered eventually. "At least there we could see."
"We can see enough," Seraphina said, though she did not sound entirely certain either.
We rode like that for hours, the trail winding steadily upward, the air growing thinner and colder with every mile. My legs had gone past aching into something closer to numb, and I was fairly sure Seraphina felt the same, though she would never say so out loud.
Around midday, she suddenly pulled her horse to a stop, one hand raised.
I stopped too, holding my breath. "What."
"Listen."
I listened. At first, nothing. Then, faint, carried strangely through the mist, the sound of hooves. Multiple sets. Moving fast, somewhere below us on what I assumed was the main road we had abandoned that morning.
"That could be them," I whispered.
"It could be anyone." But her hand had already moved to the dagger at her boot. "Get off the trail. Now."
We led the horses carefully off the path and into the trees, crouching low behind a fallen log thick enough to hide us both. The hoofbeats grew louder, then closer, then close enough that I could hear voices carrying faintly through the fog.
"...said they went north, could be anywhere by now..."
"...Duke wants them found before nightfall, no excuses..."
"...if the boy’s with the girl, she’ll fight, keep that in mind..."
My whole body went cold. They knew about Seraphina. Knew she would fight. The Duke had sent people who had clearly been briefed on exactly what they might be walking into.
Seraphina’s jaw was tight beside me, eyes fixed on the fog where the voices had come from. Four horses, maybe five, moving steadily along the main road below us, close enough that if we had stayed on that path even ten minutes longer, we would have ridden straight into them.
The sounds slowly faded as the riders continued past, the mist swallowing hoofbeats and voices alike until there was nothing left but silence and my own heart hammering too loud in my chest.
"That was close," I breathed.
"Too close." Seraphina finally released the breath she had been holding. "We cannot use the main road again. Not until we are well past wherever they are searching."
"Do you think they will find the trail we took."
"Maybe. Eventually." She stood, brushing dirt from her knees. "We need to move faster than eventually."
We mounted back up and pushed on, the trail growing rougher the higher we climbed, the mist finally starting to burn away under weak afternoon sunlight. The mountains rose sharply on either side now, grey stone cutting into a pale sky, and somewhere among them, the Grey Tower was waiting.
I kept thinking about the voice from the search party. If the boy’s with the girl, she’ll fight. My father had warned his men specifically about her. Which meant he had noticed, at some point, exactly how capable she was, and had decided that mattered enough to mention.
"He knows things about her he never told me," I said, thinking out loud without quite meaning to.
Seraphina glanced over. "What."
"Never mind. Just thinking."
"You are terrible at hiding your thoughts from someone who can hear them directly."
"Fair point." I exhaled slowly. "The men searching for us, they knew you would fight. Someone told them that specifically. My father must know more about your combat training than I do."
Her expression flickered, something guarded passing behind her eyes before she smoothed it over. "My family is not exactly secretive about it within noble circles. It is not so surprising he would know."
That was true, technically, but it did not fully explain the flicker I had just seen cross her face. I filed the thought away instead of pushing, sensing this was not the moment.
We stopped again as evening approached, finding a small hollow between two large rocks that offered decent shelter from the wind. No fire this time. Too risky, with search parties somewhere in the mountains behind us.
We ate cold rations in near silence, wrapped in blankets against the growing chill, shoulders pressed together for warmth more than anything else.
"Ethan," Seraphina said eventually, voice quiet in the dark.
"Yeah."
"When we find Lily. What if the truth is something you cannot come back from. Something that changes everything you think you know about yourself."
I had been turning that same question over in my own head for hours already. "Then I deal with it. I do not really have another option at this point."
"You always have options."
"Do I." I looked over at her, barely visible in the dim light. "The story wants me dead in ninety days. My father apparently built a secret tower and hid my sister and God knows what else inside it. My mother died finding out something about my own family that I still do not understand. I feel like every option I have just leads deeper into the same mess."
She was quiet for a moment, then reached over and took my hand under the blanket. "Then we go deeper together. That is still a choice. Maybe the only one that actually matters right now."
I squeezed her hand back, grateful for something solid to hold onto in the dark.
Somewhere in the distance, faint and easy to miss if I had not been listening for exactly this, I heard it again. Hoofbeats. Fainter this time, further away, but unmistakably real.
Seraphina heard it too, her whole body going still beside me.
"They are still searching," she whispered.
"Do you think they know which trail we took."
"I do not know." Her hand tightened around mine. "But we should not stay here longer than we have to."
We sat in tense silence a while longer, listening, until the faint hoofbeats finally faded completely into the mountain wind. Neither of us fully relaxed, even after the sound was gone.
I checked the system one more time before finally letting exhaustion pull me toward sleep.
"Search parties remain active in the region. Distance from host, unknown. Recommendation, maintain vigilance."
Vigilance. As if I had been doing anything else since the moment I opened my eyes in this body.
I closed the screen and let my head rest back against the cold rock behind me, Seraphina curled close against my side, both of us too tired and too wired at once to properly sleep.
Somewhere above us, hidden in clouds and distance, the Grey Tower waited with whatever truth it had been built to hide.
Somewhere behind us, my father’s men searched the mountains, closer than I wanted to think about.
And somewhere further back than that, at the edge of memories I barely trusted, fragments of my mother kept surfacing without warning. A humming voice. The smell of something sweet baking. A hand smoothing hair back from a child’s forehead.
None of it made sense yet. None of it fit together into anything solid.
But it was there now, closer to the surface than it had been before we left the estate, like something in these mountains was pulling it loose piece by piece.
I did not know if that was a good thing or a very bad one.
I closed my eyes anyway, Seraphina’s steady breathing beside me the only thing keeping the spiraling thoughts from pulling me completely under. 🏔️