Red rimmed Lady Nadine’s eyes as she gazed beyond the yellow line. “What kind of malsite do you think it is?”
“It’s difficult to be sure,” Rune said. There were two main classifications of malsites: bipermeable and unipermeable, which was a technical way of saying a person might pass in and out of one kind, but the other kind…once a body was in, they could never leave. This was the latter sort. If Princess Johanne had gone in, she would never come out. It was a terrible trap for anyone.
But that wasn’t the question Lady Nadine had asked. She wanted to know the subclassification—what kind of horror lurked within this bubble of malice.
Some were obvious, like those where gravity ceased to be relevant, or where breathable air had been sucked out and destroyed as the malsite formed. A person could look at those and see what was wrong. But others—no one knew. When people went in, they were never seen again. There were no stories, no theories, no reasons to hope.
There was just nothing.
“I can’t tell,” Rune murmured. “I am sorry.”
Lady Nadine dropped her head into her arms to muffle an anguished cry, and Rune’s heart broke.
“How could this happen?” Lady Nadine sobbed. “What will we do?”
Rune stood and offered her a hand. “My lady, please allow me to return you to your carriage.”
Sniffing, she took his hand and let him draw her to her feet. He gave her a moment to compose herself, and then called for the others to give up the search.
“I’m sorry,” he said, gazing toward the malsite. How terrible that it looked perfectly normal, just like the forest surrounding it. An illusion; a lie. “I’m afraid Princess Johanne is beyond our reach. Our best course of action is to return to the rest of the group for the night. We can send another search team out in the morning, but…” He didn’t finish the sentence. He shouldn’t have started it. Princes—especially crown princes—ought to know what to say to raise morale, but how could he even suggest that anything good might follow this?
The moment they’d crossed the border between Embria and Caberwill, responsibility for the delegation had shifted from the Embrian commander to him. Rune Highcrown. Royal bungler.
Years ago, the safety of his brother—Opus Highcrown IV—had been entrusted to him. Rune had trained all his life for that duty, to be his brother’s guard, his second, but when it mattered most, he hadn’t been fast enough. His failure had robbed the kingdom of their most-loved prince, and a man who would have made an unforgettable king.
And now he hadn’t been smart enough to protect Princess Johanne.
Only this time, the cost of his failure was so much higher. The alliance. The dream of peace. And the chance to address the true danger to humanity—the Incursions.
The burden had already been so heavy. From the moment his parents had informed him of the prospective alliance and the role he would play, he’d been terrified he would find a way to mess it up. But he’d endured the negotiations without incident—even secured a few items they’d wanted but been ready to concede if necessary. By the time they were ready to leave, he’d started to believe all of this would work out just the way he’d hoped.
And now his fiancée was trapped in a malsite, as good as dead.
Worse still, he feared he knew the identity of this creature Lady Nadine had seen. She wouldn’t name it; she was still too wrung out and terrified. But what other creature would shepherd a girl into a malsite? What other creature could destroy a man so thoroughly that a seasoned warrior refused to speak of it? What other creature might be described as a monster?
A rancor. It had to be.
But Rune kept that word to himself, for Lady Nadine’s sake.
As everyone prepared to leave, Lady Nadine felt through the pouch she wore and removed a clean handkerchief. Carefully, she placed it on the ground, then unclasped her pendant, tugged off her black rings, and fumbled with the catch of her bracelets. It was a fortune in obsidian.
“My lady?” Captain Oliver asked.
Lady Nadine didn’t bother to answer. Instead, with only a moment’s hesitation, she secured everything inside the fabric and fastened it using the clip on her own brooch.
“Who has the best arm?” She spoke softly, but looked around the group with a fierceness that rivaled Princess Johanne’s.
Swifthand stepped forward, and the rest nodded agreement. With great solemnity, he took the bundle. “Are you certain, my lady?” He wasn’t mocking her anymore.
She gave a firm nod, then handed the lieutenant Rune’s canteen; water sloshed inside, but there was precious little. “I would do anything for Hanne.”
Everyone watched as Lieutenant Swifthand hurled the obsidian-laden package across the yellow line, then the canteen. They sailed through the evening gloom, seemed to catch along that faint shimmer, and then vanished.
They waited a moment, to see if anything would happen, but then it was full dark and they needed to leave. They needed to collect Lord Bearhaste’s body—what was left of it—and get to Brink as quickly as possible. Perhaps they could find some way to rescue the alliance, if not the princess.
“Do you think it will make a difference?” one of the men asked, not quite low enough to escape Rune’s notice.
“I don’t know,” said another. “It’s probably too late.”
Rune hushed them, but privately, he agreed. A rancor had escaped the Malice; it was too late for all of them.
* * *
Still, in the morning, he sent John and a few other guards back to the malsite, bearing packs stuffed with food, water, and other supplies.
Just in case.
3.
HANNE
Hanne spent her first day in the malsite searching for a way out.
She ran her hands along the pellicle—the membrane-like barrier of the malsite—pushing and prodding, trying to find any weakness in the dark magic that had trapped her. It was so frustrating, because she could see clear to the other side. There were the trees she’d stumbled through, the yellow ribbons she’d overlooked in her terror. There was the cloudy sky, like lace through the green forest canopy.
She just…couldn’t get there.
The malsite was roughly circular, with a diameter of a hundred paces. It might have been an impressive size from the outside, had she noticed the yellow line and gone around it. Inside, however…Inside was a completely different story.
There were only trees here. Brush. The thinnest trickle of a stream, which somehow passed through the pellicle. When she tried to follow the water out, she couldn’t; she just jammed her fingers. She wasn’t the only one who had attempted to escape that way, either; when she felt around in the mud, the bones of tiny fish pricked her fingertips. They were piled up at the edge of the membrane. She dug a little deeper, hoping to open enough space for more water to come through to her, even though it was probably filthy and filled with diseases, and she had no way to boil it—but she got nowhere.