Celeste had a head start and a horse, but she was six weeks pregnant and riding alone through neutral woods in the dark, and Ironfang were the best trackers in the territory.
We caught her at the river.
She'd dismounted to find a crossing the spring melt had the water high and fast, too dangerous to ride and she was standing at the bank with the coalition map rolled in one hand and her other arm wrapped under her belly when Cain's wolves came out of the trees and surrounded her.
She didn't run. There was nowhere to run. She turned to face us with her back to the river, pale in the moonlight, and she looked at me only at me and she didn't beg.
"You weren't supposed to find out like this," she said.
The bond went cold in my throat. There it was. A confession in five words.
"So it's tru
