Black Hollow's cliffs towered like the serrated teeth of some sleeping monster. Fog crept along the ravine like a draft from its lungs. Clara hid low behind a mess of rocks, the ground biting through her gloves.
Behind her, four soldiers trailed in silence, soot-painted faces, knives buckled tight.
None of them spoke.
They didn't have to.
Clara had gone incognito, wearing nothing out of the ordinary — scuffed boots, cut hair, no hint of perfume or refinement to be found. She hadn't been Lady Clara Beaumont in years.
Now she was a ghost. An apparition moving into the shadows of an army that didn't even notice she was passing.
The ledge under her gave way slightly as she eased along the trail. It was steep and tight, one misstep from falling that would shatter more than bones. But Clara's fingers were steady. Her breathing slow.
She had climbed out of worse than this. She'd lived through worse men.
This was just another foe to beat.
Nightfall in the Hollow
By the time they reached the rim of the enemy camp, the sky had been consumed by night.
Through the dying trees and low boulders, Clara saw them — striped tents of enemy black and red, low-flicking fires in steel pits, shadowy figures between them like wolves on patrol.
She motioned with two fingers. Her team broke silently, spacing out.
She crept closer.
The enemy did not anticipate this.
Their sentries were boisterous, restless, young — voices ringing in the stillness. One of them slept beside a barrel of arrows. Another paced lazy circles, the rhythm steady, counted to the second.
Clara slid past him like wind through a keyhole.
At the corner of one of the command tents, she hunched low. Within, muffled voices barked in a dialect she knew — harsh, guttural, clipped. She didn't catch everything, but she heard the essentials.
A second siege. A decoy route.A trap.
They had learned of Everthorne's advance forward.They were waiting.
Her heart accelerated.
This was not a camp.It was bait.
Clara crept back to the others, heart thudding in her throat. She found Lark, the youngest in their crew, just as he was about to cross the exposed path.
She caught his arm and yanked him back just before a torchlight swept the spot where he'd been standing.
"No heroics," she whispered. "We're not here to die pretty."
He nodded, swallowing hard.
The Alarm
They were almost out when the shot cracked through the air.
A flare, hot and red, hissed into the sky.
They'd been discovered.
Clara didn't think — she fled.
"Go! Split!" she yelled.
Arrows ripped through the boughs surrounding her. One brushed against her thigh. Another buried itself into a tree mere inches from her nose. She dodged and rolled, wheeze scorching her chest, blood thickening her boot.
But she did not stop.
Through the trees. Down the rocks.Back into the fold of the cliffs.
By the time she fell on the forest floor, her hands were trembling, her leg bleeding, and her head reeling from fatigue.
But she was alive.
And she had the information.
Dawn
When Clara returned to camp, her face was smeared with mud and dried blood. Amelia was the first to reach her, grabbing her just as she stumbled.
"You're late," Amelia breathed, voice low but quivering.
"Needed to make it dramatic," Clara grunted, lips cracking into a slanted smile.
Claude entered next, jaw clenched, eyes wild — not with rage, but with concern.
Clara extended a rolled parchment and a tiny bloodstained map.
"They're not laying the groundwork for a siege," she croaked. "They're laying the groundwork to kill anyone who walks into Black Hollow."
She glared up, eyes fierce.
"They're expecting you. Every step. Every angle. You've been played."