Two hours. That was all the mercy the Blackwood Forest was willing to grant them.
Ciro's eyes snapped open the moment the moon began its descent past the tree line. He hadn't truly slept; sleep was a luxury for the safe. Instead, he had drifted in a grey, fugue state of hyper-awareness—a predator's rest—where his body remained still, but his ears cataloged every snap of a twig and every rustle of the wind.
The cold was biting. The damp clothes clung to his skin like a second, freezing layer of flesh. But beneath the cold, the chemical burns from the Basilisk blood on his arms still throbbed with a dull, persistent heat, a reminder of the hell they had just crawled out of.
He touched Elara's shoulder gently. "Elara. Wake up."
She didn't groan or shift sluggishly. She jerked awake with a sharp intake of breath, her hand flying instinctively to her throat. Her eyes were wide, darting frantically around the shadows of the clearing. It broke Ciro's heart slightly to see how quickly her royal softness had been hardened into the jumpy paranoia of a fugitive.
"Is it... are they here?" she whispered, her voice cracking.
"Not yet," Ciro said, standing up. He winced as his bruised ribs protested the movement. "But the wind has shifted. It's blowing from the West now. It will carry our scent down into the valley."
He helped her stand. Her legs were stiff, and she swayed slightly, but she didn't complain.
"We move," Ciro commanded softly.
They left the temporary sanctuary of the waterfall, heading deeper into the dense, tangled thicket of the Blackwood. The terrain here was unforgiving—ancient roots coiled like snakes across the path, and the canopy was so thick it blotted out the stars, turning the world into a monochromatic maze of grey and black.
Ciro moved with a disturbing, jagged rhythm—three steps forward, pause, listen, look back. He broke a pine branch and swept it behind them periodically, erasing the deep indentations of their boots from the soft, wet earth.
Elara tried to mimic him. She stepped where he stepped, keeping her breathing shallow to minimize the vapor cloud in the cold air. She was learning. The pampered Princess who used to trip on her own velvet hem in the palace corridors was gone. In her place was a frightened creature, yes, but one who was learning to survive.
They walked for twenty minutes in relative silence.
Then, suddenly, Ciro froze mid-step.
He didn't crouch. He didn't draw his weapon. He simply turned into a statue. He held up a clenched fist—the universal signal for absolute stop.
He didn't look at the ground for tracks. He looked up.
"What is it?" Elara mouthed silently, her heart beginning to hammer against her ribs.
Ciro didn't answer. His black eyes were fixed on the heavy branch of an ancient oak tree about thirty yards to their left. It was empty. Just bark and moss.
But to Ciro, the emptiness was the warning.
"The birds," Ciro whispered, his voice barely a vibration in the air. "They stopped singing."
Elara strained her ears. He was right. The rhythmic chirping of the nightjars, the distant hooting of owls, the rustle of nocturnal rodents—it had all vanished. The forest had fallen into a heavy, unnatural silence. It was the kind of silence that happens when a predator enters a room.
"Something frightened them," Ciro murmured, his hand drifting to the hilt of his single dagger. "Something that moves quietly. Something that knows we are here."
He crouched low, his eyes scanning the forest floor with obsessive detail. He inspected a patch of moss near the base of a fern. To an untrained eye, it looked completely untouched.
But Ciro saw it.
A single blade of grass, bent against the grain. It wasn't broken. It wasn't crushed by a heavy boot. It was merely depressed, as if someone had stepped there with the grace of a ghost only moments ago.
Someone had stepped here. Recently. And they were wearing soft-soled leather moccasins, not the heavy, clanking iron-shod boots of the Royal Guard.
A chill that had nothing to do with the winter air slid down Ciro's spine.
"Rangers," Ciro cursed under his breath. The word tasted like ash. "Valerius didn't just send the army. He sent the Rangers."
"Rangers?" Elara asked, stepping closer to him.
"The King's elite trackers. They don't carry banners. They don't shout orders," Ciro explained, his eyes darting around the shadows, calculating angles, calculating wind speed. "They hunt men like they hunt deer. They don't want to capture us, Elara. They want to pin us."
THWIP.
The sound was sharp and sudden—like a bedsheet tearing in half.
Ciro didn't think. He reacted.
He shoved Elara hard to the right. She hit the dirt with a grunt just as a black-fletched arrow slammed into the oak tree exactly where her head had been a fraction of a second ago.
The arrow didn't just stick; it buried itself halfway into the hardwood, the shaft humming violently with the force of the impact.
"Run!" Ciro roared, abandoning all pretense of stealth.
He grabbed her hand and hauled her up. They sprinted through the underbrush, branches whipping their faces like lashes.
THWIP. THWIP.
Two more arrows struck the ground at their heels, kicking up sprays of dirt.
"They are herding us!" Ciro realized as they ran, his mind racing.
The arrows weren't missing. Rangers didn't miss stationary targets at thirty yards. They were firing wide on purpose. They were cutting off the escape routes to the North and South, forcing Ciro and Elara to run East.
"Where are we going?" Elara gasped, her lungs burning, her legs screaming in protest.
"Not where they want us to go!" Ciro shouted back.
He saw the trap closing. To the East lay the open valley—a killing field.
"Left!"
He took a sharp, suicidal turn, diving straight into a thicket of black-thorn briars. It was a brutal path. The thorns were an inch long and as hard as iron needles. They tore at their clothes and skin, drawing lines of blood across their faces, but the thicket was too dense for arrows to penetrate effectively.
"Keep your head down!"
They scrambled through the briar patch, Ciro using his body as a plow, hacking a path with his dagger while shielding Elara from the worst of the thorns.
When they finally burst out the other side, they were bleeding, breathless, and their clothes were in tatters.
But the relief was short-lived.
Ciro skidded to a halt, his boots finding the edge of a precipice.
"No..."
They were standing on the lip of a steep, jagged ravine. Below them, a white mist swirled violently, hiding the bottom. The drop was easily a hundred feet into the unknown.
"Dead end," Elara cried, looking back at the briar patch they had just exited.
The silence returned. The arrows stopped.
From the shadows of the trees they had just left, a figure emerged. He didn't make a sound. He simply materialized from the bark. He was dressed in mottled green and grey cloaks that shifted with the light, blending perfectly with the forest.
He held a longbow—tall as a man, made of yew—with an arrow nocked and drawn to his ear.
Then, a second figure stepped out from behind a fern. Then a third from the canopy above.
Five Rangers.
They stood in a perfect semi-circle, blocking the only escape route back to the forest. They didn't speak. They didn't pant from exertion. They just watched, their bows drawn, waiting for the order.
They were the King's Hounds. And they had cornered the Wolf.
Ciro stepped in front of Elara, raising his single, blood-stained dagger. It was a pathetic defense against five master archers. He knew it. They knew it.
The lead Ranger lowered his hood slowly.
He was a man Ciro recognized from the court—a man named Silas. He had a scar running through his lip, twisting his mouth into a permanent sneer. Silas didn't look angry. He looked bored. Professional.
"The Jester," Silas called out, his voice calm and carrying easily across the clearing. "The King sends his regards. He told us you were slippery."
Silas adjusted his aim, the iron arrowhead pointing directly at Ciro's heart.
"He also said you tell good jokes."
The Ranger drew the bowstring back another inch. The wood groaned under the tension.
"Make me laugh."