Lily ran through the evening forest like a small black ghost with bare feet, a stolen cloak, and terrible timing.
She moved quickly over moss, roots, leaves, and old animal paths, following the trail with practiced eyes. The forest did not confuse her. She knew how to read bent grass, broken fern tips, scraped bark, and the deep press of hooves in soft soil. Even in the dimming light, she could tell deer tracks from horse tracks well enough.
The problem wasn't the forest, it was that she had left too late.
The sun was already sinking behind the trees, spilling gold and orange through the branches while shadows thickened beneath the roots. Soon the forest would belong to night, and Lily did not like running at night. Walking was possible. Hiding was possible. But running in darkness was how people met roots, holes, snakes, low branches, and other natural punishments for stupidity.
She huffed as she ran, sweat gathering beneath Art's oversized cloak.
"Stupid sun," she muttered. "Bad timing."
She had promised Mister Terminator she would return in one day, maybe two.
Lily frowned.
"Three," she decided between breaths. "Three days. This day not count. Started late. Legal loophole."
That was fair, probably.
This was all Art's fault anyway. Stupid handsome berry thief. Stupid blue-eyed criminal with his stupid smile, stupid cloak, and stupid way of calling her cute as if words like that could be thrown at a person without consequences. Without him, she would not be running through the forest near sunset. She would have planned properly. Tomorrow morning, perhaps. Or next year. Or the year after that.
Lily's steps slowed for half a heartbeat.
Actually, without Art and Reinheart coming to her lake, she might never have left at all. That thought twisted strangely in her chest.
Then she scowled and ran faster.
"Still his fault," she said.
Also, he could have waited longer. Or given her a ride on that ridiculous horse of his. That would have been basic manners after invading her republic, stealing food, insulting her, and leaving behind emotionally dangerous clothing.
The hoof tracks continued ahead, faint but readable. Art and Reinheart's horses had moved cleanly through the trees, leaving deep marks only where the ground softened. Their long strides made the trail annoying, but not impossible. Lily followed it until the path passed between two old trunks and the tracks carried forward into darker forest.
Then she stopped.
From somewhere to her right came the sound of water. Not lake water. This was running water, quick and bright, spilling over stone. A stream, perhaps. Maybe even a waterfall.
Lily turned her head.
Through the trees, beyond thick brush and slanting evening light, a small forested hill rose in the distance. The sound came from there, faint but clear.
Her tiredness faded a little.
Water meant animals. Water meant paths. Most importantly, water sometimes meant people. Villages liked rivers and streams. Roads often followed them. Civilization, if it had any sense at all, should be somewhere near water. So if she found the water, then followed it, maybe she would find a road. Maybe a village, maybe Einsway.
The hoof tracks continued forward. The water called from the side.
A sensible person would keep following the horses. Lily knew that. She was not lost, and the trail was still readable.
But the sound of the water tugged at her curiosity harder than the tracks tugged at her caution.
"Just check quick," she whispered.
Then she turned and ran toward the forested hill.
The forest thickened near the slope. Ferns brushed her legs. Roots twisted through the ground. Low branches tugged at the black cloak as she pushed forward, excitement rising despite the ache in her legs.
Then a fallen tree appeared across her path.
Lily barely slowed. It was only an old mossy trunk with a few broken branches jutting upward. She had crossed worse things a thousand times. Without thinking, she planted one hand on the bark and vaulted over it.
For one perfect second, she was graceful.
The cloak flared behind her like a dark banner. Her bare feet touched down lightly on the far side, and she took one proud step forward.
Then the cloak caught, and something yanked her backward hard.
Lily's eyes went wide.
"Oh no—"
Her feet flew out from under her, and she hit the ground flat on her back with a painful thump. The air burst from her lungs.
For several seconds, she lay there staring up at the darkening leaves, mouth open, unable to breathe.
A squirrel stared down at her from a branch.
Lily wheezed.
"Do not laugh."
The squirrel did not laugh, although it looked like it wanted to.
Lily rolled onto her side with a groan, clutching her ribs. The pain was not serious, but it was extremely offensive. She looked back and found the cloak snagged neatly around a broken branch.
Of course.
She glared at it.
"Cloak big. Cloak stupid. Cloak attempted murder."
The fall had knocked more than air out of her. It had knocked a little sense back in.
She had been dragging a huge cloak through the forest like a trap. No wonder it kept catching. Art might have looked dramatic wearing it, but Art was tall, annoying, and probably trained from birth in the noble art of walking around with impractical rich-boy fabric.
Lily was not.
She untangled the cloak, gathered the loose length, wrapped it tighter around herself, and tied it over her simple clothes like a rough traveling robe. Then she pushed the hood back far enough that it no longer swallowed her face. It took several annoyed grunts, one failed knot, and a quiet threat to burn the cloak for treason, but at last the hem stopped dragging and her arms and legs could move freely.
She looked down at herself.
Now she really did look like a little forest ghost, if forest ghosts had flushed cheeks, messy pale hair, bare feet, and the deeply offended expression of someone betrayed by fashion. The cloak was still too big, still too heavy, and still far too warm, but at least it no longer seemed determined to kill her.
A clear improvement.
Mostly.
Lily tugged at the collar and made a face. The fabric was soft and well-made, comfortable against her skin, but it held heat like winter travel gear. Very noble. Very expensive. Very annoying.
"Hero clothing impractical," she muttered.
Then, with her dignity repaired enough to continue, she turned back toward the sound of water and climbed.
The hill was steeper than it had looked. Grass slipped under her feet, roots tangled across the slope, and brush caught at her ankles as if the forest had decided she had gone far enough for one day. More than once she had to grab a branch or mossy stone to pull herself higher. By the time the trees thinned near the top, sweat clung beneath the cloak and her breath came sharp in her throat.
The rush of water had grown loud enough to drown the smaller sounds of the forest.
At last, Lily pushed through a screen of young trees and stopped.
A pond lay hidden near the top of the hill.
It was small, no wider than her cabin, dark and clear beneath the fading sky. Water bubbled from somewhere between rocks at the far side, rising from deep underground before spilling over the edge of the hill in a narrow silver fall. Below, she could hear it crashing into another pool before running onward through the forest.
Lily stared, sweaty, thirsty, and suddenly delighted.
"Water."
She dropped to her knees, leaned down, and drank.
The first mouthful was cold enough to hurt her teeth and wonderful enough that she did not care. She drank again, slower this time, cupping the water in both hands and letting it wash the heat and dust from her throat.
Then a thought crept into her mind.
A hidden spring. Water from deep inside the earth. A secret pool on a forest hill.
In stories, places like this were always holy. Sacred wells, healing springs, fountains of youth, mystical water blessed by stone and darkness. Maybe this water had special properties. Maybe it healed sickness. Maybe it granted wishes. Maybe drinking enough would make her stronger, taller, wiser, and perhaps restore certain missing old-life proofs of manliness if she believed hard enough.
Lily waited for a moment, but nothing happened. She remained small, sweaty, barefoot, and unfortunately female.
"Bad magic water," she muttered.
Then she noticed the taste. Lily smacked her lips and frowned.
"Rust?"
She took one more careful sip. And indeed it was rust, not mud, not leaf rot. Not ordinary mineral water. It tasted like old pipe water from a building that should have been condemned.
Lily leaned over the pond and stared into the dark surface, curiosity pulling at her despite the fading light.
"Why you taste like pipe?" she muttered.
Maybe there was iron beneath the hill. Maybe some strange metal vein ran through the rock. Or maybe, impossibly, there was an actual pipe hidden deep below the earth, feeding water upward from somewhere unknown.
The thought hooked into her at once. A pipe meant construction. Construction meant people. Or ruins. Or ancient civilization. Or some horrible underground death place with excellent plumbing.
Lily was already searching for a stick to dig with when she heard men's voices through the roar of the waterfall.
She froze.
They were not Art and Reinheart. There were too many of them, and their voices sounded rougher, meaner, the kind of voices that made the back of her neck prickle. Laughter crawled up from below, half-drowned by rushing water, followed by the clink of metal, boots scraping stone, and the snort of horses.
Panic squeezed her chest.
She was not ready to meet more people. Especially not a whole group of big, scary men. She had barely survived one annoying boy and one terrifying old master.
Then the old police part of her mind woke beneath the fear, cold and steady.
Unknown number, unknown intent, likely armed. Do not move fast, do not make noise, do not announce yourself like an idiot heroine in a bad movie. Stay low, watch first.
Scared or not, this was now an investigation.
Lily dropped to her hands and knees and crawled toward the edge where the water spilled down the hill. She pulled Art's hood over her pale hair for extra stealth, then flattened herself onto her stomach for the last stretch. Slowly, carefully, she eased the hood back just enough to see.
Below, beside the larger pool, stood seven men.
For one strange heartbeat, Lily thought she was looking at medieval cosplayers from a convention or a movie set. They had helmets, shields, packs, tabards, spears, mail, leather, and mud-stained boots. Then the fantasy broke. Because there were no cameras, no plastic props, no crew standing around with water bottles and bored expressions. The steel looked real, the spearheads were sharp, the armor carried dents, scratches, rust, and old dried blood in places no costume should.
This was another clear sign that Lily was not in her old world.
Or, if this somehow was still the twenty-first century, then the twenty-first century had gone terribly wrong.
Maybe she was in a very rough part of the British Isles. That was still technically possible, since the men sounded somewhat British if someone had kicked British speech through a muddy medieval stable. But the armor was real. The horses were real. The spearheads were sharp. The longbow one man carried looked used, not decorative.
There were no cameras, no plastic props, no convention hall, no bored crew members holding coffee. Just armed men in a forest.
The men wore matching black tabards over their armor, each marked with a white lion rearing with a sword raised in one claw. The same symbol had been painted on shields, stitched into packs, and tied to horse gear. A company mark, then. Not rich knights, but not starving bandits either. They had decent weapons, rough armor, travel rolls, waterskins, spare straps, and the weary look of men who had fought often enough to stop caring how ugly they looked while doing it.
The White Lions, Lily guessed. Or perhaps the Naughty Lions. That sounded more accurate.
One man carried a longbow and watched the trees more than the water. Two leaned on spears. Another had a mace hanging from his belt. A broad man rested with an axe across his knees. Their shields lay nearby, scarred and mud-spattered, while their horses waited among the brush, chewing grass and stamping at flies.
Lily pressed herself lower against the moss.
Bad men, she thought.
Maybe not evil bad. But rough bad. Dangerous bad. The kind of bad that could become very bad if you were small, alone, and had no legal protection except a rusty knife.
One thick-shouldered man spat into the water. "Damn this cursed forest. It all looks the same. We passed this pool already, I tell you."
A narrow-faced man with stringy hair laughed through his nose. "No, no, Hobb. New pool. See the flowers? Prettier than last night's, yes? Water tastes like iron too. Your eyes are just crooked."
Hobb turned on him. "Shut your rat mouth, Nim."
Another man groaned and stretched his back. "I say we camp. We've been chasing ghosts for five days. All we've found is mud, deer tracks, and bloody chicken feathers."
"Don't speak of the chickens," muttered the archer.
The others laughed, but not loudly.
The archer did not smile. "Clever creatures, these forest birds. Won't stand still for an arrow. Scatter before I loose, as if they know."
Lily, despite everything, felt a tiny flicker of pride.
Her chicken age of discovery had clearly made an impression. The flock had spread far and wide, carrying the glorious reputation of Lily's Lake into the wider world.
Then branches cracked behind the men, and the laughter died.
A dirty gray horse pushed through the trees, carrying a broader rider in better armor. His black tabard bore the same white lion, but his mail was finer, his gauntlets better made, and a proper sword hung at his side. A round shield rode near his saddle, scarred but well-kept. He looked less like a knight than a knight who had been left in bad weather and learned to enjoy it.
Their leader, she guessed.
He swung down with a grunt and pulled off his full-faced helmet, revealing a hard face, a broken nose, and a pale scar cutting across one cheek.
The men straightened, not with respect, exactly. More like a pack of dogs recognizing the one dog that bit hardest.
The scarred man looked them over with disgust. "What are you lazy bastards sitting around for? We have a job."
Hobb spread his hands. "Boss, we've been searching since dawn. Let us rest for the night."
"We are not paid by the hour," the boss said. "We are paid when the work is finished."
"For what?" Hobb muttered. "A cabin by a lake? That could be anywhere. This forest is huge. And if the girl's been out here near ten years, she's gone or dead by now."
Lily's blood chilled at the words, "Girl. Ten years. Cabin by a lake."
The boss turned on him. "Doesn't matter. We find the cabin, confirm whether anyone is there, and we get paid. But if we find her alive?" His mouth curved into a hard smile. "A thousand gold coins."
The men went quiet.
Even Lily understood enough to know that was a monstrous amount of money.
The boss let the silence sit for a moment. "That is retirement money, lads. No more jobs. No more cold roads. No more chasing bandits through rain. So stop whining and find me that girl."
The men suddenly looked far less tired.
Nim rubbed his hands together, though his eyes still flicked toward the trees. "Gold sounds sweet, boss, but the woods are wrong. Rats snatched a whole loaf from my pack last night. Rabbits watching from bushes. Foxes following. Eyes everywhere."
Another man pulled his pack closer as if expecting it to crawl away. "He's right. Something moves when you're not looking."
The boss's mouth twisted. "That is why we do not stop until we must. I want out of this forest as fast as God allows."
The younger spearman glanced toward him. "What about the two black riders? Did they give you anything useful?"
Lily's heart jumped.
Black riders.
The boss sighed. "Monster hunters. Master and apprentice. Said they were cutting through toward the east after clearing the heart of the forest."
"Clearing it?" Hobb snorted. "From what?"
"Nothing, according to them. No cabin. No lake worth note. No bandits. No monsters. Just foxes, trees, and too much green."
Lily pressed closer to the stone. Art and Reinheart, they had met these men. And they had not told them about her lake. Maybe they were not so bad after all.
The archer shifted his longbow on his shoulder. "You think they found the girl?"
The boss frowned. "Doubt it. If they had, they would have taken her. If she were dangerous, they would have slain her. More likely they saw nothing, or they saw something and decided it was none of our business."
"Then we are close?" Nim asked.
"Maybe." The boss looked toward the forest. "Close enough that I do not trust them."
Hobb grunted. "Master's mad, paying that much for a mere girl. Shared blood or not, no girl is worth a thousand gold."
"Aye," the boss said. "Usually. But this is not just any bastard girl. I was given a description, and if it is true, she has a look about her that would make nobles choke on their wine."
The men leaned in despite themselves.
The boss lowered his voice. "My guess? She is a marriage piece. The master has sons enough. A daughter, bastard or not, is only useful if she can be traded high."
One of the men snorted. "Noble girls are all contracts and cradles."
The men laughed roughly.
The boss smiled without humor. "True. But what if the contract were royal?"
The laughter stopped, as a quiet understanding passed through them.
The archer stared. "Surely not."
The boss shrugged. "I said if. But a thousand gold says the master thinks she matters. So get on your horses and keep your eyes open."
Below, the boss shoved his helmet back on.
The men mounted with renewed energy, gathering shields, spears, packs, and reins. The boss led them westward through the trees, black tabards and white lions shifting between trunks until the forest swallowed them one by one. Their hoofbeats faded slowly, heading in a direction that made Lily's stomach twist.
They were going toward her lake.
For a moment, she could not move. They were looking for her. Probably her. There could not be many girls hidden for nearly ten years beside cabins and lakes in this forest. But why? What had she done? Who was this master? What had happened to Mama? What had happened to Papa Rob? How did these men even know there was a girl to find?
Only Art and Reinheart had seen her, and they had said nothing.
Lily swallowed.
She was grateful for that. Confused, but grateful.
Her thoughts jumped to home. Mister Terminator. Miss Attitude. Big Mama. The hens. New Town. Her tools. Her bow, which she had stupidly left behind. Her papers. Her garden.
What if the men found it?
They might break things. Steal food. Trample plants. Hurt the animals.
Her hands clenched.
Then she forced herself to breathe. The animals knew how to hide. They had proved that against Art and Reinheart, to Lily's great shame and now great relief. Her mighty army was cowardly, yes, but cowardice was sometimes tactical wisdom. The chickens could flee to roofs and branches. The mice could vanish into New Town. The foxes could melt into the brush. Mister Terminator would know what to do.
Hopefully.
If the men found the cabin and Lily was not there, then they would find very little worth taking. Some tools. Some food. Some strange clay houses. Things could be rebuilt. Plants could regrow. Clay could be shaped again.
Chickens could not.
"Hide," Lily whispered, as if the forest could carry the order home. "All of you hide. No hero chicken stuff. Please."
She stayed still until the last hoofbeat faded beneath the trees. Only when the waterfall became the loudest sound in the world again did she finally breathe properly.
The smart choice was to go home.
Warn everyone. Get her bow. Prepare traps. Move what mattered.
But if she went home now, she would still know nothing. No roads. No laws. No villages. No reason why armed men were hunting her. Years ago, she had heard voices and dogs in the forest too. Men searching. Men lost. She had thought that danger had passed. Yet it had not, maybe it never would.
If she wanted answers, she had to find people before the wrong people found her again.
Art and Reinheart had said they would pass through Einsway after going east. Rob had come from Einsway. If Lily wanted to understand this world, her mother, Rob, the bad men, and the price placed on her own head, then Einsway was the first real clue.
She could not fight eight armed men with a rusty knife and bare feet, but she could investigate. That was different.
Lily rose carefully, adjusted the black cloak, and climbed down the rocks beside the waterfall. At the lower pool, the grass was crushed, the mud stamped with hooves, and the air still carried the sour smell of horses, sweat, leather, and bad intentions.
She wrinkled her nose.
"Medieval gangsters," she muttered.
Tracks led left after the White Lions. Other tracks crossed away through the trees. Lily looked at them both, then shook her head.
No.
She was not following armed men into the dark.
Instead, she turned toward the stream as it ran downhill through the forest. Water led to paths. Paths led to people. People led to answers.
Probably.
The sun was lower now. The forest ahead was darker. The hilltop spring bubbled behind her, tasting of iron and secrets.
Lily pulled Art's hood over her pale hair, kept one hand near the rusty knife at her waist, and followed the water toward civilization.
"Civilization better have good food," she whispered.
After a moment, she added more quietly, "And fewer bad men."
The forest made no promises.
Lily went anyway.