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For two months after my father was murdered, I routinely woke to Casimir hovering over my bed while he shook my shoulders. Tears stained my bedsheets; my forehead was slick with sweat. Casimir would wrap his arms around my shoulder and stroke my hair, rocking me till I fell asleep.

I stopped crying after the third month when a new purpose took over. Samu was still out there, and I had to find him. The goal consumed every thought, every dream, every nightmare. There was no time to continue mourning my father; it was shoved to the back of my mind. But now I have Samu back. I wonder if that's why I wake in the evening with damp eyes for the first time in 10 months.

My first thought other than my father is one of panic. But then I register the shadows on the side of the tent and the distant chatter outside. Night hasn't fallen yet. I relax back into the mattress.

I left Josul on the beach after lunch, catching sight of where Lei and Killian prepared for their voyage to see Myers. They prepared no carriage, instead packing the saddles of two large horses as they mewed softly at a tuft of hay. I stood in the shadows as they murmured plans in low voices, picking up enough of an idea to understand when they were to leave. Midnight. Sanaa caught me then, hiding in the shadows. She invited me for a walk, but I politely declined, claiming I was tired from 'training' and wanted to rest before dinner.

It was a half-truth. I needed time to plan how the hell I was going to follow Lei and Killian if they were on horseback and I was on foot. My only shot was tracking the horses. Casimir taught me to track hares, so I figured it couldn't be that different, could it?

I hadn't meant to fall asleep, and I certainly didn't mean to wake up crying for the first time in months. But in the Torinnian shifter camp on the coast of Elel, Casimir isn't there to lull me back to sleep. I lie deathly still as I stare at the roof of the tent, rippling gently in the wind. Tears leak across my cheeks and down my neck. There's no doubt in my mind that wherever he is, he's searching for me just as dedicated as I searched for Samu.

Casimir grounded me. And in the wake of the past few days, what's been revealed about my supposed past, I feel like a fallen leaf, swirling in the wind from one place to another, unsure where it should land. Samu is here, but not really. My father is still dead, but he was a liar. And somehow, Myers, a man labeled crazy by the entire village of Veymaw, is tangled up in all this.

I turn over, burying my face in the lumpy pillow, and cry. For the first time since the months after his death, I allow myself to think of my father.

His warm smile, soft hands, and the sweet smell of his bread every Saturday morning when I woke up. Long ago, I stopped believing in the idea of good or bad. Morality isn't black and white, it's a myriad of different shades of grey. But the father that I knew was all good. I want to protect the sacred memory of him from the tainted truths.

It's hours before the sky is entirely dark and the voices outside eventually fade. That's when I know it's time to go.

***

Moonlight bleeds through the thick canopy of leaves. It's a spotlight on the pathway as I crouch behind a large boulder, the black cape I knicked from outside of Draigh's tent concealing half of my face.

Lei sits atop her bay horse, staring at Killian. He stands by his horse in the moonlight, talking in hushed voices to Sanaa and Josul, her guards stoic a few feet away. The thin, linen clothing they both donned the past few days has been exchanged for black garments and leather boots, both their belts home to sheathed knives.

All I managed to knick was a black cape and a pair of slightly too large boots. Trying for anything else, even in the dead of night, was too much of a risk. I couldn't miss this.

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