Violie

Just as the stars are fading from the sky under the threat of the rising sun, Violie, Leopold, Pasquale, and Beatriz depart from the Crimson Petal. Ambrose is staying there to await Daphne's signal, at which point he'll saddle a horse and ride to meet them in the Nemaria Woods.

Hapantoile is only just beginning to yawn awake, with candles flickering to life in windows as they pass by with the earliest of risers, but the streets themselves are empty apart from the four of them.

Violie herself still feels half asleep, her eyes bleary and thoughts soft-edged. She barely registers when Leopold brushes the back of his hand against hers until he does it a second time and she realizes it wasn't an accident. She looks up at him, eyebrows raised to find him watching her with a furrowed brow.

"What is it?" she asks, keeping her voice low so that Beatriz and Pasquale, walking just ahead of them, don't hear. It isn't that she wants to keep secrets from them, but the attachment between her and Leopold is so new, and involving his dead wife's volatile sister would likely crush whatever fragile thing is growing between them. And Violie doesn't want to crush it. The very idea of it makes her feel unmoored.

"We're being followed," he whispers back.

Violie tenses, resisting the urge to look around her.

"You're sure?" she asks, though she knows the answer to that and the look he gives her confirms it. He's sure.

"Two sets of footsteps behind us—keeping their distance, for now."

Relief washes over Violie. Two sets of footsteps are an easy threat to face, if they're a threat at all.

"Townspeople getting an early start on the day, perhaps?" she asks, but Leopold shakes his head.

"The sound of their boots, the rhythm…it's regimented. Military or guards is my guess."

Still, two guards can be dealt with between the four of them.

She quickens her pace enough to catch up with Beatriz and Pasquale, Leopold beside her, and they relay Leopold's suspicions. Before Violie can get more than a few words in, Beatriz is reaching for the dagger at her hip, withdrawing it from its sheath. Violie, Leopold, and Pasquale hasten to draw their own weapons. The sound of swords slipping from sheaths echoes around them in every direction—more than just two, Violie realizes, a sickening dread taking root. Leopold realizes it too, his face paling in the predawn light.

"It's an ambush," Beatriz hisses. "Scatter and run—meet in the woods. Go."

Violie doesn't need to be told twice. She runs east, down a narrow alleyway, relieved when Leopold falls into step with her. He's still a stranger to Hapantoile, but Violie knows these streets as well as she knows the sound of her name.

"Two of them went that way!" a sharp voice shouts, and the thud of boots against pavement sounds behind them.

"Stay close to me," she tells Leopold, taking a sharp right out of the alleyway onto a wide road—mercifully empty but exposed. Another alleyway leads past the rear entrances of the butcher's and baker's—the baker is unlocking the door as they run past him, and he lets out a string of curses, loud enough to draw attention.

Violie rounds another corner, and a grim smile tugs at her lips when she catches sight of a large wooden cart piled with empty apple crates parked beside a single-story house.

"Come on," she tells Leopold, running toward it.

"What are you—" he starts, but breaks off when Violie sheaths her sword and climbs onto the cart, then onto the precarious pile of apple crates. Standing on the tallest one, she can just grab the ledge of the house's roof, pulling herself up onto it. Leopold is right behind her, hoisting himself onto the roof mere seconds before the guards turn down the alley, thundering past the apple cart without thinking to look up.

When they're gone, Violie lets out a breath, the adrenaline pumping through her fading and leaving worry in its wake. She looks at Leopold.

"Beatriz and Pasquale…," she begins.

She sees her own fears play out on Leopold's face beforehe seals them away behind a tight smile. "They'll be fine," he says.

The dread pooled in her stomach spreads. "They were following us, Leo," she says. "They were ready. They knew where we were—my mother—"

He grabs hold of her hand, squeezing it tight. "Vi," he says, his voice low. "We can't go back, you know that. They'll be watching for us and you won't be doing your mother or Elodia or Ambrose any favors by returning. As soon as we're able, we'll go back, I swear it, but we can't without an army."

Violie wants to scream at him, to tell him she doesn't care what happens to her, she just needs to keep her mother safe, but she swallows the words down. She forces herself to breathe, letting the cold hand of panic clenching at her heart loosen enough for her to see that he's right—she can't help her mother right now. She looks around them, at the stretch of tile roofs, glinting in the light of the rising sun.

"They'll have guards at all the gates searching for us too," she tells him. "Inspecting anyone entering or leaving."

"Is there another way out?" he asks.

Violie wracks her brain, searching her memories of running around Hapantoile. "No," she says. "But if we can get word to the troops…"

"The Sororia," Leopold says. "Your mother said the Sororia was on our side. Surely the guards at the gate would let a Sister pass unchecked."

Violie doesn't think—she grabs Leopold's face and kisses him quickly on the lips, leaving him surprised but smiling slightly.

"This way," she tells him, scrambling to her feet. "But tread lightly—the last thing we need is to alarm the sleepingtownspeople."