Artemis

  It rose above the canopy at an angle, stone darkened by age and moss, leaning just enough that my eye caught it before understanding what it was. A watchtower, cracked along one side, still standing through stubbornness more than strength.

  I slowed, lowering myself behind a line of brush, and studied the land ahead.

  The trail bent once more, passing between two low ridges of stone, and only when the wagon disappeared between them did the rest of it begin to reveal itself.

  Low walls, the color of the earth itself, ran along the basin beyond, so overgrown in places with moss and creeping vine that they blended into the ground until you were nearly upon them. From above, they were almost invisible, broken by brush and shadow, shaped more like a natural rise than a man-made barrier.

  Earth-worked stone, I realized. Drawn up and shaped, seamless in places, patched in others where time or damage had forced repair.

  I circled wider, keeping to the trees, letting the wagon reach the gate before I moved closer.

  The walls were high enough that even a good throw of rope would be difficult in the dark. A wooden gate sat between two squat towers, iron-banded and scarred from years of use. Lanterns burned low near the entrance, their light dim enough not to carry far.

  Inside, the compound spread outward around a central stone building larger than the rest, its walls heavier, its roof pitched steeply. Wooden structures clustered around it—barracks, sheds, lean-tos, all added over time without any thought to symmetry.

  The leaning tower rose at the far side of the yard, taller than the rest of the structures, its upper platform still intact despite the long crack running down one face. A man stood there now, a dark shape against the fading sky, watching the forest beyond the walls.

  Guards moved through the yard in slow, practiced patterns, accustomed to routine. Routine made men predictable. Predictable men died first.

  Celeste may try to go in the moment she saw this place. I’d have to keep her focused. If Faylen is inside, I would use everything I had to reunite them.

  I watched the wagon pass through the gate and disappear inside.

  I eased myself lower against the earth as I studied the walls, the gate, counting movements, letting the shape of the place burn itself into my mind piece by piece.

  The gate wasn’t the problem. It was the answer to every problem, and that was exactly why it would be watched.

  Two men lingered near it even after the wagon disappeared inside, one posted with his back to the wall, the other pacing in a short line as though he’d been given a length of rope and told not to wander beyond it. A third crossed the yard with a lantern and paused to speak to the watchman in the tower.

  I changed my focus away from the front gate and let my eyes travel along the wall instead, following the line where stone met moss and shadow. The earthworked sections were seamless enough that they looked grown rather than built. It was clever craftsmanship. There was no obvious weak points, no gaps, no breaks where an inexperienced hand joined one section to another.

  They’d shaped it like the forest itself.

  If any of us had carried an Earth affinity, we might have been able to work the stone slowly, shaping a narrow path without bringing the whole wall down on our heads. Unfortunately, none of us could bend stone.

  A wind moved through the basin, carrying the smell of smoke and animals. Horses, somewhere inside. Fresh dung, trampled into the yard. The faint tang of iron too, though I couldn’t yet see where it came from.

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  I scanned the buildings clustered around the central hall, looking for the subtle tells. A structure that mattered more than it appeared. At the door stood a guard, with a path worn deeper into the dirt than the rest—ground down by routine vigilance.

  Men passed between the barracks and a low shed with a sloped roof, each carrying something small: sacks, a bundle of wood, a bucket.

  The watchtower creaked once in the wind, or perhaps it was only my imagination giving it a voice. A crack down its side caught what little light remained and held it like a pale scar.

  I watched the man up there stretch, lean forward, then relax again when he saw nothing but trees.

  From everything I’d seen so far, I’d counted over thirty men, perhaps more. Enough to make this ugly. We would bleed here. The only question was how much.

  My gaze dropped to the base of the central building. Its lower windows were narrow and set high. But along the far side, half-hidden behind a stacked wood pile and a lean-to, I caught sight of small slits along the bottom of the building.

  Not a true window. Just a thin cut in the stone, dark within. The opening was too small to fit a hand through.

  A basement.

  Cold slid through me, my body remembering what my mind buried long ago. Pins and needles crept back into memory, turning to numbness where the shackles had bitten too tight. Dust drifting through a narrow slit of light, the only proof that time was still passing.

  I snapped out of it, and anger followed, heat flooding in where the cold had been. I wanted to rush down there, to break stone and bone with my own hands. Raze the compound to the ground until it was nothing but kindling and rubble.

  I leaned back against the nearest tree, holding myself still until the urge to move passed.

  I let out a slow breath and turned to look back at the compound, forcing myself to keep watching instead of letting the thought run ahead of me. Somewhere under that stone, people were breathing stale air and listening to boots above them. Hoping for any kind of salvation.

  So I watched.

  Time slipped in small increments. Light dimmed. Lanterns multiplied. Guards rotated without fanfare, trading spots with a nod and murmured words. The yard quieted as men filtered into the barracks and the outbuildings, leaving fewer shapes moving in the open.

  I knew I could get in alone. Wind would carry me over the stone without a sound, drop me into shadow, drive an ice-spike into a throat before anyone knew I’d crossed the wall.

  But this wasn’t about what I could do alone anymore. Celeste and Lioren couldn’t follow the same way. Not without being seen. And not without turning this into a slaughter before we ever reached the basement door. We couldn’t risk them pulling the prisoners up and using them as shields.

  I moved again, circling wider, keeping eye on the wall and the yard where I could. I picked my way through the brush until the compound’s far side came into view, the stone here darker with damp, lichen thick along the base. The wall bent slightly where the land rose, and the trees pressed closer, but still no opening.

  I paused behind a fallen log and watched the wall for long moments, letting my eyes adjust to the darkening colors.

  Then the wall trembled.

  Not all of it, just a narrow section. Stone slid outward, a precise cut gliding aside as if it had always been meant to move. A figure slipped through the gap.

  He moved wrong for a guard at first, too cautious, head down. The way he moved, I thought he might be a prisoner attempting to escape.

  Then he straightened enough for the light to catch his gear. It was a guard.

  He glanced over his shoulder, then reached back and eased the stone door shut, careful to leave no sound behind.

  I followed at a distance. He kept to the trees, avoiding open ground, until another shape detached itself from the shadows ahead. They met briefly. No words I could hear. Just the small shuffle and clink of coin as the man put a bag in the guards hand.

  They parted, the stranger vanishing into the dark, and the guard turned back toward the wall, slipping back through the hidden door as easily as he’d come. The seam vanished so completely that even knowing where it was, I had to stare to find it again.

  If the man hadn’t been careless enough to use it, I never would have known it existed at all.

  Not the main gate.

  Celeste had said they didn’t use the front entrance when they took her out that night into these woods, only a side door. She wouldn’t have known it was hidden, not with everything happening so fast.

  I took a moment to study the ground around me, committing the fallen log, and the trees to memory. Then I raised a hand and loosed two narrow blades of Wind. Each struck a different trunk, carving shallow scars in the bark. The last I cut into the log at my feet, leaving a mark I wouldn’t miss on the way back.

  I waited until I felt it was safe and slipped closer, letting the Wind carry the sound of my steps away from the wall. I didn’t go all the way to the stone. From here I could see enough, the way the wall bent slightly where the hidden seam lay. The marks I’d made were enough to guide be back to here.

  I exhaled slowly, the breath leaving me in a thin plume that vanished almost at once in the cooling air.

  I knew how we would get in now.

  I let my eyes sweep the compound one last time, fixing it in my mind. Tomorrow, this place would burn. Thrown into chaos by my hand.

  I took one last look, then turned and began the long run back to Celeste and Lioren, leaving the compound to its last quiet night.