At the rear of the column, an utterly ordinary wagon bounced along the ruts — so ordinary that most soldiers' eyes slid right past its sagging tarpaulin, its mud-spattered wheels, the thin cracks in its faded paint. Only careful inspection revealed the whisper-fine runes drawn by Raine's alchemy chalk: sigils that bent light so edges blurred, that dimmed sound, that coaxed attention elsewhere. The illusion was deliberate mundanity, the best kind of camouflage in a triumphant procession.
Inside, Ara sat ramrod straight on a crate of barley, hands folded in her lap as though she still expected palace tutors to grade her posture. She'd bound her hair into a traveler's knot to hide its regal length, yet a few chestnut strands escaped to brush her cheeks each time the wagon jolted. She spent the bumps counting breaths, reminding herself she could breathe now without permission.
