A wind moving faster than any winter storm I've trudged through pushes against my back. It's not a cold wind or one that is unsettlingly hot like in the Blood Desert. This one is right in the middle, enough to dull the chills of the night that the mountains will provide.

Small patches of snow cover their tips but have long ago frozen, and left as nothing but swirls of ice picked up by the brisk wind. We won't be traveling that high, at least I hope we won't. Renit hasn't exactly given me every little detail about making it the rest of the way to Lona through the Oxpea Mountains. Besides the villages stationed somewhere in the many caves along the towering peaks, I don't know what we'll be facing. Monsters and witches alike.

Renit dismounts, and walks around the side of his horse to take the reins, urging for me to do the same. We didn't plan to continue the rest of this journey on foot but the slick rock and fallen stone will not bode well for horses.

Opening his palm to the guide at the base of the mountains, Renit frowns at the small collection of copper coins dropped against his skin. Much less than what someone should pay for two castle horses but it's better than nothing. We couldn't have someone stealing them for nothing at all and using the beasts for their own personal gains. The guide will rent out these horses to those willing to make the trek towards the Oxpea Mountains. But he will go no further.

No one does, they claim the eyes of the peaks are always watching. I never bothered to ask who the eyes were, if they're figments of the imagination, superstitions, or actual witches waiting to strike us down. It's just another thing to add to the list on why I can't stand to think of going to the most dangerous city in all of Esaria.

The land is beautiful, I can attest to that myself, but there are some places better off not witnessing. I believe Lona is one of them. Renit offered to allow me freedom from ever stepping foot onto the blood covered streets but I'm not allowing him to go there alone. They might respect the king and all his wrong-doings, but Renit is as good a target as any.

He might as well be bait for the fighting pits. And Renit told me they don't fight fair like in Ducoria. Hidden weapons, use of powers, anything to gain the advantage. We'll have to be ghosts in a city that looks for them in every shadowed corner.

I hand the reins over to the guide and stare up at the mountains one last time. The mountains we will be climbing. It'll take us days to get to the other side. Lona is directly at the bottom of these mountains but to get there, we'll be exhausting all our food, supplies, and lack of weapons. Although we managed to purchase an extra bow, two swords, and throwing knives from someone in Ducoria, I still don't think we have enough.

The weapons are weak compared to what we could purchase in the capital. We are to travel light this time around; the horses couldn't carry us all the way from one end of the kingdom to the other carrying every weapon this land has to offer.

Renit allows me to carry the new bow as the string is tighter and more secure than the one we stole. A quiver of arrows rests against my hip and the selection of throwing knives leans against my beating heart, strapped to a baldric across my chest. Another thing we spent our precious coins on, Renit didn't believe I could go without one.

As the guide takes our horses away, heading back to the post along the trail, I glance at Renit out of the corner of my eye as he stares up at those mountains. His throat bobs in a swallow and the wind tears at the strands of his hair. The prince is clean-shaven once more, both of us cleaned ourselves up on our last day in Ducoria, the same day a storm rolled in and ruined the streets further.

The storm didn't follow us out here. The wind is merely what accompanies these mountains like a forever friend. We'll be dealing with it the entire trek from the ground.

"There's no time like the present," I sigh, starting my ascent. There is a trail leading through Oxpea, one that follows along the side of the mountain and twists along the climb. The only thing I can be pleased about is the rise is not steep.

"Keep watch around every corner. If anything moves, shoot at it," Renit instructs.

As I step over a large rock, I turn to face him. After all the instruction he's given me, that has to be the stupidest one yet. "So you want me to shoot at anything that moves? Even if an entire village is waiting around the corner to kill us?"

Renit stops and frowns. He carries the satchel of food and his own array of throwing knives. If I wanted to piss him off, I would say he looks more like a pack mule than a prince. A pack mule strapped high and low with weapons, including a sword sheathed behind his back and a bow to match.

"Fine, shoot at anything that tries to attack you," he clarifies with a flat tone. Renit pushes past and climbs over a rock that blocks the bottom of the trail.

I jog after him and mimic every movement he makes to clear the obstacles. My boot slips over loose shale but I catch myself against the side of the mountain. More pebbles skitter down the side and land near my boots.

By now, my hands have healed. The bandages have been removed and I can once again use them without wincing from the pressure against my skin. My body handled the rest and stitched the skin back together when we didn't have a healer to finish the task for us. I look down at my hands and find clarity in my palms.

"So what you're saying is that if someone points a bow at me, I'm to shoot them?" I ask in a mocking tone.

Renit glances over his shoulder. "If I have to answer that question, then you're not prepared to face Lona," he grumbles. That dreary tone carries over to me in the wind.

I snicker to myself, something I hope he doesn't hear. With me trailing behind, Renit watches every bit of movement on the mountain for those cave villagers we've been hearing about. Even the guide warned us of their presence.

This isn't the only mountain that holds a threat. This is simply the mountain with a trail that hasn't been completely ruined, but Oxpea stretches on for much farther, as far as my eyes can see. The mountains curve together, twisting until folding around Lona and heading north, the closest to Arego anything can be besides the river. That's where we got our water from, the river heading from the Oxpea Mountains. In a way, we've always had a relation to the most dangerous city.

"I'm prepared to face Lona," I boast.

"I've only been here once." Renit kicks a rock aside and it skitters down the side of the mountain. We've already climbed high enough that my stomach churns when I look down to the ground below. "The people are not kind, even to someone with my father's reputation. They'll kill anything and anyone just for the sake of having another tally on their skin."

Another tally on their skin. "You mean they mark their kills?" I ask. The trail widens and I jog to catch up to his side. He watches my steps over his shoulder to ensure I don't fall off the side and ruin this journey right here and now.

"Some of the citizens are covered with scars. Those are their tallies. You have to remember, Lona is full of reject witches, assassins, even those that have returned from the war and found nothing to come home to. They're bitter, they've lost limbs or the sanity in their minds. These people no longer have the hearts to discern life and death; they'll kill you and won't think twice about it." Renit glances over his shoulder at me once more, worry cutting through the hard features that keep a prince attached to the beauty of a warrior. "Don't test them."

I shake my head. "I won't." I knew these people weren't going to be friendly but...a rock sits in my stomach, the same as those surrounding us. If I thought the well in Ducoria was bad, I'm in for a rude awakening with these people.

The lords may be living their lives one step at a time but without proper knowledge, they're knocking on death's door with every time they step out of their own.

"How long were you in Lona for?" I ask once the silence starts to drive me mad. All I can hear is the presence of the wind, tearing through my hair and forcing my jaw to ache after the cold air swims into my ear. I hate the wind, I always have.

"Seventeen years," Renit answers. I notice the reluctance immediately. "Part of my training was centered here. I was taught by assassins. How to fight and how to kill."

My throat dries. "That's terrible."

Renit scratches at the back of his head and attempts to smooth the disheveled strands. He'll find out that's more difficult now than it would have been at the bottom of the mountain. Bile rises into my cheeks every time I look down to find the ground farther and farther away.

The trail twists, sometimes heading farther into the side of the mountain before it stops again and we're forced to climb the small ledge onto the rest of the trail. "My father ordered it, there was nothing I could do to stop him. That was over one hundred and fifty years ago so there's a chance it's changed since then." For my sake, Renit smirks, but that expression doesn't meet his eyes. I can see every terrible thing done to him over the years and the scars he's forced to bear.

"Did you..." My voice trails off. I don't know if I want to know the answer to this question but Renit doesn't pry, he keeps walking like I haven't said a word. "Did you keep a tally?" I blurt.

The prince hoists himself onto a ledge safer than the trail and offers his hand down to me. I use the loose rocks as my vault and stand at his side, shifting to find the trail once more. The wind rips at my back, tousling my hair more than it's already been ruined. Once our feet are secure on the trail once more, I pull my hair back behind my head with a band.

Two stubborn strands frame my face but I don't bother trying to pin them back. I didn't bring supplies in the first place.

Renit takes his time answering. "In the seventeen years I was trained, fifteen of them being the training and two of them being what I was forced to do along with killing my way out—I killed seventy-four. Instead of tallying them on my skin, I kept those kills recorded in a journal. Their name, age, power, and their position."

Seventy-four. That's nearly a third of Arego, and I have to remind myself that Renit killed those witches, too. Did he keep a tally of them, as well? Or were they not important on his list of kills?

"Their position?" I ask instead of asking a question I really don't want the answer to.

Renit takes a swig from the flask and hands it over to me before pushing a large rock out of the way. We'll clear the way for those that are traveling through here next, other than us. If we have to make a quick escape then we'll want a clear trail. "What they did to train me, torture me, punish me. Or the innocents that I had to kill in order to survive."

"You must have hated Lona," I offer.

The prince's face turns grave like he's looking back on a memory that haunts him daily. One he won't be able to forget until he fades from this life. "I did. That's why I escaped after seventeen years. I killed my way out of the city and when I got back to the capital, my father was disappointed that I didn't try to do that sooner."

I stop. "He was never going to order you back home?"

Renit shakes his head. "No, he was going to leave me there until I figured it out. Until I realized that my only escape came at the lives of those I needed to kill." He turns to face me, towering over me in height, build, and that strong stare. But his anger isn't centered at me, he won't take it out on the one person he's on this journey with.

His revulsion is for all of those that forced him here, and for what his father did. He killed seventy-four people because he had to. Not because he wanted to. If he didn't, he would have died and the kingdom would have lost their prince. The prince that later became the king's weapon—a result of massacres in Lona. After all that was done, those people still didn't grow to fear him.

Renit has spent his time answering my questions. He asks one of his own. "Do you fear me for the things I've done?" His eyes blaze with the anxious truth, his voice the same.

Unable to find the words, my mouth clamped shut, I shake my head. I would never fear him for things he was forced to do.

The prince's eyes drift to the necklace hanging from my neck, the one belonging I've kept throughout the entire journey. The only one that matters. Then his eyes meet mine once more. "Good. I don't have time for those that won't accept my past."

Turning on his heel, Renit focuses once more on the journey ahead. I search through my soul to find one part of me that blames him but I find nothing. He was brainwashed by his father, by the loss, by the pain and the guilt. And I hate to say that I might have done the same were it not for my luck in finding the light at the end of a blood-splattered tunnel.