Velmira stared at herself in the full lengthed mirror, wearing not only finer and lighter clothes, but also a “breastplate” of leather. Renyn had insisted that she wear some more protective gear, enough of it that she even wore a proper pair of pants. No skirt. Once upon a time, she would have thought this scandalous. A woman? In pants? But now, she found it necessary. It was a means to an incredibly noble end, she decided.

  Running her hands over the leather armor, then the armguards, Vel examined the hardness of the armor by knocking on it in several places. She wasn’t sure it would halt a sword so much as it would stall it. Amalia stood behind her, two women almost done equipping her.

  “This makes me feel . . .” Amalia started, glancing back at the rest of the leather equipment on the table behind her.

  “Protected?” Vel asked.

  “Uncomfortable.”

  A smile pulled at Vel’s lips. “They did offer plate armor instead,” Vel suggested.

  “Velmira, look at the size of me,” Amalia rolled her eyes. “They only had one set small enough, so I highly doubt my luck in the real armor selection is going to be any better.”

  “Hmm,” Velmira hummed, moving towards the armory’s door. She stepped out into the hall, looking towards the room they took Sigurd and Aden to. “Do you think they had anything small enough for Aden?” she asked.

  “Oh, pfft, I don’t know,” Amalia responded, and as the serving women finished with her, she stepped out after Vel.

  “Ilnona.” Vel turned to her right as Renyn approached. Beside him was a man with a pack so big that Vel thought he’d merely topple backwards. Somehow, he didn’t.

  “I’ll respond better to Velmira, please,” Vel said.

  “Right,” Renyn stiffened, stopping before her. He was so . . . weird about her, or perhaps he just didn’t know what to do.

  What does one do when they meet their sibling from a prior life? she wondered, looking up at him. For avenging sake, why was everyone here so tall? Even her mother was her same height. In Alnonor, Vel was tall for a woman, but here, she was about the same height as every other woman.

  “Well, this is Menoll, he’s a historian. I’ve requested that he guide you and your team through the jungle, as well as help you prepare a plan for infiltration.”

  “A pleasure, your majesty,” Menoll bowed briefly.

  This going to take some getting used to, Vel thought, but gave a her best smile that she could. It . . . wasn’t very good.

  “Thank you, Menoll,” she said, and when she heard footsteps behind her, she turned to find Sigurd in leather armor as well. He had a bow over his shoulder, along with a quiver attached to his hip. Aden beside him, however, wore nothing more than thick fabric clothes. He crossed his arms, looking dissatisfied.

  “Who is leading the knights that will be joining us?” Sigurd asked.

  “Captain Enno, who you met yesterday. We thought it expedient to keep him with you,” Renyn said. “They’re waiting near the stables now.”

  “Is there a road to the temple?” Sigurd asked.

  “Yes,” Renyn answered.

  “We won’t be taking it. We’ll take the horses to the city’s edge, but beyond that, we should abandon them.”

  “What if we’re attacked by more tigers? How will we outrun them?” Amalia asked.

  “The knights took care of the [tamer] last night. If you are attacked by more wild cats, then it’s because the enemy has another tamer that we are unaware of,” Renyn explained. “And tamers can’t get very far from what they’ve tamed.”

  “Still,” Amalia sighed.

  “They’ll be expecting Vel to come on the main road, probably hoping she came alone. It’s a risk we shouldn’t take,” Sigurd replied.

  “It’ll take you at least half the day to go through the jungle by foot,” Renyn noted.

  “But I can lead them. I know that jungle like the back of my hand, your highness,” Menoll said.

  Renyn sighed. “Very well.”

  “Let’s go,” Sigurd said, Vel falling in step behind him.

  A little time later, Vel found herself outside the city’s south gates, dismounting a horse that she had to ride on her own. She did that once before, but at least this time, Captain Enno was there to give better instruction than Sigurd offered. Sigurd’s way of teaching by simply throwing her in the fire wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t grand either.

  She followed Menoll through the jungle, Sigurd beside her. Amalia and Aden were kept at the back of the formation, and [spear masters] surrounded the lot of them. The [scouts] Renyn provided stayed ahead of the group, returning in turn as part of a system to know that they were each still alive. Vel had never bothered to consider that a scout could be ambushed and killed ahead of them without their knowing otherwise.

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  “What will we find when we get there?” Sigurd asked, Menoll looking over his shoulder towards them before looking forward again.

  Vel pushed aside some of the underbrush as the historian started, “It’s an old temple of The Church of Retribution. The temple has four floors, but with the jungle overgrowth and no one upkeeping it for over thirty years, some of it has probably seen better days.

  “Each floor is smaller than the last, with the bottom floor being the largest. The bottom floor was once the sanctuary, where the sick and afflicted would come, much like the modern temples of Retribution. Now, however━”

  “And the entrances?” Sigurd interjected.

  “Oh, yes, two of them. A western entrance, and an eastern one, each ornately carved with . . .”

  Velmira smoothed back her hair as the historian went on about unnecessary details. Rather, details she didn’t wish to hear about. Fertile mothers and lands, symbols of the church, and otherwise. He was frighteningly fascinated with a church that Vel had come to hate. She adjusted her hair comb, as if worried it would fall out, but the handmaidens in the palace had put in a number of pins to help hold her hair up.

  “You talk as if you like the Church of Retribution,” Vel mentioned.

  Monall jumped, looking almost frightened as he glanced at her. “Good lord’s graces, no!” he said. “The Church of Retribution is evil! Oppressive, and always has been, hidden behind a facade of garnering healers to take care of the sick and wounded. Why, they control most governments in the world. No monarchy has escaped them like ours in Ymril has, and that was merely by sheer force. We’d been so fortunate to go unseen by the gods, and I believe that’s due to the [kingdom boon of protection].”

  “What?” Sigurd asked, furrowing his brow. “An entire nation has a boon? Since when?”

  “Since we vacated the last temple of Retribution,” Monall said. “Only happened seven years ago, but it required cutting off one of our outer territories. They refused to accept our new god, the one we came to know through [Dark Seer] Lyvina.”

  “Who? Who is the new god?” Velmira asked, moving closer to the historian. “Dark? is his name Dark?” she asked, noting her mother’s exclamation earlier, by Dark’s good graces . . .

  “Darkannor, but most just call him Dark, yes, but . . .” Monall trailed off, looking away as he stepped over a thick root. Following suit, Vel looked forward, searching between the trees for the temple she knew would eventually lay ahead of them.

  “But?” she asked, waiting for more. More about her god, the one that had, in a way, both freed and cursed her. Yes, she had a life to live now, and she was grateful for that, but she was supposed to save the world from the Pantheon of Retribution? Or something like that, she supposed. She couldn’t be needing to reforge Godkiller to take out Darkannor or some other gods, right? That made no sense.

  “We should focus, Velmira,” Sigurd suggested. “The entrances, they’re not locked?”

  “No,” Monall answered.

  “And the floors? Where are the stairs of each, and which floors would be the most defensible?”

  “The top floor is the most defensible. It only has one staircase leading up to it. The other floors have two each. The top floor is where, if the [sacrifice] was born in this area, have been killed. It’s no small room though, even if it is the smallest of the four floors. All the rooms are quite large, on par with the palace’s own size.

  “The temple was built like a mirror. There are north and south stairs on the first floor, east and west on the second, and on the third floor, the stairs are in the north━the only set. The bottom floor, as the sanctuary, is an open floor plan, supported with pillars. The second floor would have housed the temple patrons, and the third is where high priests and priestesses would have space reserved for them.”

  “And storage areas?” Vel asked, furrowing her brow as she tried to imagine this temple. It was so different from the one she knew in Alnonor, considering that there were rooms for patrons on the first floor. Her temple only had three floors, and storage areas were also on the first floor, places for clothes, sheets, and cleaning supplies.

  “In smaller stone buildings outside,” Monall said.

  “The surrounding area, what does it look like?” Sigurd asked.

  “There should be stone walkways around the area. It would lead to the main road back to the capital.”

  “Why would they build it so far out like this?” Vel asked.

  “It’s a short ride on horseback,” Monall said, then shrugged, “It’s easier to control the [sacrifice] if she’s kept away from the noise of civilization.”

  Vel pursed her lips. “They didn’t do that with me. Rather, I was free to interact with everyone who entered the temple, but . . . I suppose I wasn’t allowed outside of the temple walls,” she said, sighing.

  “Ah, walls. Sounds like they created their own way of separating you from society regardless, your highness,” Monall pointed with a finger.

  “The space around the temple, how large is it?” Sigurd asked.

  “Large enough for three supply wagons to comfortably move around side by side,” Monall said.

  “But with only two entrances to defend, they don’t necessarily need an army around the entire place,” Captain Enno mentioned.

  “And no windows?” Amalia asked.

  “No windows, not proper ones at least, on the first floor. This slits, but otherwise, the doors would have been kept open for airflow during the day. I suppose if you wanted to scale the side of the building to the second floor, you could reach the windows there. But it’s a square building with very few obstacles around it.”

  “Easy to cover every corner. We’d be caught before we could scale the building,” Enno said.

  Sigurd nodded, his jaw visibly flexing. “There’s only so much planning we can do at this point. Let’s wait for the scouts to return with information about the temple,” he said.

  “Won’t be a long wait then,” Monall pushed aside some particularly large leaves, stepping over roots as he moved them all the way aside.

  Vel stepped into the gap he created, her shoulders brushing past shrubbery as she peered through the trees. Beyond them, far beyond them, mossy stone walls stood. She couldn’t make out any details, only enough to know that it was manmade.

  She took a deep breath. Edard was in that building, somewhere, and she was going to find him. Had to. Pointedly ignoring the voice in the back of her head, the one that suggested he could be dead, she pushed forward, using gloved hands to push leaves back.

  Has it already been half a day? she asked, placing one foot in front of the other. Oh, how hard it was not to just run, not to chase after Edard. She wanted to plow through whatever foe she would face, and she would. She placed a hand on the short sword on her belt, an unfamiliar weight, though one Renyn insisted she carry alongside the daggers she had requested. She hoped he was right, and that it would be worth it.

  And by Darkannor’s name, even if she had accepted that it was a high possibility, she hoped no one else had to die.