Silas moved through the brush with a silence that felt unnatural. I struggled to keep pace, my boots heavy with the mud
and my mind reeling from the image of my father’s final moments. Every snap of a twig made me flinch, but Silas didn’t even look back. He navigated the trap line by memory, sidestepping snares and deadfalls that I knew were there, and some I didn’t.
“Step exactly where I step,” he murmured, his voice barely a breath. “Caleb has trackers who can read the weight of a footfall. Don’t give them a trail.”
We climbed a steep, rocky face where the trees thinned, the moonlight exposing us for a terrifying minute before we slipped behind a waterfall of frozen ivy. Silas pushed the vines aside, revealing a narrow fissure in the rock—the entrance to the Hidden Hollow.
Inside, th
