We had no clue when night fell—the woods couldn’t grow any darker than they already were—so when Lith professed her weariness, we stopped to camp. We tethered the horses and made a small fire. I, too, was tired, my body left weak after the adrenalin had ceased to course through my blood, and we ate a sparse meal of smoked beef in silence. Surely Lith thought of nothing other than the dead man we had left behind us earlier, but I couldn’t trouble myself with him. When you followed someone, no matter how surreptitious, you lived on the edge of danger. And sometimes, you fell in.
The next morning began when we woke; just as the night had been impossible to distinguish from the twilight around us, the morning sun was unable to reach us through the canopy overhead to awaken us. We were left to
