The forest swallowed them whole.
Moonlight dappled the undergrowth, flickering silver through the skeletal branches above. Every sound seemed louder in the dark: the crunch of boots in frost-hardened leaves, the whisper of wind through pine needles, the steady pulse of Elias's breath.
They had run for hours. His legs burned, but he dared not speak. Seraphina limped slightly ahead, her cloak now dark with dried blood. She moved like someone long used to pain—efficient, quiet, alert.
Only when they reached a ridge above a shallow valley did she stop. The trees parted just enough to reveal the heavens.
"Sit," she said, her voice low but steady.
Elias dropped beside her, chest heaving. His eyes lifted almost instinctively to the stars.
"I thought we were running," he said.
"We are," she replied. "But blindly running is just dying slower. We need to think like them now."
She reached into her satchel and pulled out a scroll. It was worn, the edges singed, but the ink inside was precise: a star chart. Elias's sharp eyes immediately recognized the twelve familiar constellations arranged in a circle.
"The Zodiac," he murmured.
"You know it?" she asked, glancing at him.
"I've seen it. In old books. But the priests say it's superstition."
Seraphina snorted. "Superstition is when you think these constellations tell you who to marry. This"—she tapped the parchment—"is science. Navigation. The sky is a wheel. The Zodiac isn't fortune-telling. It's a map."
She laid the scroll flat. "Valerius's men are trained. They know the stars. They know where we were last seen. So they look up, find the constellations, and calculate where we must be headed. If we follow a logical path, they will catch us."
Elias leaned over the chart. It showed the positions of Aries through Pisces, marked with the rising and setting times. The chart was beautiful in its precision, but something felt… off.
"What time was this made?" he asked.
"Two nights ago, in the capital," she said. "They likely made copies for the hunt."
He frowned. His memory of the sky—every glint, every shift—flashed behind his eyes.
"This chart is wrong."
Seraphina looked at him sharply. "How?"
He pointed at the eastern horizon. "Libra doesn't rise until after midnight this week. But here they've drawn it already halfway to the zenith. And Scorpius is too far north."
She narrowed her eyes at the parchment, then at him. "How do you know that?"
"I saw it," Elias said simply. "Every night. I remember."
She stared at him for a moment, and in her gaze he saw something shift. Not disbelief—respect.
"Well," she said quietly, "that is the first good news we've had tonight."
She snatched a twig and began drawing in the dirt: a crude circle with twelve marks. "If they think the sky is like this, they'll expect us to move southeast, toward the river valleys. We won't."
Elias nodded, tracing a different route across the circle. "We go north, through Capricorn and Aquarius—sparser terrain. No village lights, no expected paths. They won't look there first."
Seraphina smiled faintly. "Then lead the way, star-eye."
For the next hour they moved carefully, navigating not by roads but by constellations. Elias's eyes picked out the faint curve of Capricornus low in the southwest, and the unmistakable "water bearer" of Aquarius to the east.
They traveled in silence until the sound of hooves echoed in the distance—Valerius's riders, combing the wrong valley.
Elias and Seraphina crouched behind a rise, breath held, as torches passed like falling stars across the hills below. The riders stopped, consulted a chart, and veered off in exactly the direction the false star positions suggested.
When the sounds faded, Seraphina exhaled.
"You saved us," she said. "Not with a sword. With your eyes."
Elias felt the words settle in him, heavier than praise.
"The stars don't lie," he said softly.
"No," she agreed. "But men do. And that's why we read the sky ourselves."