The Lakelands did not welcome travelers with fanfares, banners, or open gates. It welcomed them with a stench. And it wasn't that sweet, sickening, "wrong" smell of the dead forest that chilled the blood and brought bile to the throat. No, this was an honest, thick, lowborn stench, accumulated over centuries and eaten into the very stones: an explosive mixture of rotting fish, cheap tobacco, horse manure, sour ale, damp mold, and unwashed human bodies.

  The wind from the lake brought no freshness—it only whipped up this odor, driving it into nostrils, into the pores of clothing, into hair. The city hung over the water like a giant parasite clamped to the shore. Houses were slapped on top of each other like mushrooms on a rotting stump: crooked, blackened by moisture, connected by rickety bridges, clotheslines, and dubious engineering solutions held together purely by stubbornness and prayers. Below, beneath the pilings, sloshed black water choked with garbage, fish guts, and likely a few unlucky bastards who had lost their footing on the slick bridges the night before.

  To Ren Varst, this stench was practically perfume. He halted his horse on the hill overlooking the main thoroughfare, inhaled the thick air deeply, and for the first time in two days, the shadow of a genuine—albeit crooked—smile touched his face. The tension that had kept his muscles taut as a drawn bowstring eased slightly, shifting into the familiar wariness of a street-smart rogue.

  “Breathe deep,” he tossed over his shoulder, ignoring Torren’s wince. “That’s the smell of civilization. Or what’s left of it.”

  “It smells like a cesspit a fisherman drowned in a week ago,” Torren muttered, covering his nose with a gauntlet. His plate armor, which had seemed like reliable protection in the forest, looked absurd and far too clean here, gleaming against the backdrop of universal grayness. “Are we really stopping here? In this... ulcer?”

  “We’re going to disappear here,” Ren corrected, slipping from the saddle. His boots squelched in the greasy mud, which instantly caked the well-tended leather. “In this chaos, no one will notice five vagabonds. Not even if one of them has a cursed crown on his head. Trust me, Torren, the only thing people here care about is what they can steal, eat, or sell. Nobody needs your honor or your fears here. The only ones who survive here are those who know how to blend in with the ash.”

  He walked up to Caleb. The king looked pathetic: pale, exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes that looked like bruises. His lips were chapped from the cold, his shoulders slumped beneath the weight of an invisible burden. The Crown glowed dimly beneath his deep hood, but fortunately, the daylight and the thick fog rising from the water masked its pulsation.

  Ren eyed him critically, the way a painter inspects a canvas before ruining it with paint.

  “Dismount, Your Majesty. Time for a masquerade.”

  Caleb slowly climbed down, nearly falling—his legs refused to obey, his muscles burning from the long ride.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, eyeing Ren with suspicion.

  “Forgive the breach of etiquette,” Ren said with mock deference, crouching down. He scooped up a handful of greasy, freezing street muck—a fine blend of horse dung and road ash. “But you look far too... noble. Even in these rags, you have that irritating posture of a man who’s never been whipped and who eats off silver. We need to make you a little more simple.”

  Caleb recoiled as Ren’s filthy hand reached for his face. A flash of indignation flared in his eyes—that same royal wrath cultivated for years in throne rooms.

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  “Don’t you dare!” he snapped, catching Ren’s wrist. “I am your king! You have no right to touch me with that filth!”

  Ren didn’t flinch. His gaze met Caleb’s, and in the mercenary’s eyes, there was neither respect nor fear—only ice-cold pragmatism.

  “Your king is rotting in the forest listening to ghosts, boy,” Ren hissed, effortlessly twisting his hand free. “Out here, you’re meat. And if that meat looks too pretty, it gets eaten first. You want them coming for your head instead of the Crown next time? Stand. Still.”

  Ren grabbed the king by the collar and ruthlessly smeared the muck across his cheek, grinding it into his pores. Caleb gritted his teeth, his face twisting in revulsion as a muffled growl escaped his throat. Ren didn’t stop: he swiped the mud across his forehead, caught his nose, his chin, and even ran his filthy fingers through the golden hair peeking out from the hood.

  “There,” Ren nodded with satisfaction, wiping his hand on Caleb’s cloak, adding another stain to the expensive fabric. “Now you’re not King Caleb, the hope of the nation. Now you’re my cousin, Lenny. You’re a bit... slow. Got kicked by a horse when you were a kid. A heavy draft horse, right on the crown of the head. Understand? That means you don’t speak, you just moo, stare at one spot, and occasionally drool.”

  “I will not drool!” Caleb hissed, feeling the cold mud dry on his skin, tightening it like a mask of humiliation. His hands shook—not from the cold, but from the fury he couldn't unleash.

  “You will if you want to live,” Mira chimed in. She sat on her horse, casually chewing on a shriveled dried apple. “And slouch. Kings walk straight like they swallowed a sword. Lenny walks like he’s carrying a sack of rotten potatoes. Make your face simpler. Open your mouth. More. Oh, perfect. You look like a complete idiot. Even I want to kick you.”

  Aelin watched this with an expression of deep, almost physical revulsion. She stood slightly apart, trying not to touch anything. To an elf who felt life in every blade of grass, this city felt like an open wound on the earth's flesh.

  “You humans are strange creatures,” she said quietly. “You build cages of stinking wood and call it home.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, her lips moving barely perceptibly. A small, dry flower caught in her hair flashed green for a second, then crumbled to dust. Aelin opened her eyes—they were still dark from the night’s ritual, but a fraction of their former clarity had returned. She walked over to her mare, running a finger along her mane, whispering something into the animal’s ear. Her magic suffocated here like a fish out of water, but she still tried to create at least a tiny zone of clean air around herself.

  “Welcome to reality, Pointy-Ears,” Ren winked at her. “Torren, hide the crest. You’re not a guardsman anymore; you’re an old mercenary who drank it all away. Just pretend you hate everything around you. Oh, wait, you’re already doing that.”

  They moved toward the gates. The road grew busier. Carts of fish clattered past, smelling so bad they made eyes water. Beggars with ulcerated faces reached out hands, muttering curses. A woman emptied a slop bucket from a window straight onto the street, narrowly missing Mira. The mercenary merely flashed her eyes, and the woman vanished instantly behind the shutters, realizing she had just locked eyes with death.

  The gate guard consisted of two types: fat and sleepy. The fat one was eating a meat pie; the sleepy one was leaning on a halberd. Ren approached them first. His gait instantly changed its rhythm—becoming loose, arrogant.

  “Greetings, defenders of the empire!” he called out. “Is there a place in this city where honest travelers can wet their whistles?”

  The fat guard slowly chewed a piece of dough, assessing the group.

  “Entry is two coppers a horse. No drawn steel. No magic. Who are you?”

  “The 'Black Heel' free company,” Ren lied easily. “This is Torren, our sergeant. This is Mira—don’t look her in the eye, she bites. This is Aelin—she’s from the woods, heals horses. And this... is my poor cousin, Lenny.”

  Caleb, remembering his instructions and feeling Ren’s fingers digging painfully into his shoulder, tried to slouch. He opened his mouth, adopting an empty, vacant stare.

  “What’s wrong with him?” the guard asked.

  “Horse,” Ren sighed sadly. “Hoof to the forehead. Now he thinks he’s... a king.”

  The guard barked a laugh, spitting crumbs.

  “A king? This ragamuffin? Well, every other drunk here is an emperor. Go on through.”

  Once they passed the gates, Caleb straightened up sharply. His eyes burned with barely contained fury.

  “'Thinks he’s a king'? Seriously, Ren?”

  “The best lie is the one closest to the truth, Lenny,” Ren smiled, but his eyes continued to scan every window, every dark alley. “Now relax. We’re going to a place where they won’t look for us. At least, for the first few hours.”