“Is she here? Lady Solene! Goddess of Nature, gift us with your presence!”
Eager feet scuff, and more voices rise and fall, and before I know it, a practical battalion of worshippers storms around the corner.
Their eyes are wide, adoring. They clutch their hands to their chest in prayer. Worn, wrinkled clothes hang off their frames, and they carry blankets and baskets of food slung overtheir arms, which makes me realize they’ve been here for days. Camped out in the hall.
Waiting for me.
I retreat a step into my bedroom, hand flying to tighten the folds of my dressing gown. The army captain bolts his feet and pivots hard on the devotees, drawing his sword with a metallic ring.
“Back!” he commands. “You heard Immortal Vale’s command. All pilgrims seeking an audience with Immortal Solene must wait in the second-floor library, outside the boundary of the royal residential hallway.”
But a bright-eyed young mother, cradling her infant in a woolen sling, wags her finger at me. “It’s really her! Look at her ears, it’s true!”
My face blanches. I clap my hand over the shell of my ear, eyes widening to find that it does, indeed, rise to a soft point. When I drag my tongue across my teeth, they snag on incisors. But my skin? It’s pale. Still in human form. No glowing lines to blind them with.
By the gods, I’m only half in human glamour, still groggy from sleep and the Gloaming.
I might as well be half-dressed.
“Umm…” I squeeze my ear, not sure how to banish the point.
“Lady Solene!” A lanky man with a limp hobbles forward, swiping off his woolen cap and clutching it in his calloused hands. A spiral tattoo, reminiscent of swirling water, marks his chin. “Give us your favor, my lady. It’s a blessing from Vale himself that you’re waking exactly when we need you most.”
As the worshipper approaches, the army captain thrusts his sword forward as a warning. “You’ve already cluttered the hallways with your damn offerings, now get back before I have to clear you out of the way, too!”
He raises the sword, taking a menacing step forward, and the crowd’s worshiping rumble rolls into uncertainty. Still, the rag-tag pilgrims’ eyes gleam with determination. I spy more of the same spiral chin tattoo among the crowd—it must be their people’s mark.
The limping man dares another step forward, even with the guard’s sword aimed at his chest.
“Damn you,” the captain caws, “I said stay back!”
“Wait!” My feet sweep me forward, my hand falling away from my ear. “Stop, don’t hurt them!”
I’m too short to reach the guard’s raised sword, but on impulse, I lift my palm. I don’t even know what I’m doing. Just following some deep river of knowledge in my bones.
My palm tingles like frostbite.
The guard’s steel glove suddenly frosts over from the base to the fingers, an icy coating spreading up his sword blade in snowflake patterns.
He yelps, stumbling backward, tugging desperately to get the gauntlet off. It falls to the floor with a hiss of ice. Beneath, his bare hand is red, chapped. Nearly frostbitten.
A hush falls over the hallway.
As though one, all eyes turn to my raised palm.
“The Wilderwoman,” a gap-toothed woman utters as if in a trance, speaking Immortal Solene’s moniker.
The air begins to spark with renewed eagerness, and I can feel it—the coming storm. My heart pounds as I step forward with a hand tentatively raised, afraid to rest it on the guard’s shoulder to check on him, in case I turn him to pure ice.
“I’m…sorry,” I gasp, bending down to grab a pair of woolen mittens from among the offerings. “I—I just didn’t want anyone to be hurt.”
As if a peace offering, I offer the captain the mittens.
His breath is quick, like he’s facing off against an enemy army. Even though it’s onlyme.
He bows his head again.
“They’ve been here for days,” he explains, sliding on one of the mittens with a nod of gratitude. “Immortal Vale consented to them leaving offerings—” he nods to the piles overflowing outside my door. “—but it’s an audience with you they want. Say they won’t return home without one.”
