Sleep, when it finally claimed her, dragged her back into the very place she had fled.
The smell of pine and damp earth vanished, choked out by the cloying sweetness of Polan’s skin oil and the metallic tang of blood. The fir needles beneath her cheek hardened, morphing into the plush, expensive rug of his study.
She was on the floor again, broken, unable to rise.
Polan stood over her. In the dream, the perspective was warped; he loomed impossibly large, a monument of judgment staring down at a broken doll. He looked at her with a profound, crushing disappointment, as if she were a puzzle that refused to be solved.
“You look at me with such hatred, Gessa, because you see only your own small life.” His voice was soft, reasonable. It wasalwaysreasonable. “You do not see the suffocation of the world.”
In the dream, she couldn’t move. She could only watch his hands—gentle, precise—as they cleaned the blood from her fingers with his own monogrammed handkerchief. The tender motion belied the agony radiating from her injuries. He wiped a smudge of blood from her knuckle, scrubbing until the skin was red and pristine.
“The Iron Spurs hold the entire Concordium by the throat,” he lectured, sounding like a patient tutor explaining a simple concept to a slow child. “They claim to serve us, but they are parasites. Cairsul digs the iron, Valenros grows the grain, and Cyndria holds the ports. But none of the Five Kingdoms can trade without paying the Spurs’ tithe. They hoard the Ley Lines, claiming independence. It is a tyranny of coin, Gessa.”
Then, the dream buckled.
The floor fell away. Suddenly she was sitting in the high-backed chair, pinned by a weight that wasn’t there before. She looked down. Her belly was impossibly large, swollen and round, with a legacy she hadn’t chosen.
Polan smiled. He smoothed the hair back from her damp forehead with a lover’s touch. Gessa tried to scream, but her throat was sealed shut as he ran his hands possessively over the distended curve of her stomach.
“But we will change that,” he whispered, his palms warm on the child that wasn’t hers, but his. “Our son will break theirmonopoly. A Wayfinder who answers to no Order, who belongs to the people—and to us. He will bring the roads back to the common man.”
He spoke the words the world was desperate to hear, masking his own greed as their salvation.
“Why do you make me hurt you to save you?” he whispered, leaning close enough to steal her breath.
She jerked awake with a strangled gasp, her heart hammering against her ribs. She was shaking violently.
The air in their small sanctuary felt dense with a static charge that raised the hair on her arms. The scent of peppermint was so intense it watered her eyes. Tiny, blue discharges snapped along the weave of her blanket, biting at her skin like sand fleas. The sound—a relentless, dry crackling—filled the small hollow.
Shadow stomped a hoof, letting out a panicked, breathy whinny that echoed too loudly in the quiet woods. He pulled hard at his tether, eyes rolling white.
The magic.
Gessa’s hand flew to the hematite at her chest, her fingers clumsy with fear. She squeezed the cold stone, pressing it hard against her sternum.Not now. Not here. Be still.
She focused her will on the iron’s deadening weight, fighting the hot, expanding pressure in her chest. Slowly, agonizingly, the static faded. The biting snaps ceased. The oppressive charge in the air receded, leaving her gasping in the dark. Shadow stood trembling, sweat slicking his coat, staring at her from the shadows. The rest of the night became a long, drawn-out battle, one ear tuned to the rustle of leaves, the other to the volatile force simmering just beneath her skin.
The second day dawned grey, a damp chill clinging to the air that promised no relief. Every muscle in Gessa’s body screamed a protest. Her ankle had turned into a stiff, agonizing lump, the skin tight and hot to the touch.
She stood by Shadow’s flank, gripping his mane, breathing hard before she even attempted the climb.
“One more day,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure if she was begging the horse or her own body. “Just hold steady for me.”
The act itself was a clumsy, pain-filled scramble that left her breathless and trembling before they had taken a single step. Shadow sidestepped nervously as she settled, his ears flicking, eyes wide, seeing threats in every dancing shadow.
“I know,” she whispered, shortening the reins to keep him from shying. “You feel it too. We’re a raw nerve, you and I. A beacon for anyone looking.”
She checked her supplies, shaking out the cloth that had held the cheese. A few oily crumbs fell to the forest floor. The waterskin tied to her satchel felt alarmingly light.
“That’s it, then,” she told him, her voice hollow. “Empty. We’re running on nothing but fear now.”
A chilling truth took hold, one she had been trying to ignore since dawn. This wasn’t sustainable. She could barely put weight on her ankle, let alone walk. Shadow, her only means of rapid escape, was becoming a liability, his terror a reflection of her own inner turmoil. And the Wild Blood—it had flared during the night, a stark reminder of how little control she possessed.
“We aren’t going to make it to the Spurs,” she said softly. The words hung in the damp air, a grim truth finally spoken. “Not like this. I’ll break, or the magic will betray us, or Kestrel will find us before we clear the woods.”
Her fingers shook as she fished the map from her bag. She pored over the ink, then turned the paper toward him, angling it so he could see. She waited, watching his ears twitch, pretending for a heartbeat that they were a team of two making a plan.
“Look here,” she said, tracing a faint line near the edge of the parchment. “Hillston. A village.” She looked up, scanningthe grey horizon. “It’s a risk. People mean eyes, and eyes mean danger. But we need food. I need to bind this leg properly.”
