My heart is my compass.
Ramson’s mind cleared. In the darkness of the dungeons, he could barely make out the retreating outline of the alchemist, the white flashes of his cloak as he hurried in the direction where the escape tunnel lay.
“Wait,” Ramson said.
Ana awoke to silence, snow, and stars. A cold draft stirred through the broken windowpanes of the dacha she and Linn had found. The fire in the hearth had gone out. From the soft, silver-blue glow of light beyond the tattered curtains, she could tell that it was still night. Dawn lingered, just out of reach.
Yet something had shifted in her senses. It took her a moment to realize that her Affinity was back.
Relief flooded her, and she sat up in the rugs and furs she and Linn had piled together for a makeshift bed. The girl was nowhere to be seen, but the soft whickering of their horses near the door told Ana that her companion would not be gone for long.
Ana clutched her head in her hands. She always felt off balance when her Affinity returned; it was like being able to see again, darkness slowly giving way to patches of light and blurred movement.
It had been a day since they’d ridden from the Kerlan Estate and escaped Sadov in the Syvern Taiga. In the semidarkness, she could still taste the nauseating fear that had coated her tongue, the hiss of Sadov’s voice from the shadows.
In five days’ time, your brother will announce his abdication due to ill health and appoint the Kolst Contessya Morganya as Empress Regent of Cyrilia.
The world drew into sharp focus. She had four more days to get to the capital of her empire.
She reached under the pile of blankets until her fingers grasped the beaded purse that had been tied to her wrist when Sadov had abducted her. Now ragged with dust and blood, it still held the last of her belongings.
Ana dug out a globefire and shook it. The chemical powders inside the orb rattled, and eventually, a spark caught on the oil coating the inside of the glass. Light lanced across the small cabin, and she held it close as she rummaged through her purse.
Her map was still in there, tattered and stained. Holding the globefire over it, she found the name of the village they’d passed last evening before settling into this empty dacha: Beroshk.
With her thumb, she traced the distance to Salskoff, and calculated.
Exactly four days of travel by horse. Her stomach tightened. They would just make it; they needed to be on their way soon.
She shifted her position, and the remaining contents of her purse spilled out. A copperstone and a silver pocket watch glinted in the light of the globefire. The sight of these objects brought back memories that ached like fresh wounds.
She held a purse full of things that belonged to people who, no matter how hard she tried, she would never be able to bring back.
Ana hurled the purse across the room.
The door opened behind her, bringing a breath of cold wind. Ana turned to see Linn clutching a satchel to her chest. Her knives were strapped to her waist, her movements sharp and lithe.
Ana looked away, ashamed to be seen crying.
Without a word, Linn crossed the room and plucked the scattered belongings up and carefully tucked them back into Ana’s purse. She hesitated, her eyes searching Ana’s face. “These seem precious to you,” she said.
Ana wiped her tears, reeling back the dark well of her grief. “What’s the use of holding on to these things if the people who owned them are gone?”
Linn laid the purse by Ana’s mess of blankets. “Do you know what I have learned?”
“What?”
“Only loss can teach us the true worth of things.” Linn’s clothes rustled as she knelt before Ana and grasped her hands. “There is nothing we can do but go on, one day at a time. We live in their memory, taking the breaths they cannot draw again, catching the warmth of the sunlight that they were meant to feel.”
The knot in Ana’s chest loosened a little; she brushed the back of her hand against her cheek, wiping away her tears.
Linn held out her hands. “Come. There is something I want to show you.”
Linn opened the cabin door and disappeared. Ana followed, and when she reached the open doorway, the cold and the sight before her stole her breath.
Outside, the sky was aglow with currents of hazy blue lights that shifted and ebbed like gentle waves, their soft glow reflected on the dark tree lines of the Syvern Taiga. A smattering of stars glittered like silver dust caught in between. And, from time to time, a wave would break away and dip down, down, down, until it disappeared beyond the trees of the Syvern Taiga.
“The Deities’ Lights,” Ana whispered. She had read of these in her studies, had craned her neck at her bedroom window for a glimpse, but the walls of the Salskoff Palace had always stood too tall. “They’re…beautiful.”
