She changed clothes by the flicker of candlelight, peeling off her ruined dress in pieces. She shivered not from the cold, but from the strangeness of standing naked in a hostile environment. It made her instantly feel even more unsafe.
The new clothes felt heavy and unfamiliar. The boots were too large, but she tore her old dress into strips to pad them, filling the gaps around her feet. She made a nest of the blanket on the mattress and laid down, arms crossed over her chest.
For a long time, she simply stared at the ceiling. The rock above was alive with the shimmer of mineral deposits, and in it she saw patterns—maps, perhaps, or constellations. Her breath slowed, and her heartbeat returned to normal.
When the tears came, they were not loud or dramatic. They were quiet, polite, like the tears of someone who had spent a lifetime learning to cry without witnesses.
She let them come, and when she woke later—though she could not say how much—her pillow was damp, but her cheeks were dry. In the dark, she listened to the slow drip of water, the hush of distant voices, the shifting of people whose lives had never once intersected with her own until now.
Alina rolled over, burrowing deeper into the scratchy warmth of the blanket, and wondered what version of herself would wake up in the morning.
She woke to the pressure of a full bladder and the ache of everything. The mattress had left its geometry on her hips; the wool blanket’s itch lingered, as if the fibers had worked their way under her skin during the night. Alina lay for a minute, staring up at the mineral constellations. She waited for the familiar rhythms of palace life—a bell, a maid’s knock, the clatter of breakfast trays—but there was only a dense, alien quiet.
She sat up. Her hair was a wild, greasy mass, stuck to her cheek by her long-dried tears. She finger-combed it and forced it into submission by braiding it. She scrubbed her face with her sleeve, found her boots at the foot of the mattress, then paused. The boots were clunky and wrong, like something a farmer’s daughter would wear in the mud. She slipped them on, and the sensation was so foreign she immediately pulled them off and opted for bare feet.
The stone was frigid, but she welcomed the shock. She padded to the door and tried the latch. It gave with a reluctant groan, and the door swung inward. No guards. No locks. For a second, Alina wondered if it was a trick, imagining that opening the door would summon a net, a fist, or the mockery of the entire rebel encampment.
But the corridor outside was empty.
She stepped out, bracing for a blow, but none came. Instead, she found herself in a high-ceilinged passage cut from the heart ofthe mountain. Daylight poured in a small shaft from somewhere above, catching the suspended droplets in the air and painting the walls in moving bands of color. The air was cold but alive; every breath tasted of iron and wet rock, not the perfumed emptiness of the palace.
Alina drifted, hands trailing over the rough-cut stone. She counted the veins in the rock, the way her own shadow fractured and reassembled with every step. She wandered until the corridor forked, one branch climbing, the other descending in a slow spiral.
She chose up. Always up.
The stairs brought her to an archway. Beyond it lay a balcony, open to a vast underground chamber: the true heart of the stronghold. The space teemed with life. So many people, all in motion, but never in chaos. Women hauled sacks of dried root. Children chased each other across the flagged floor. Old men argued in knots of three and four, their voices echoing off the ceiling like the caw of distant birds.
And everywhere, magic.
A woman in a green shift stood by a mossy well, eyes closed, arms raised. Water lifted from the bucket in a perfect, shimmering globe, then split into smaller orbs that hovered at her command, floating into the outstretched bowls of those waiting in line. A man with a grizzled beard knelt beside a crying boy, hands cupped around the child’s knee. With a word, golden light spilled from his palms, and when he took his hands away, the blood and the wound were gone. Further on, an elderly man hovered steel rods and tools, bending them into shape with nothing but a flick of his fingers and an iron will.
Alina stared, unable to look away. She’d grown up hearing stories about the Gifted—their threat, theirlawlessness, their unpredictable violence—but none of it matched this. Here, magic was a tool, not a weapon. It was like a muscle: used but never flaunted. Were all Gifted like this? Peaceful? The Gift was outlawed because those who carried it were dangerous creatures. That’s what she had been told all her life. It was common knowledge. Her father had managed to protect the Realm from this danger. Did he know that the Gift could be used like this? Had he been advised wrongly? Something didn’t add up here.
She was so mesmerized by the floating water that she didn’t notice the people staring back at her.
It started with one or two, then spread. Each time her eyes met someone’s, they quickly looked away. A woman pulled her toddler closer. Two teenage boys stopped mid-joke, mouths still open. An old man scowled and spat on the floor.
Heat sparked in her cheeks, the blush rising under her skin. She tried to move with purpose, to look as if she belonged here, but her steps betrayed her. She kept to the balcony’s edge, scanning for an exit.
She overheard them, too. The snippets were ugly, sharpened by resentment and years of hunger.
“…land stolen, never given back…”
“…they took my daughter, never saw her again…”
“…King’s men, always the same—smile to your face, knife to your back…”
“…purges, that’s what they called them. I call it murder…”
The words knifed into her, one after another. Alina wanted to protest, to say not all nobles were monsters, that she’d never taken land or a child, that her life had been as circumscribed and sterile as theirs was brutal and open. But she knew it would do no good. No one here cared for what she had to say. To them, she was littlemore than a symbol of everyone and every institution that had ever wronged them.
She found herself drawn to the edge of the balcony, where a cluster of children played in a patch of thin sunlight. They chased conjured butterflies—living, flittering things of pale blue light—and for a moment Alina felt her heart rise, sweet and unguarded.
Then one of the children, a girl with hair almost as wild as her own, looked up and met her gaze. The girl froze, mouth falling open. She whispered something to her companions, and in an instant, the game dissolved. The children scattered, and the butterflies vanished with them.
Alina watched them go, shoulders hunched, arms crossed tight over her chest. Her eyes stung, but she willed the tears not to fall. She stood there, alone and on display, feeling every inch the creature of myth and rumor they believed her to be.
She turned away from the crowd, and for a long time she just walked, barefoot, through the winding maze of corridors, realizing that apart from the very different setting, this was not so different from her old life at all: on display, and yet not seen at all.
