Alina shivered, and not just from the cold.
A third group huddled near a wooden post planted in the earth. Here, the lesson was more subtle, but no less strange. A woman in a moss-green shift stood with her eyes closed, arms extended toward the post. From her fingertips, thin tendrils of energy—green, nearly transparent—snaked through the air and wrapped around the wood. She coaxed them forward, then snapped her wrist; the tendrils constricted, binding the post so tightly that the grain bulged under the pressure. For a tiny moment, Alina felt a tingle in her fingers. There, then gone. She put her hands in her pockets.
“Stop!” called her partner, a slight man with fingers stained black by ink. “You're choking that poor post to death. It's turning purple. It’s panicking.”
The woman cracked one eye open. “It's a piece of wood, Elias. It doesn't have feelings.”
“Neither did my last lover, but I still treated her with respect,” he quipped. “Gentle, remember? You're not making rope for a hanging, you’re weaving a blanket for a baby.”
The woman rolled her eyes but relaxed her grip, and the green tendrils softened, looping the post in a delicate net. “Happy now? Shall I sing it a lullaby too?”
Alina stared, unable to reconcile what she saw with the stories she’d been raised on. The palace had always painted the Gifted as threats, aberrations, a class of people whose powers were uncontrollable, whose every breath was a danger to the Realm. She’d never thought of the power in the context of discipline, or teaching, or—she struggled for the word—art.
The wind-girl, Adair, noticed her then, pausing between drills to wipe her forehead on the back of her hand. She gave Alina a lopsided grin, unashamed. “You want to try?” she called across the yard, voice carrying like a bell.
Alina shook her head, managing a polite smile. She doubted she could even lift the sword, let alone summon air to move it.
Adair shrugged and went back to her practice, this time sending a lazy, swirling gust toward the ceiling. It caught the torch smoke, spinning it into a tight, inverted cone before it collapsed. The show-off.
A stray wind—one of Adair’s weaker swings, surely—rolled across the yard and swept up the fringe of Alina’s tunic, tossing a handful of debris at her feet. She stepped back, caught off guard,and felt heat rise in her cheeks at the reminder that she was, in every way, out of place.
The sound of laughter—honest, open, unmocking—drifted over from the sword group. Alina glanced around, half-expecting to see Seraphina lurking in the shadows, ready with some barbed comment. But Seraphina was nowhere in sight; it was just Adair, grinning and shaking her head as if to say, “Better luck next time.”
Alina found a bench at the edge of the yard and perched on it, arms folded. She told herself she was observing, gathering information for the inevitable escape. But she knew, deep down, that she was watching because she couldn’t help herself. There was something thrilling, almost intoxicating, in seeing the Gift wielded with control and purpose. Again, a tingling arose in her fingertips and the amulet around her neck grew warm on her skin. She chose to ignore it. It was simply her body reacting to what she was seeing. Just like when somebody complained of a queasy stomach and her own stomach started to twist. That was it.
As so often, her thoughts strayed to her parents. What would they make of all of this? Had they actually ever seen someone wielding the Gift? If they had, surely they couldn't keep believing them to be monsters. The more Alina thought about it, the less everything made sense.
The yard was a portrait of discipline, but also of defiance. Every drill, every demonstration, was a refusal to be what the world had accused them of being. Alina envied their certainty, their mutual reliance. They would all die for each other. She doubted the palace guards would ever die for her, not out of loyalty.
The bench was cold. She hugged herself tighter, trying to ignore the sting of the air on her ears and the ache in her legs. But she did not move. She watched until the training ended, until the swordgroup dissolved into laughter and the earth-shapers scattered, until the green-shift woman picked up her bundle and drifted toward the warmth of the sleeping quarters.
Alina remained. She watched the torches burn down to nubs, their light sinking into puddles at the base of the wall. She listened to the echoes fade, and to the way her own breath seemed so much smaller in the absence of all that force. Again, annoyingly, her thoughts went to Kael and what Gift he must possess. He seemed to be handling it so naturally, as if it wasn’t any different from walking and breathing.
Only when she could bear the cold no longer did she rise and walk back into the winding corridors. Her feet carried her onward, but her mind stayed in the yard, replaying the sweep of Adair’s sword and the pressure of the wind on her face. An image of herself in Adair's place arose unbidden in her mind, wielding sword and wind. Startled, she shook the thought away. Childish fantasies, nothing more. But as much as she tried to ignore it, she couldn't shake the uneasy knowledge that deep within her a truth lay buried, waiting to be uncovered.
Once again, her feet had taken her to the training ground. In the last few days she had felt increasingly irritable. Nobody was actually doing anything with her, apart from Finn, who didn’t count, because everything was a joke to him. She was constantly waiting for something to happen, for someone to take her somewhere or interrogate her or anything. But nothing happened. She had been here for three weeks, and still she didn’tknow what to expect. They interacted with her regarding the bare necessities, showing her where to bring her laundry and where to get fresh clothes. They handed her food and answered when she asked for the way. But nobody really talked to her about anything, least of all what their plans for her were.
Now she stood and watched Kael ordering his people about. He did it with such confidence, so sure of himself, his heart so invested in the cause. It seemed to come to him with such ease. And it made him so annoyingly attractive.
She hated him. She wanted to hate him. And yet...something drew her to him, made her eyes swivel to him, let her attention wander to him. She had to watch that damn lock of hair fall over his eyes. Had to observe his graceful movements, strong and sure. Had to—
“Like what you’re seeing?” Alina nearly jumped out of her skin. Finn stood beside her, grinning from ear to ear. “It’s quite obvious, you know. Hell, I would stare, were I into guys. But I am not.” He winked, then bent toward her and whispered into her ear, “That's why I’m staring at you.”
And off he went.
Alina did not know what to say or how to react—or how to move at all, for that matter. It was all too much! A few weeks ago, all she had to concern herself with was how to perform in Lord Rowan's class and whether or not her friendliness to the handmaiden was perceived as she intended it. She had been ensconced in a world of rules and etiquette and every nuance of tone of voice, every movement was to be considered and then executed accordingly.
Here, she was completely lost. She felt so out of place; a foreign object in a strange land. The place was damp and dark and cold; itwas a maze of never-ending corridors and halls and caves, carved into a mountain that seemed none too happy to have all these humans crawling about and seemed to be doing its best to make them as miserable as possible.
Her clothes were scratchy and ill-fitting. They smelled strange, and she didn’t want to think about who they had belonged to before. She felt dressed up and ridiculous, undignified in them. Genderless and very unattractive.
The people were rude, staring suspiciously, either not talking to her at all or dropping some sneering comment. At best, they were barking some orders or ignoring her. Why on earth they had taken her when they did not want to ransom her and at the same time clearly did not want her to be here in the first place, was a mystery to her.
So deep in thought was she that she did not realize that the continuous string of commands and answers, questions and reports had ended. Kael had approached her. He stood at a polite distance, his golden eyes looking her over thoughtfully. It made her feel even more self-conscious. At the same time she was annoyed at herself that his looking at her should make a difference at all. Why should she care?
“Are you all right, Princess?” Kael asked.
“Why do you ask?” she spat. “Does my comfort level factor into your kidnapping metrics? Should I rate my abduction experience on a scale of one to ten?”
