Alina’s eyes were drawn to the silver-haired woman—Branna—who had moved to a small table and was meticulously grinding herbs with a stone pestle. Her hands moved with a sure, unconscious grace, and for a moment, the air around her fingertips seemed to hum with an energy that made the fine hairs on Alina’s arms stand up.
“It’s not illusion,” Kael continued, following her gaze. “It’s persuasion. It suggests to the world that this tower isn’t worth the trouble of noticing. The forest agrees. The stones agree. And so, most of the time, the king’s soldiers agree.”
He fell silent, letting her absorb the barrage of new information. Alina looked from the magical keeper to the desolate refugees to the ancient, warded stones. This was no warrior’s camp. It was a sanctuary, a secret whispered into the ear of the world. The sheer practicality of it, the deep, embedded power required to maintain such a thing, was staggering. It spoke of a resistance that was older, more patient, and far more clever than the brutish rebellion her father’s stories had described.
A sense of anticipation, cold and sharp, began to coil in her stomach, cutting through her residual irritation. This was not a show of force. This was the revelation of a foundation. Kael hadn’t brought her here to threaten her with an army; he was showingher the roots of something. The fact that he was showing her at all meant he believed the roots mattered to her.
Her hands trembled, faint and delicate. Alina clenched them into fists at her sides, hoping no one had noticed. The amulet at her throat, usually a cold and dormant weight, felt strangely aware—not quite vibrating, but present, all the same. She resisted the urge to touch it. The quiet in the room was no longer just an absence of sound; it was a listening silence. She wondered what it was waiting for. She wondered what Kael was about to show her that required this solemn, almost sacred preamble. What came next would not be another argument. It would be evidence.
When Kael spoke to her next, his voice was so low that Alina almost missed it. With a jerk of his chin, he indicated the other people in the room, but then returned his gaze to the fire. “They came in last night. From the western farmlands. His Majesty’s troops were ‘consolidating assets’—burning crops, seizing livestock. A routine exercise.” The words were flat, stripped of any emotion. Somehow, it made it worse. “Their boy, the eldest… he was nine. He ran, as any child would. He didn’t run toward the soldiers. He just ran. Away.”
Alina’s eyes flicked to the family. The woman had been quietly weeping into her hands when they entered, but now she paced a tight, furious circle near the hearth, her arms wrapped around herself as if holding her body together. Her cries were not soft sobs but harsh, ragged things, torn from her throat with a violence that made the air itself feel raw. The sound filled every inch of theroom, soaking into every nook and cranny—there was no escape from her grief.
Her husband sat on a low stool, his back against the cold stone wall. He did not look at her. He did not look at anything. His hands rested palms-up on his knees, utterly still, and his eyes were fixed on some point on the floorboards as if he could see straight through them into nothingness. He was a man hollowed out, a shell waiting to collapse.
Two children, a boy and a girl who could not have been more than six or seven apiece, sat close together a few feet away. They shared a single, thin blanket, their small bodies pressed side-by-side for warmth or comfort. They did not speak. They did not fidget. They simply stared into the middle distance with identical, numb expressions, eyes wide from seeing things they could not comprehend.
Kael paused, the mother’s ragged breathing drowning out all other sounds. “They couldn’t find him after. The soldiers didn’t care to look. They were herded out with the others. He was just… left. One less mouth to feed in a rebellious province.”
Alina’s breath caught in her throat. She looked at the two younger children, trying to imagine a third figure between them, and failed. The abstraction of “purges” and “lost children” she’d overheard in the rebel stronghold suddenly had a face. The face of a hollowed-out man, unable to speak. A woman, wracked by rage-filled sobs. Two small children, numb with terror.
The pacing woman stopped abruptly. Her head snapped up, her streaming eyes scanning the room as if seeking a new focus for her unbearable pain. They landed on Alina.
The change was instantaneous. The grief on her face curdled into something else, something hot and dangerous: recognition.Her eyes, red-rimmed and puffy, widened. She took a stumbling step forward, pointing a trembling finger.
“You,” she breathed, the word a puff of mist in the chilly air. Then, louder, a shriek that tore through the tower’s solemn quiet. “You!”
The man on the stool flinched, the first voluntary movement he’d made. He slowly, painfully, turned his head. His eyes, dull and lifeless, focused on Alina. There was no recognition in them, only a deep, weary confusion.
The woman advanced, her earlier exhaustion burned away by a furious energy. “I know you! I’ve seen your portrait on the royal proclamations they nail to our doors before they take our taxes. The Princess,” she spat the word like it was a curse. “What is she doing here?” This last was screamed at Kael, a raw demand.
Alina took an involuntary step back, her heart hammering against her ribs. “I… I’m sorry,” she stammered, the words hopelessly inadequate, childish. “For your loss.”
The laugh that ripped from the woman was ugly and broken. “Sorry? You’re sorry? Your father’s men burned our fields! They took our grain, our milking cow—gentle Bella who never did a thing wrong—and then they took my son! My Ewan!” Her voice broke on his name, her rage falling into broken sobs. “He had a laugh like… like little bells. He was nine. Nine! And you stand there in your… your…” She gestured wildly at Alina’s rough-spun clothes, as if they were a grotesque costume. “…and you say you’re sorry?”
Alina couldn’t stop her tears from falling, hot and shameful. “I didn’t know,” she whispered, the defense sounding weak even to her own ears.
“You didn’t care to know!” the woman shrieked, taking another step forward. Kael shifted his weight slightly, placing himself subtly between the woman and Alina, not as a threat, but as a barrier. The woman didn’t seem to notice. “You ate the food from our stolen harvests! You slept safe in your palace while we buried neighbors! You are of them! Your face is on their orders! Your family’s seal is on the writ that sent those men to my door!”
The father finally spoke, his voice a dry rasp, like stones grinding together. “Lyssa. Leave it.”
The woman—Lyssa—whirled on him. “Leave it? Marek, look at her! She’s right here! She can hear what they’ve done!”
“She can’t give him back,” Marek said, each word an effort. He looked at Alina then, and the depth of the emptiness in his gaze was more terrifying than his wife’s fury. It was a void, impossible to climb out from. He held her eyes for a long, awful moment, then turned back to the wall, dismissing her from his world completely.
Lyssa swayed on her feet, the fight draining out of her as quickly as it had come. The strings of violent energy seemingly keeping her up snapped and, like a marionette, she collapsed to a heap on the ground, shuddering. She wrapped her arms around herself again and began to cry, the sound now a low, hopeless moan. The children had watched this outbreak silently, stunned into immobility, utterly overwhelmed and unable to process. They were beyond tears.
Alina stood frozen, the woman’s words echoing in the silence they left behind. Your face is on their orders. She could feel the weight of every stare in the room: the children’s blank looks, Branna’s cool assessment from across the chamber, Kael’s silent observation. She had never felt so seen, and yet so utterly invisible. Her apology was not just unwanted; it was an insult. Her presencewas a profanity in this temple of loss. The guilt was a physical weight in her chest, a stone of shame that made it hard to breathe. She had come from a world of words and rules and polite fictions, and she had just been confronted with a truth that had no use for any of them.
When Branna guided her out of the room, out into the entry area again, it was a relief—but Alina’s reprieve was brief. A trapdoor stood open now, revealing a square hole in the floor, with a ladder leading into what was obviously an underground room or rooms.
“There is more to see,” Branna said as she went first, her silver hair a faint guiding light. Alina followed, her hand skimming the cold, rough wall for balance. She felt sick to her stomach, almost begging Kael to take her back, yet feeling too ashamed to ask. Kael came last, a silent presence at her back.
The cellar was a low-ceilinged, cramped space, a hollowed-out bubble in the foundation of the tower. The air was several degrees colder, carrying the thick, sweet-rot scent of mildew and the dry, ancient perfume of dust and ink. It was a chaotic library of pain. Crates had been stacked haphazardly, their wooden slats splintered and stained. Shelves carved into the rock were crammed with rolled scrolls, tied with faded ribbon. Piles of loose papers formed precarious towers on the floor, dusted in a fine gray powder. A single candle in a wrought-iron holder sat on a central table, its flame guttering in the damp draft, casting long, dancing shadows that made the piles of paper seemto shift and breathe.
Branna gestured with a long-fingered hand, encompassing the entire disorganized archive. “Every missive, decree, and order we could intercept or retrieve. Every list of names. Property seizures. Military deployments. Court judgments.” Her voice was cool, dispassionate, a scholar discussing a fascinating, if morbid, collection. “They write everything down. They are meticulous record-keepers, your family and their soldiers. It makes our job easier. Proof cannot be argued with when it bears the royal seal.”
Kael remained near the foot of the stairs, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, face unreadable. He did not look at the papers. He looked only at Alina. “It’s all here,” he said, his voice quiet but carrying easily in the confined space. “See for yourself.”
