As the first faint gray light of a new day began to seep through the shafts leading to the surface, Alina was still awake. Her eyes were dry. Her hands were still. The choice did not feel like a decision. It felt like an acceptance of a truth that had always existed, waiting for her to stumble upon it in a dusty cellar. She could not change the blood she came from, but she could refuse its legacy. She could choose a different side.
She closed her eyes, not to sleep, but to finally, fully see. The princess was gone.
What would emerge from this room was someone else entirely.
8
A Ringing Endorsement
Alina woke to the unpleasant stink of her own sweat. For a moment, she clung to the haze of her dreams, the memory of yesterday’s revelations clinging to the inside of her skull. But the world asserted itself with uncompromising force: her rough woolen tunic, the gritted cold of the stone beneath her cot, the too-loud sound of her own blood in her ears. Dawn had not yet reached the stronghold’s galleries, but she knew from the practiced rhythm of boots and mumbled curses that the day had begun without her.
She washed as best as she could with a bowl of cold water and dressed with trembling fingers, pulling the laces too tight. She was still shaken to her core by what she had seen in the tower. After her initial time with the rebels she hadn’t doubted the persecutions anymore, not really. She had always known that her parents were cold and distant people, and she had begun to see that her father ruled with more than an iron fist. But to see proof of your own parents’ cruelty was earth-shattering. How could shebe their child? How could they not see the immorality of their choices?
After what she had seen and heard yesterday, there was no doubt anymore who the villains were. She had thought that there must be some mistake, some twist of events to explain everything. Her father had never been a gentle man; he never really was a good father, if it came to that, but a tyrant? That had seemed too extreme. But now? She believed him absolutely capable of it. She saw it now with cold clarity. Kael’s words from the first days came back to her, when he had told her she would see things differently once she had all the facts. That he only seemed to be the villain, but really wasn’t. Well, he had been right.
With her reeling mind she made rather a mess of her morning ablutions. Her hair, sleep-matted and bristling, refused the quick braid she tried to force it into. Every inch of her ached, and not only from the unfamiliar exertion. She felt like she had been run over by a stampeding herd of bulls, more emotionally than physically.
At the threshold she hesitated, half-hoping to find Kael in the corridor—only to be disappointed. Instead, a different presence waited: A woman Alina had come to know as Tamsin, or Nightingale. She was all angles and silence, arms folded across her chest, her gaze fixed on a patch of lichen halfway down the wall.
“Princess,” she said, the word as flat and functional as a stone.
Alina managed a nod, fighting the urge to blurt out an apology for everything that had been done to the Gifted. She fell into step beside the rebel, matching her stride. Together they moved through the maze of tunnels, past the tea-brewing woman, the children with their conjured butterflies, the boy with the bandaged ear—each a silent witness to the parade. No one bowed. No one even looked up. And she was glad for it. After what she had learned,how could she look any one of them in the eye? Of course, now she fully understood their resentful behavior against her. How could they stand having her around? She was surprised they hadn’t stoned her on her very first day in the Caves.
It was only when they emerged into the outer antechamber, where the morning mist crawled under the threshold and pooled around their boots, that Tamsin finally spoke.
“Follow me,” she said. Then, as if the words physically cost her, she added, “Watch your step.”
The forest outside belonged to another world—a world that had no patience for fragile palace creatures. The ancient trees grew close together, their lower trunks banded with hoarfrost, their crowns vanishing into a sky the color of tin. Somewhere, birds gossiped in the upper branches, but it was not the lovely melodies of songbirds in summer but the sharp screeches of the ones who stayed during the winter months. The earth underfoot was uneven, the roots jutting up like broken bones. Each step sank Alina deeper into the cold, blue gloom.
Tamsin set a pace neither hurried nor slow. Her boots found the silent path, avoiding every puddle, every clutch of brambles. She never looked back, not even when Alina—breathless and stumbling—caught her sleeve on a tangle of dead vine. After a hundred yards, the hum of the stronghold faded, replaced by the far-off hiss of the river and the soft, insistent pulse of wind through needles and leaf.
They came at last to a clearing, half-encircled by standing stones, ancient, lichen-covered sentinels. The mist was thicker here, settling in pale ribbons between the rocks, rising and falling with the invisible tide of the air. There was a pronounced stillness about this place. Faint drips of condensation trickled from pineneedles, while tiny animals on the ground stirred and rustled through the undergrowth. The sighing of the wind in the trees had stopped. The air smelled of moss and resin and green things. Tamsin stopped at the center, head bowed, as if acknowledging a presence only she could sense.
“Here,” she said, not turning. “It’s easier if there are no witnesses.”
Alina waited, trying to slow her breathing. She flexed her fingers, fighting the numbness that crept up from her wrists.
Tamsin lifted a hand, palm outward. “Show me what Kael taught you yesterday,” she said.
“Taught?” Alina blinked, then fumbled for the memory. He had taught her that her parents were tyrants, but she doubted Tamsin referred to that. “What do you mean?”
Tamsin studied her for a moment. “Didn’t Kael teach you about your Gift yesterday?”
“He said he believed that I carry it.”
“You didn’t train?”
Alina shook her head. Tamsin squeezed the bridge of her nose between her forefinger and thumb. “It would be nice to have all the information for once,” she clipped out. She pinned her focus on Alina again. “He was supposed to show you the basics. As he obviously didn’t, I will do so now.” She lifted her arm again. “Let your Gift come to the surface.”
Alina hesitated. Did she want to learn that? Did she even believe she truly was one of the Gifted? She remembered the way her fingertips had tingled the other day but was that proof? On the other hand, considering everything she had seen and learned these past few weeks, was being Gifted a bad thing? What did she have to lose? There was no way back into her old life anyway. So, slowly,she raised her hand, mimicking the gesture. She waited. Nothing happened. She felt exceptionally stupid.
Tamsin frowned, just barely. “Not like that. You’re thinking too much.”
Alina’s cheeks burned. “What should I do?”
Tamsin squatted, tracing a finger through the frost at her feet. “The Gift is not like swordplay. It’s not muscle and repetition. It’s listening. Letting the world in, then pushing it out as you need.”
She straightened, and for the first time Alina saw the telltale signs—the faint green webbing in the whites of her eyes, the way her nails seemed to shimmer with chlorophyll. “Watch,” Tamsin urged.
