Kael’s mouth twitched, the smallest possible smile. “Just yourself. And lace your boots properly.” He glanced down at her feet, and for the first time, Alina realized she’d laced her boots differently than the others—crisscross instead of laddered. She wondered if he’d noticed every detail about her or if it was just his way.
“I’ll be ready,” she said, with more confidence than she felt.
Kael nodded, then addressed the group. “Get some sleep. If you’re late, you’ll stay behind.” He turned and strode away, already receding into the noise.
The room slowly emptied as the fire died back, and the rebels drifted to their bunks or their posts. Finn lingered, but only long enough to swipe another piece of bread, then vanished in pursuit of a card game he’d promised to win. Marcus stayed to help the cook clear the tables, and Tamsin was the last to leave, stacking bowls with the methodical calm of a person who had seen far too much chaos in her lifetime.
Alina sat alone for a while, watching the last of the embers die out in the hearth. Her mind spun with the prospect of tomorrow—the weight of expectation, the fear of failure, the faint but undeniable thrill of being given something real to do for the first time since her arrival. She wondered if Kael would be there in the morning, or if he would leave the details to others.
She thought, too, of the amulet hidden beneath her tunic, the secret weight of it against her skin, and how different her life had become in the such a short time.
When she finally rose to leave, she took care to tuck the bench in, wipe the last of the spilled broth from the floor, and arrange her cloak in the way she’d seen the others do. She moved quietly, trying to stand out as little as possible.
Alina walked the corridor to her cell, a little lighter, a little less worried, and tried to wrestle down the slow-rising hope that maybe, in her own way, she might belong—at least a little.
The patrol was anticlimactic. Alina had been overly nervous, not being able to sleep well. She had been awake since long before dawn, anxiously pacing her room until it was time to leave. She was at the meeting point a few minutes early only to find the party fully assembled. Her feelings of inadequacy reached new heights.
Kael was obviously not joining the patrol—a disappointment, as she noted grudgingly. The amount of time she spent thinking about this man was ridiculous. She pushed the thought aside and concentrated on the here and now.
The night was so cold it pressed the marrow from her bones. It had started to snow lightly, and the only sounds were boots crunching on brittle frost and the soft, ever-present whistle of wind curling through the spruce. Alina had assumed patrols would be tense, dangerous—she’d pictured herself ducking between shadows, heart pounding at every snapped twig, her presence vital to the outcome of the mission. Instead, she trailed at the rear of the column, silent, shivering, and as superfluous as a hood ornament.
Even that proved optimistic. Tamsin, walking just ahead, never looked back, not even when Alina stumbled over a rootand had to catch herself on a knee. Finn, taking up the rear, was uncharacteristically quiet; he seemed more interested in keeping a careful eye on the drifting snow than on making conversation. Only Marcus, steady and broad-shouldered at the front, occasionally signaled a halt or adjusted the party’s route with a few curt gestures. There was a choreography to the way they moved, born of repetition and necessity. Alina was a bad dancer—always a half-beat late, always a little too loud.
At dawn, the sky grew pale and soupy, the clouds the color of old parchment. The forest thinned, and the mountain ridge loomed up ahead, black and bone white. Tamsin led them up a switchback, the group leaving behind small clouds of breath that hovered for a few moments in the frozen air.
Two hours passed before anything happened. They stopped at a granite outcrop overlooking the valley. Tamsin knelt and peered into the distance, then motioned for Marcus to join him. The two crouched together, heads almost touching, voices so low Alina caught only fragments.
“—west approach, too exposed—”
“—risk if they double back—”
She tried to listen, but her teeth were chattering. If the others noticed, they gave no sign of it.
Finn offered her a strip of jerky and, after she chewed it down to leather, whispered, “Boring, isn’t it?”
“Is it supposed to be?” she replied, voice half-muted by the wind.
Finn grinned. “If you’re bored, that means we’re doing our jobs. Of course, it doesn’t make for a very entertaining story at the fireside.” He tapped a finger against his forehead. “That’s why it’s so important to have a little fantasy. You can joinme tonight to hear about our fantastic adventures at today’s patrol.” And with a flourishing bow he moved on.
After another hour, the patrol doubled back, circling a frozen creek swollen with icy water. There was nothing: no sign of pursuers, no strange prints on the snow-dusted ground, no evidence of the “Royal Bloodhounds” the rebels whispered about. A deer passed within twenty paces of their party and, sensing no threat, stared at them with eyes as liquid and untroubled as a child’s. In that moment, Alina felt a kinship with the animal—both of them lost, both out of place in this brutal cold.
A heartbeat later, those eyes dulled as the animal fell to the ground with an arrow piercing its side. It breathed shallowly a few times, shuddered, and went still. Tonight’s stew would be a little richer.
They returned on a different route, and the last leg of the march was in silence so deep it felt like a spell. Alina’s muscles ached and her nose was numb, but the ache was almost welcome. It gave her something to focus on besides the gnawing sense that she’d contributed nothing. When they finally reached the disguised entrance to the rebels’ cave, Marcus signaled the all-clear with a birdcall so flawless it tricked even the jays clustered in the trees. Marcus and Finn filed inside, leaving Tamsin and Alina to train. Tamsin immediately set off in the direction of the training ground, and Alina, dispirited to the core, trailed after her.
By the time Tamsin and Alina reached their training ground, it was late morning. The forest clearing—if it could be called that, being no more than a shallow bowl of moss ringed by ancient, moss-bearded pines—was coated with hoarfrost, every branch jeweled with glittering crystals that caught and split the morning light. The air was sharp, clean enough to burn the nose, and so cold that even Alina’s breath seemed to shatter and fall to the ground in tiny, invisible pieces. But it had stopped snowing, and the ground was dark green with moss sprinkled with a fine dust of minuscule snowflakes.
Tamsin positioned herself at the center of the clearing with her arms folded behind her back, her posture perfect, her black braid tight. Alina wondered what this woman had seen and been through as a rebel and before that. She gave off an air of indestructibility. An iron will carried in a honed and lethal body.
“We start with focus,” Tamsin said. “You recall the exercise?”
“Yes,” said Alina, though her heart was already hammering at double pace. She felt the familiar urge to smooth her hair, to check her appearance for some trace of princess in these rags but forced her hands to remain still.
“Begin,” Tamsin said, tone flat.
Alina set her feet, flexed her fingers, and reached, first for herself, then for the world outside, as Tamsin had tried to drill into her. The lesson was simple, but its execution was a battlefield. The Gift was not in her blood, Tamsin insisted. It was in the world itself. Her task was to shape it, not summon it.
Alina closed her eyes. She imagined a thread running from her to the earth beneath, to the hush between roots, to the pulse of living water running under stone. She breathed in, as if to pull it closer.
