The woman kept her eyes on Alina, suspicion radiating off her in waves. When Alina crouched to help, she stiffened, planting herself between the boy and the princess as if she expected a knife between the ribs at any moment.
Alina fought the urge to bristle. Biting back a nasty remark, she met the woman’s glare head-on, then shifted her attention to the boy. “Can you walk?” she asked, careful to keep her voice even.
The boy nodded, a twitchy, nervous movement. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Let’s get you to the infirmary.” She gave him a small smile, hoping to look reassuring.
Kael motioned for Alina to help, and together they lifted the boy to his feet. He was lighter than she expected—hunger had left its mark on everyone in the Caves, but upclose it was a raw, ugly thing. The woman hovered, arms crossed, her eyes never leaving Alina’s hands as she steadied the boy.
The older rebel addressed Kael directly, pointedly ignoring Alina. “It was that rotten beam,” she said, voice rough. “I told Marcus last week, it was going soft.”
Kael gave a clipped nod. “I’ll have him check the whole section. For now, let’s get to the infirmary so Sage can patch you up.”
Together, Alina and Kael supported the wobbling boy—Soren, as it turned out—to the infirmary. He tried to be brave, but it was clear that he was quite shaken up and in pain. Apparently, one of his legs was also injured. The woman limped behind them. Alina could feel her eyes boring into her back the entire time.
At the entrance to the infirmary, Kael motioned the woman to help Soren into the room. Soren looked at Alina, eyes still wide from shock and pain.
“Thank you,” he whispered, so quietly Alina almost couldn’t hear it. She squeezed his arm, then passed him gently to the woman, who took the weight without a word. She let them enter the infirmary and turned to Kael, who was leaning against the wall. He let out a long, shaky breath, like the only thing holding him together had finally gone slack. He wiped a smear of dust from his jaw and straightened, turning to face Alina.
“You did well,” he said in a low voice. It took her a second to realize he meant her handling of the rebels.
She wanted to laugh, or maybe collapse, but tension still coiled tight in her spine. “I didn’t do anything.”
He shook his head, the faintest hint of a smile ghosting his lips. “Sometimes doing nothing is exactly what’s needed.” He reached out and brushed the dust from her hair, fingers lingering just a beat too long.
“You should go back to your room,” he said, voice gentler than she’d ever heard it. “Find some rest.”
She shook her head. “I’m not tired.”
He arched an eyebrow, clearly not believing her, but let it drop. “All right.” His gaze lingered a moment longer on her face, then he turned to enter the infirmary.
Like the war room, the infirmary was always warmer than the rest of the Caves. But unlike the war room, it smelled not of sweat and stale beer, but of dried herbs and mixed potions, of fire smoke and something sharp.
Something in the smell was comforting. It spoke of health and care and cleanliness that stood in stark contrast to life in the Caves. It held an aura of hope and safety, albeit with a chance of pain.
Cabinets and open shelves lined the entire left wall, each one crammed to overflowing with earthenware pots and glass bottles, tins with curling labels, sticks of chalk, and enough vials to stock a palace apothecary. Bushels of dried herbs dangled from the ceiling rafters—some greenish and pliant, others gray and brittle—bound in twine and caught in the shadows like the ghosts of last summer’s harvest. The mixed aromas reminded Alina of late afternoons in the palace kitchen, when Marta Sweetbriar would tie a bunch of rosemary behind the stove and the heat would coax out its sharp, piney perfume. Here it was layered with the bitterness of willow bark, the clove-sweet rot of bruised comfrey, and the mineral bite of blood.
In the center of the room was the main table: a broad, waist-high slab of stone, big enough to hold a grown man. It served as workbench and treatment bed both, and was just as often used for spreading out tools or wrapping bandages. At one end, a rolled mat waited to be spread out for patients to lie upon. Above it were rows of mismatched lamps, some elegant as teardrop crystal, others little more than tin cans with bent handles, all strung from the rafters and angled to flood the tabletop with uneven light.
On the far wall, five cots were nestled against the wall, all of them currently unoccupied and each waiting with a soft pillow and a warm blanket neatly folded.
Sage Wintermend was waiting for them, because news raced through the Caves faster than a winter storm and she knew they were coming. As the room had, the woman gave Alina a flash of reminiscence. Like Marta Sweetbriar, Sage was a short woman—and would have been round had she not suffered through the ever-present shortage of food—who had a no-nonsense attitude with a heart of gold underneath.
Kael steered Soren to the nearest cot, murmured something that made the boy unclench his fists, and left Sage to work. The older woman hesitated, then lowered herself to the adjacent bed, her eyes flicking nervously from Soren to Alina and back again. Sage moved quickly, cleaning and binding the wounds with a forceful tenderness that brooked no argument. Soren gradually relaxed under her care, still wary of pain but safe in the knowledge that Sage was a healer with all her heart.
Alina lingered, watching as Soren’s breath evened out and color bled back into his cheeks. She wanted to do more, to say something, but words fled her. She settled for meeting the woman’s gaze and holding it—neither challenge nor apology, justacknowledgment. The woman looked away first, and Alina felt a strange, muted triumph.
Kael caught her arm gently. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
They stepped into the corridor, both a little shaken by what had just happened, and by what had happened before. Kael’s hand hovered at her elbow as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to let her go.
They walked in silence, the only sound the echo of their boots and the slow, wet drip from somewhere in the stone above. Their encounter before the cave-in now felt like a huge invisible thing between them, leaving Alina unsettled and uncertain. She yearned to pick up from where they had been interrupted, but was too shy to make a move. What would he think of her if she threw herself at him, especially after what had just happened? Wasn’t it thoroughly inappropriate to even think of such things when two people had just barely escaped death?
And yet, the images came to her, and her chest tightened. What had she gotten herself into? This man was a maelstrom, and she was a leaf on the water, powerless against the force. It was petrifying and yet she savored every heartbeat of it. It was too late to turn around now, and impossible to pretend otherwise.
By the time they had reached her room, the dust slowly settling and crunching under every step, Alina was utterly worked up and wrecked by nerves. She seemed to have forgotten how to speak, her stomach a tangled knot of anxiety. At her door, they stopped. A few meters down the corridor, the heap of stones and broken wood spoke of the near-catastrophe that had happened only minutes ago. They both ignored it. Slowly, Kael turned to her, bracing onehand against the frame. He was so close, his presence filled the space, making the air seem suddenly too tight for breath.
Oh.
