She looked at him—truly looked—and saw the exhaustion stitched into the corners of his smile, the way his hands were never still for long, always worrying at something: buttons, strings, a loose thread on his sleeve. She wondered what it would take to unravel him completely, to see the shape of the person underneath the jokes and bravado.
A crow landed in the branches above, shaking out its wings and cawing once, sharp and insistent. Finn grinned up at it, then back at her, as if daring her to join him in the game. “See?” he said. “Audience thinks I’m hilarious.”
Alina wanted to rise to the bait, to volley back with a clever retort, but instead she found herself staring at the mist, letting the silence settle in again. She tried to picture the palace. Not the grand halls with their marble and gold, but the kitchens, the warmth of the ovens, the slap and knead of dough, Marta’s hands strong and sure as they worked. She remembered the way Marta could silence a room with nothing but a look, how she could find laughter in the worst of days, how she’d once let Alina dip her entire fist into the mixing bowl because “sometimes that’s what a girl needs, and don’t let any prince tell you otherwise.”
The longing hit her with such force she almost doubled over. She pressed her forehead to her knees, breathing through the ache, not caring that Finn could see her breaking.
After a long minute, Finn spoke again, so softly she almost missed it. “You know, for what it’s worth—I think you’redoing a hell of a job.”
She turned her head, peeking at him through tangled hair, and saw that he meant it. There was no angle, no teasing, just the simple fact of his belief, and it made something dangerous and hot flicker in her chest.
“I don’t feel like it,” she admitted, her voice ragged at the edges. “I feel like every day I’m just one wrong word away from ruining everything.”
Finn leaned forward, elbows on knees, his hands woven together so tightly his knuckles gleamed white. “Welcome to the club,” he said, shrugging.
“How do you go on, then? How do you do what you do every day, without faltering? Without losing hope?” Alina asked, desperate for answers, for some comfort after having been put through the wringer.
He looked at her, open and earnest. “What is the alternative, Alina?” He paused to let her think on it. “Nobody is going to rescue us. The Crown is never going to have a change of heart. There is nowhere we could go. So, as far as I understand it, there are three options: let the Crown have us; give up, lay down, and die; or fight. All three options are shit. It’s shit that those are our only options. But no amount of despair will change that. The only thing left to us that holds a chance for change is option three: fight. So that’s what we do.” He paused again and searched her gaze. He took her hand and squeezed it. “It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she half laughed, half sobbed. “It’s a no-brainer.”
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket—a miracle it was even clean—and held it out. “Don’t tell anyone you saw this, or I’ll never live it down.”
She accepted the handkerchief from Finn with a wary nod, pressing it to her eyes. The fabric was rougher than palacelinen—unstarched and sun-bleached, steeped in the scent of sweat and woodsmoke—but she found it steadied her, as if Finn’s offhand care had somehow transferred through the cloth. “Your secret is safe,” she said, willing her voice not to break. “But I doubt anyone would believe me if I told them.”
Finn’s smile sharpened, carving up the lines at the edge of his eyes. “Oh, you’d be surprised,” he said, lowering his voice as though letting her in on a private joke. “That’s the other secret: if you say anything with enough conviction, people will believe it.” There was an earnestness to his words that caught Alina’s attention, as if he were internally referring to something else. As if he had a secret.
For a while, they sat in a hush pocked only by the click and scrape of Finn fiddling with the guitar’s tuning pegs. Alina tried to watch the clouds, tried to let her mind empty out into the fog, but instead it filled and filled, waves lapping at her ribs, until the only thing left was the thing she could no longer ignore.
She forced the words out. “I killed a man yesterday.” Her voice was flat, a stone dropped in a bottomless well. “Not an accident. Not just a—” She waved, helpless, at the space between them. “I made a choice. I looked him in the eye, and I did it anyway.”
Finn’s hands stilled. The guitar’s hum faded into nothing. “Was he going to kill you?” he asked, soft and not at all condescending.
Alina picked at the edge of the handkerchief, unraveling a thread. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. He was a guard. One of my—of the king’s. Somebody’s brother, a person.” She swallowed, the memory vivid in her mind’s eye: the man’s surprise as he fell, the ragged breath, the heat and the stink and the silence after. “He never saw it coming.”
Finn considered this, turning her words over in his mind like a card sharp weighing the odds. “Sometimes,” he said at last, “that’s the best mercy anyone gets.”
She let her head fall, hair curtaining her face, but she could still see Finn through the veil, waiting as if he’d been expecting the confession all along. “Did you ever think there was a line?” she whispered. “Like, a border—you stand on one side and you’re still good, you still get to be yourself. But then you cross over, and there’s no going back. It’s all mud. No matter how careful you try to be.”
Finn didn’t answer right away. He looked out over the mossy stones, past the edge of the glade, and his silence said more than any words could. When he finally spoke, it was with a gentle certainty that hurt to hear. “I think most people never know which side they’re on, or if there’s even a difference. They just keep marching straight ahead, and hope their feet find solid ground. The fact that you worry about that line speaks volumes for the kind of person you are.”
Alina tried to snort but the sound caught in her throat, twisting into a cough. She squeezed her hands together, knuckles white. She wanted to believe him, wanted it so badly her bones ached with the effort. But the image of that guard—the way his eyes widened, the way she’d felt nothing and everything all at once—would not let her off that easily.
She thought of Kael, who had witnessed the aftermath. He’d looked at her, not with blame, but with a kind of resignation, as if he’d always known this day would come and was just sorry it had. She wondered if he’d felt the same the first time he’d taken another person’s life—or any time after that.
She turned to Finn, who was watching her with concern so open it stung. “Do you think Kael ever—” she hesitated, unsure how to finish.
Finn filled in the gap. “Regrets it?”
She nodded.
Finn made a face, something between a grimace and a smile. “He regrets everything. That’s the problem.” He reached for the guitar, but didn’t play it, just let his fingers rest along the neck. “Most people believe Kael’s got it all figured out, but from where I’m sitting, he’s the most haunted man alive. He doesn’t sleep, hardly eats unless one of us makes him. He’d die for this cause, for us, for you, but he’s terrified of letting anyone down. Every day.” Finn shrugged, as if trying to convince himself as much as her. “That’s why he’s the captain. He’s been to the dark side of the line and clawed his way back.”
Alina shivered. “But what if you can’t go back?”
Finn’s eyes crinkled with something close to admiration. “Then you make a new line. There’s no law that says you can’t.”
The words wove into her, potent and terrible. She felt transparent, as if Finn could see every ugly, frightened part of her, and yet he didn’t flinch. Instead, he held that gaze, warm and unwavering, anchoring her to the present.
