The Gift, still raw from before, tingled at the edges of her nerves. She tried to suppress it, tried to remember what Elara had told her about restraint, about using fear as a focusing tool instead of a fuse. But the wolves advanced in perfect silence, and her heart was too loud for any wisdom to get through.
The alpha wolf sprang. Alina threw up her hands, palms out, and screamed.
The Gift detonated. There was no finesse to it, no clever shaping or subtle weave, just a blast of force that hammered outward from her body in an invisible explosion. The world went white and silent for half a second, then came roaring back with the stink of ozone and burning hair.
When her vision cleared, the three wolves lay dead, limbs in tangles, eyes staring dull and unseeing. She sat for a while, shaking from the adrenaline, the overwhelming exhaustion, her aching stomach, and the freezing cold—and most of all from the realization that this could have happened all too easily with the refugees. Instead of the wolves she saw the people lying there, the woman with the newborn, the children, the old people. Maybe Kael had not been entirely wrong then.
Her hands shook so badly she could barely wipe the sweat from her brow. Her throat felt scorched, her chest tight and empty. TheGift was a traitor, always ready to defend but never to comfort, and the aftermath left her more hollowed out than before.
She pulled herself upright, leaning against the nearest oak for support. Had she had anything in her stomach, she would have vomited. The bark of the tree was slick and clammy, cold enough to bite through the cloth of her sleeve. She pressed her cheek to it, letting the chill calm her racing pulse. Her knees buckled, and she slid down until she was sitting in the cold detritus of the forest floor, knees hugged to her chest.
Her breath came in sharp, uneven bursts, each one a plume of white in the dusky air. She stared at her hands, at the tremor that would not leave, and wondered what it was about her that managed to turn salvation into something so ugly.
The forest, satisfied for the moment, grew quiet. There was no birdsong here, no sound but the creak of old wood and the sigh of the wind high above. Alina buried her face in her arms and rocked, back and forth, until the worst of the shaking passed.
She wanted to laugh, but the sound stuck in her throat. She wanted to cry, but the tears had run dry hours ago.
Eventually, she stood. The world felt lighter—not better, but at least the panic had bled out, leaving her with only the familiar ache of being utterly, irretrievably alone.
She brushed the dirt from her knees and fixed her gaze on the thin ribbon of trail ahead. The path through the woods was longer, and she knew there would be more wolves, more dangers, more chances to lose herself to the Gift.
But there was also the chance, however slim, that she could make it through. That she could become something other than what everyone expected, something even she might one day recognize.
She set her shoulders, sucked in a breath, and staggered into the trees.
Night fell early in the woods, and with it came the storm again. The wind, having been less brutal within the woods, picked up again. The trees groaned and swayed, the clouds pulling tight across the sky until they smothered every last trace of clear sky. By now, it felt like an entity, she just didn’t know if it was a hunter or a companion. The first flakes of sleet pinged against Alina’s face like grains of salt, but soon they thickened, turning the forest into a rattling, spectral blur.
She hunched deeper into her jacket, tucked her chin, and kept moving. The trail was barely visible. Her body was a mess. What wasn’t numb hurt like hell. Her fingers, still shaking from the Gift, were stiff, useless sticks. She stuffed them under her arms, but it did little to help.
Would she ever feel whole again?
The path dropped steeply and she followed, slipping and sliding as the leaves turned to slush beneath her boots. The wind grew teeth again, and she knew that it was biting at the exposed skin on her neck and cheeks, but she couldn’t feel it anymore. Every few steps she had to stop and wipe the ice from her lashes, blinking through the blur. The trees, so close and menacing before, now seemed to huddle together against the storm, their branches woven into a black, creaking cage. She was frozen to the core, so cold that she could not imagine anymore what warmth felt like. Thecold seemed to numb everything, her body and her thoughts. Her surroundings became blurry, her mind sluggish.
She walked until she couldn’t. And then she walked some more.
When her eyes snagged on a dark shape up ahead, she thought it was a trick of the storm. Just a shadow at the base of a boulder, barely visible through the curtain of sleet. She almost passed it by, but something in her—some animal sense, some last spark of self-preservation—made her stop. She doubled back, scraping at the snow with her boots, and found an opening. She barked out a crazy laugh, the sound whipped away by the wind.
It wasn’t much. A fissure in the rock, barely wide enough for her to squeeze through sideways, but it cut deep, and the promise of shelter was enough. She braced her shoulders, held her breath, and inched inside.
The wind dropped away instantly. The silence was so sudden it rang in her ears as Alina crouched in the narrow tunnel, her back pressed to cold stone. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust; the darkness was nearly perfect, but the floor sloped gently upward, leading her away from the storm. She followed, one careful step at a time, and though a tiny voice in her told her that something might live in here, there was no other option but to move forward. Feeling along the wall with her hands, she went on until the tunnel widened just enough for her to sit down and hug her knees to her chest. Thankfully, she was alone.
Hopefully, it would stay that way.
She was still shivering, but the stone, though cold, was a relief after the claws of the wind. She let herself sink back, letting the ache in her bones pull her down, down, down. After a while, warmth bloomed deep within her. Ah, she thought distantly, I am freezing to death.
Then sleep took her.
Dreams came. Not the gentle kind, but ones made of teeth and claws and the endless, echoing voices of everyone she’d ever failed. She saw her father, face blurred by distance, calling her name across a chasm that kept widening with every step she took. She saw Finn, smiling, then disappearing behind a wall of glass. Kael’s eyes haunted her, gold in the dark, not angry but tired—so very tired—and somewhere in the dream, she heard the wolves again, circling, waiting for her to slip.
She woke with a start, every muscle locked, heart pounding so loud she thought the wolves had found her for real this time.
It was morning, or close enough. The storm was gone. A faint light filtered through the crack of the cave entrance, reflecting off the wet stone and turning the small chamber into a prism of dim blues and grays. Surprisingly, she was still alive. Her stomach reminded her loudly that she was indeed, but would not be for much longer if she kept up walking and not eating. She rubbed her eyes, realizing that she was barely able to move.
Alina spent the next hour stretching and mobilizing her muscles in a painful, laborious process that left her sweating and trembling. She needed three attempts to get to her feet, and when she stood, she swayed precariously. She was totally and utterly battered and drained. Her muscles were jelly, her joints stiff as wood, her belly was so empty it was hollowed out, her head swam, she had a tremor all over and her vision was still blackening round the edges. With a strange detachment, she realized that she was going nowhere today, and probably never would. This seemed to be her last stop.
Having come to that understanding, she might as well inspect her final resting place. Slowly, Alina let her gaze wander along thewalls. The frost that coated them wasn’t smooth, but etched with delicate lines and whorls spread over the surface. Something was off about them, they looked… deliberate. Yes, that was it. They were carved with a far too great precision to be the work of wind and water. She reached out, ran her finger over the nearest pattern, and felt the groove, deep and purposeful.
She stepped back to take in their entirety. And now she could clearly see it: they were runes. She recognized a few from the palace library: warding signs, protection spells, the kind that old alchemists etched into their doors to keep out evil spirits or unwanted memories.
