She tried to keep her eyes on her feet to avoid staring, but the closer she got, the harder it became. The villagers watchedher progress, some openly, some with sidelong glances and half-hidden smiles. The children were the boldest. Three of them stopped in the middle of a footrace to point at her, conferring in stage-whispers before one of them—a boy with a thatch of white-blond hair and a missing front tooth—shouted, “Hello! Who are you?” The others shushed him, but Alina could see their faces, eager and unafraid.
She felt the heat rising in her cheeks and looked away, pretending sudden fascination with a patch of wild strawberries fattening in the shade. The fruits looked like rubies, and their scent made her mouth water. She wondered if she was allowed to pick one. In the palace, foraging was strictly forbidden; only the gardening staff could touch what grew in the royal grounds. The memory of Marta flashed in her mind—she would have winked, plucked three berries, and popped them into Alina’s mouth one by one, daring the kitchen staff to scold her. The thought made Alina ache with a homesickness she’d thought herself too wise to feel.
She passed a wooden arch braided with morning glories, and the path widened into a sort of commons. In the center, a circle of stones marked a fire pit, its ashes still faintly smoking from a recent meal. Beyond that, glass jars crowded a plank table—some filled with jams or pickled roots, others with wildflowers or clusters of tiny, glowing insects. Around the table, a group of elders sat in the sun, their hands moving over knitting needles, whittling knives, or cards. They noticed her approach and made no effort to rise or intercept her but nodded and smiled kindly, following her with warm expressions on their faces, as if she were an old friend passing by.
The path went on on the far side of the commons and Alina followed it. Her body, while not healed by any means, was not on the brink of collapse either. How very strange.
She could feel the eyes of the village on her, not hostile, but heavy, as though each person was weighing her and finding her wanting. She had spent her life being measured—by tutors, by the rebels, most of all by her parents—but this was different. There was no ambition here, no sense that her presence could be twisted into advantage. It was as if she had walked into a story being told by someone else, and everyone was waiting to discover what role she would play.
At a small bridge over a network of rivulets, she paused. A group of children sat with their bare feet dangling over the edge, arguing about something in urgent whispers. They looked at her as she approached, then at each other. After a moment, a girl who might have been nine or twelve—it was impossible to tell, she was built like a stork and wore confidence like a cloak—stood and offered a shy half-wave.
Alina waved back, equally shy and moved on.
The path led her to the heart of the settlement, where the houses clustered closest and the air was thick with the smells of bread, smoke, and wet earth. Here, the villagers’ curiosity was less disguised: men and women paused in their work to watch her, children peeked from behind laundry lines, and the elders at the central fountain seemed to lean in as one organism, their interest palpable.
She passed two women kneeling by a stone basin. One was dark-skinned with a braid as thick as Alina’s wrist, the other pale and speckled with freckles. They were coaxing something impossible from a pile of damp sticks: blue flame, transparent andflickering, that burned cold and left no scorch marks on the stone. One woman noticed Alina and winked, making a gesture with her hand that Alina recognized as both greeting and warning. In her father's realm, the open wielding of the Gift was punishable by death or—if one was lucky—lifelong exile. Here, it was performed in broad daylight, in the center of the village, treated as an ordinary part of life. Images of another village where the Gift was used openly flooded her mind and with it, the memory of Kael—his eyes, his face, his hands. The way he had looked at her, the way his presence made her body react, the way his scent drew her in like a magnet. A pang of longing slashed through her, so intense that she couldn’t breathe for a moment.
A little further on, a man was splitting planks with a hatchet. He looked up, met her gaze, and raised the blade in salute. Then, with a murmured word, he sent the wood floating through the air in a neat, controlled spiral, stacking itself with gentle clicks against the trunk of a nearby tree. Alina’s lips parted in involuntary wonder at the effortlessness of it, and she glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed, but the man had already returned to his work. No one else seemed impressed.
She was halfway through the central square when she realized she had no idea where she was supposed to go. She slowed, hoping someone would approach or offer directions, but the villagers maintained a careful distance, their attention intense but not hostile. There was a feeling in the air, a charge like the moment before a storm.
Unsure, she paused at the edge of the square, beneath the boughs of the two largest trees. The weight of staring became too much, and she found herself arranging her face into the mask of the palace: serene, unbothered, above it all. But in this place,surrounded by people who had no reason to care who she was, the mask felt thin and ridiculous, like a child’s costume worn out of season.
She stood for a long moment, awkward and exposed, until she was certain that nothing would happen unless she made it happen herself.
She was about to choose a direction at random when a voice, clear and precise as a bell, rang through the air.
“You’re early,” it said. “Or maybe just in time.”
Alina turned, expecting a council of elders or a jury of her peers, but saw only a single woman—tall, with hair cropped short at her chin and streaked through with premature silver, her skin weathered by sun and wind. She wore a tunic the color of old linen and boots laced up to the knee. Her hands were bare, and her long, clever fingers were flecked with scars.
The woman’s presence was magnetic, a field of gravity that pulled every other detail of the world into orbit around her. She studied Alina with a gaze so direct it felt like being measured for a suit of clothes, or a coffin.
“I am Nola Willowheart,” she said. No bow, no greeting, just a statement of fact. “Come with me.”
Nola did not wait for a response. She turned and set off at a brisk pace, her stride smooth and economical, each step deliberate, but unhurried. Surprising herself, Alina followed, trying to match the older woman’s rhythm and failing by half a beat. In a strange sort of way, Alina knew in her heart that this woman did not mean her any harm. She couldn’t have told how she knew, only that it was clear as day. Maybe she was still lying in the cave and this was her slipping away into the next life? Or whatever it was that came after this one? As they walked, people partedaround them—sometimes pausing in their work, sometimes not, but always leaving a clear lane. It seemed as though the entire village had decided, wordlessly, that this was a procession to be watched and not interrupted.
The path led up a gentle rise and into the shadow of a tree so large its trunk could have housed several palace bedrooms. Set into the roots, halfway between earth and sky, was a house—no, a nest, more round than square, the walls built from woven branches and daubed with clay that glinted red in the fading sun. A staircase spiraled around the trunk, and Nola took it without hesitation, each step taking her a little further from the world below.
A little dazed by the surrealism of it all, Alina climbed after her, feeling every rung of the railing with hands that still ached from the mountain. At the top, there was a light breeze, the air tinged with the green scent of leaves and the faint, bitter trace of sap.
Nola reached the landing and paused, waiting for Alina to catch up. When she did, the older woman nodded once, then opened the door with a flick of her wrist.
“Come in,” she said, and Alina obeyed.
The interior was simple, but not spartan: shelves that were lined with jars and bundles of dried herbs, a table cluttered with parchment and ink, a bed built into the wall and piled high with furs and patchwork quilts. The windows were cut into the shape of leaves, and the glass panes threw green-tinted light over everything. It was the opposite of the Caves—open, light-filled, and alive with the smell of growing things.
Nola closed the door and turned to face her, folding her arms. She cocked her head and scrutinized Alina.
“You’re not what I expected,” she said.
Alina bristled, a familiar heat rising in her face. “Sorry to disappoint.”
A glimmer of amusement flickered at the edge of Nola’s mouth. “We were told to expect someone broken. Are you broken?”
Alina hesitated. Was she broken? She remembered the way her voice had sounded, high and ugly, in the last fight with Kael; the hunger and the shame and the way her hands wouldn’t stop shaking even when she tried to make them still. What did being broken entail? All encompassing desperation? Or feeling nothing at all?
“Probably. Maybe. I’m not sure,” she said.
