Chapter 5
On the fifth afternoon since fleeing Niflheim, the trees thinned, and more houses appeared as they traveled down the road.
Imani lifted her hand to shade her eyes and saw the High Sentinel’s estate towering over the city.
It was so white that the sun struck it and fractured, scattering light across the city below.
The estate rose in broad tiers of pale stone above the surrounding roofs, its long wings stretching across the hilltop.
Tall, narrow windows reflected the afternoon sun, and several white towers broke the roofline, their pointed peaks visible above the walls even from the road.
A wide outer terrace wrapped the front before dropping toward the city in ordered levels of stone and greenery.
It dominated the city, intentionally placed at the highest point, where nothing could stand above it or rival its presence.
Even from this distance, it felt less like a residence and more like a declaration.
Ellisar ruled there openly, without concealment, his authority carved in stone and light. It was a different kind of power than Stralas—less hidden, less layered, and far more direct.
Nerves fluttered in her stomach as they neared the vine-covered city walls. Squinting, she could even make out her wanted posters plastered on the gates.
Tanyl had papered the realm with her likeness.
The bounty was an invitation to slaughter.
She suppressed a grin and twirled her wand.
If Ellisar could be convinced, she’d come to him instead of running.
She was tired of running. Running required reacting.
It required letting someone else set the pace, the direction, the stakes.
She had done enough of that. If she stepped into this city and claimed her place, everything that followed would begin to shift.
Not just her position, but the way the game itself was played.
Shining gates welcomed her like an old friend. Her childhood home wasn’t far away.
The closer they came, the more familiar the faces around her became in ways that had nothing to do with recognition.
Silver hair caught the afternoon light everywhere she looked, worn in braids, short cuts, and loose lengths down pale backs.
Blue eyes turned toward the approaching cart beneath delicately pointed ears.
Pale Norn skin ranged from almost translucent to weathered from years spent beneath the Draswood canopy.
Imani had spent so long surrounded by other breeds that the concentration of Norn struck her harder than expected. These were her people, at least by blood, even if half of them might currently believe she was a murderer.
Guards checked papers as elves lined up to enter the city.
Ellisar allowed visitors in, but only under strict guidelines.
Vathis was a beautiful, safe place to live, and he seemed intent on keeping it that way.
She didn’t know how they would explain their arrival, but Gavin’s swagger suggested he had already accounted for it.
The open-air cart crept forward through the crush.
Imani and Esa straightened their backs and kept their heads held high while people stared and pointed.
Some gazes lingered longer than others, measuring, comparing, deciding whether what they saw matched what they had been told.
That mattered more than fear. Fear could be swept away, but earning their respect was more valuable to Imani.
A pixie and an elf, with the Crown of Life on her head, were riding together in what must have looked like a captive situation. She suspected the crowd had never seen anything like it. Some were already making the connection to Imani’s face on the wanted posters.
As they approached the guards, her crown fluttered in the breeze, and everyone’s attention snapped to it.
Their eyes widened first. One guard glanced from her face to the wanted notice beside the gate, then back again.
Gavin tore the poster from the wall and shoved it at him.
“There. That’s her. We’re taking her to Ellisar. ”
“The poster says she’s a murderer,” a guard muttered.
“It also says she claims the Crown of Life,” Gavin snapped. “Look at her head.”
“I am looking.”
Which is precisely the problem, Imani thought. Everyone could recognize Imani from Tanyl’s posters. Recognition did not tell them whether Tanyl’s accusations were true.
“We don’t deliver every fugitive who walks through Vathis directly to the High Sentinel,” the first guard said.
Gavin’s face reddened. “I found the woman half the realm is searching for. Send word to the estate if you don’t believe me, but she is not disappearing while you debate procedure.”
The guard studied Imani again, then motioned to another soldier. “Escort the cart. Nobody leaves it until the estate decides what to do with them.”
With a loud grating and clanking, the gates opened.
Imani looked straight ahead, impassive, as a hundred pairs of eyes settled on her.
She did not acknowledge the whispers or the shifting weight of attention.
If they needed something to read, she would give them exactly what she chose, nothing more, nothing less.
Power was not just held. It was performed.
And she understood, now, how much of it depended on what others believed they were witnessing.
She was prepared for their wrath, disbelief, and hatred as they made the trek to the estate. She was, after all, a wanted murderer.
Vathis was an old city with uneven brick roads, and the cart rocked and rolled slowly through the crowd. As whispers spread, more elves clamored to catch a glimpse of the wanted woman and the Crown of Life.
Knowing moved through them faster than certainty.
“That’s her.”
“The woman from the posters.”
“Imani Aowyn.”
An older Norn woman pressed both hands to her mouth, then bowed deeply. “A Norn queen,” she whispered, almost reverently.
Someone behind her scoffed. “A murderer wearing flowers does not make a queen.”
“Tanyl is no king of mine,” another man shouted back. “Let the Norn rule themselves again.”
A rotten apple struck the side of the cart hard enough to burst against the wood.
Esa jerked away from the spray.
“False queen!” someone yelled.
Another voice answered, “Gods bless the Queen!”
Cheers rose from one section of the street while jeers answered from another.
Imani kept her chin high.
This was what Tanyl’s campaign had actually accomplished.
He had made her famous enough that no one needed an introduction, but he had not made the realm agree about what she was.
To some, she was the murderer from the notices.
To others, she was proof that a Norn could sit a throne again.
And judging by the curses thrown at Tanyl’s name, not everyone in Vathis had accepted his version of the war.
And still Imani stared straight ahead. Regal. As if she had always belonged in this role.
The truth was that she couldn’t face being anyone else.
So, she’d be the fugitive queen. And if she wore it long enough, convincingly enough, it would stop being something she merely pretended.
It would become something she defined… when the fugitive became the ruler.
The line between survival and rule was thinner than she had once believed.
All it required was the moment she chose not to step back.
It wasn’t a good plan, but it was a start, and she had always known how to build from nothing.
The closer they got to the estate, the larger the crowd became. Some Norn bowed as the cart passed. Others crossed their arms and refused. One man shouted, “Gods bless the Queen!” and several people around him clapped.
“She’s no queen!” someone screamed from across the street.
A fist-sized clump of mud sailed over the crowd and struck the wagon behind Imani.
Gavin swore. “Get back!”
The people surged anyway.
“Tanyl murdered enough of us!”
“She murdered people too!”
“At least she’s Norn!”
“That doesn’t make her our queen!”
Another woman pushed close enough for Imani to see tears shining on her cheeks. She pressed one hand over her heart and bowed her head. “Gods bless you, my queen.”
Imani could only gape at her.
Three feet away, another elf spat into the road.
The contradiction followed her all the way toward Ellisar’s estate.
Oddly, the hostility steadied her almost as much as the support.
Blind reverence would have been useless.
This was more honest. Tanyl had given the realm her face and told them what to believe about it, but he had not succeeded in deciding the question for everyone.
Some already wanted her to be queen. Some would never accept her.
Most, she suspected, were waiting to see which version of the story survived contact with Ellisar.
The crowd could recognize her. Gavin could swear to what he had witnessed. None of it settled the political question. Ellisar’s judgment would carry weight in Vathis that a wanted poster, a living Crown of Life, and a hundred shouting strangers could not.
Maybe he would believe her.
Maybe he would have her arrested.
Either way, she had finally reached someone powerful enough to force the question into the open.
* * *
The crowds dispersed as they approached the estate’s gates.
Ellisar certainly didn’t lack security around Vathis.
How would she ever see the man? He remained a shrouded mystery in her mind.
That made him dangerous in a different way than Kiran.
Not because he was unpredictable, but because he had chosen not to be seen.
That kind of restraint suggested control.
And control, she had learned, was far harder to break.
At the estate entrance, more guards demanded papers, and again Gavin held up the wanted poster and gestured broadly toward Imani. “I present to you the true queen of Essenheim. We must speak with the High Sentinel.”