8. Adelina
Adelina
The sky does not stay open for long.
The pain catches up before the castle is even out of reach behind me.
It begins as a pull beneath my shoulder blades, sharp enough to steal my rhythm, then spreads down my back in burning waves that make each beat of my wings harder than the last. I grit my teeth and climb higher, because the first stretch matters.
Freya said east until the river bend. East by the winter star, because everyone will expect me to go south.
The winter star burns ahead of me, cold and bright, and I hold my course by it because the alternative is looking back.
If I look back, I’ll see the castle. If I see the castle, I’ll think of Freya standing above the trapdoor, her face framed in lamplight, her mouth trembling when she tells me to run.
I’ll think of her dragging the rug back into place, arranging pillows beneath blankets, standing between my brother and an empty bed as long as she can.
I’ll think of Varek’s hands, Selvara’s smile, the cold force in Prince Kaedryn’s voice when he realized I hadn’t known what I was being asked to sign.
What I was made to sign.
My wings falter. For one terrible second, the wind drops out from beneath me, and my stomach rises into my throat as I sink through the edge of the cloud.
I force my wings open wider, pain flashing bright enough to blur the stars, and the air catches beneath them again.
A sound tears out of me before I can stop it, swallowed instantly by the sky.
I keep flying.
I don’t know how long I stay above the clouds.
Time becomes strange up here, measured less in minutes than in wingbeats, in breaths, in the sharp ache of muscles I haven’t used like this in years.
I’ve flown in my garden, yes, if it can be called flying.
Short lifts. Careful turns. A controlled rise over stone paths and orchids with walls on every side and Freya watching below, pretending she isn’t afraid I’ll push too high and be seen.
This is different.
This is not practice. This is my body being asked to become something it was never allowed to be.
The clouds thin as the night deepens, breaking into long gray ribbons below me.
Through them, I catch glimpses of the world beneath, black pine forests, silvered ridgelines, narrow cuts of frozen stream reflecting starlight.
Everything is sharper from above, stranger.
The kingdom I have lived inside my whole life unfolds beneath me like a map I was never meant to touch.
I know the route.
I saw it in the book. I saw the sketch of the river shaped like a hook, the three ridges that point east before the land falls south, the abandoned watch house hidden behind black pines. I remember every line Freya showed me because my mind remembers what it sees, whether I ask it to or not.
But remembering a map is not the same as flying through the dark with pain crawling across my back and wind cutting tears from my eyes.
A gust hits from the north and shoves me sideways hard enough that I lose sight of the winter star.
Panic slices through me. I twist too quickly, and the motion sends agony down my spine, hot and deep.
My wings snap unevenly, one catching too much air, the other folding inward for half a beat before I wrench it open again.
The world tilts. Clouds rise. Stars fall.
Breathe.
Next mark.
Next star.
Next breath.
Freya’s voice steadies me because my own can’t.
I find the winter star again and turn east. The night stretches until it feels endless. At first, fear keeps me sharp. Every shadow beneath the clouds becomes a patrol. Every break in the wind becomes the sound of wings behind me.
Then fear begins to thin beneath exhaustion.
My arms tremble. My legs have gone numb from cold and strain.
My back is a living flame, every beat of my wings pulling at pain that has no wound to explain it.
More than once, I consider dropping below the clouds and landing among the trees, just long enough to breathe, just long enough to let my body stop shaking.
Each time, I think of the words Freya pressed into me.
“First checkpoint before dawn if you can. They will look for you at morning. Be gone before morning knows where you are.”
So I keep going.
The river appears sometime in the last stretch of night. For one wild heartbeat, I nearly follow it south, grateful for anything familiar from the map, but Freya’s instructions catch me before I turn too soon.
“Do not follow the river. Cross it.”
I cross.
The air is colder over the water, rising sharp through my wings, and the current glints beneath ice where the moon finds cracks in the frozen surface.
On the far side, the land rises into ridges, three of them, just as the book showed.
The second is split by pale stone. Relief moves through me so suddenly that my wings falter again, and I have to bite back a sob as I correct my balance.
The map is real. Freya’s people are real. The relief I feel makes my heart stutter.
I angle lower after the third ridge, staying close enough to the treetops that pine branches scrape the mist beneath me.
Flying low is more difficult. The wind is broken here, chopped apart by the forest and the slopes, and every shift demands more strength from muscles already burning.
The sky behind me has begun to lighten by the time I see the rock face shaped like a broken tooth.
The watch house is below it, hidden behind a cluster of black pines.
I circle once, too exhausted to trust my eyes.
Nothing about the place looks safe. Nothing looks like a house.
It is only a dark shape tucked into the ridge, its roof buried under snow and needles, its walls the same rough stone as the slope behind it.
If I had not memorized the drawing, I would have passed over it entirely.
Maybe that is the point.
I land badly. My boots hit a patch of frozen dirt beneath the pines, my knees buckle, and I stumble into a tree with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs.
Pain tears across my back, hot and immediate, and for several seconds I can only cling to the trunk with my wings spread awkwardly behind me, trying not to cry out.
A low growl rolls from somewhere to my right. A wolf, maybe. Or something wearing a wolf’s shape. Not Varrow. Freya always said Varrow were quieter than hunger.
The sky is turning gray. I don’t have time.
I let my wings fold away. They vanish in a rush that leaves my back hollow and aching, and I pull my cloak tighter around me as I stagger toward the north side of the hidden house.
The door is so well concealed I almost miss it, a dark seam beneath overhanging branches and stone.
My fingers are stiff enough that it takes me two tries to find the latch.
A strip of blue ribbon is tied beneath the iron.
I stare at it.
Blue.
Safe.
My throat closes so tightly I have to press one hand against my mouth to keep from making a sound.
Safe does not mean forever. Safe does not mean Freya is unharmed.
Safe does not mean my brother will not find me, or the prince will not follow, or the world beyond this threshold will suddenly become kind.
But it means the door may open. It means someone knew I might come.
It means Freya did not send me into the dark alone.
I lift my fist and knock twice, then once, then twice again, exactly as the book instructed.
Nothing happens. The forest takes shape around me in thin silver light.
Dawn is not here yet, but it is close enough to make every shadow dangerous.
My breath fogs in front of my face. My hand trembles when I lift it to knock again.
Then a board creaks inside.
A woman’s voice comes through the door, low and cautious. “Who seeks shelter?”
My mouth is so dry I barely manage the words. “A traveler sent by Freya.”
Silence.
Then, closer, “Freya sent many travelers in her life.”
The second phrase. I close my eyes, dragging it from memory. “But only one beneath a winter star.”
The bolt slides back. The door opens just wide enough for a woman to look out.
She is older than I expected, though not as old as Freya, with brown skin weathered by mountain wind and dark hair threaded with gray beneath a plain wool scarf.
Her eyes move over me quickly, taking in the cloak, the boots, my hidden hair, the tremor I can no longer control. Then her gaze lifts to my face.
She knows me. Something in her expression breaks. “Oh, child,” she whispers.
I almost fall apart right there on the threshold. Instead, I force myself to say, “Mistress Hedda?”
“Yes.” She opens the door wider and reaches for me. “Come in before dawn catches you standing there.”
It’s different from court warmth, from polished hearths and perfumed smoke.
This is rough heat from a low fire, the scent of root stew, wool drying on a rack, pine resin, old wood, and people who have lived close to winter long enough to respect it.
The door shuts behind me, and for the first time since Freya shoved me into the tunnel, there is a barrier between me and the outside that doesn’t feel like a prison.
A man rises from a chair near the hearth. He is broad and gray-bearded, with one arm wrapped in a leather brace and a knife at his belt. His eyes go to Hedda first, then to me. The moment he sees her face, his own changes.
“So it’s tonight,” he says quietly.
Hedda keeps one hand on my arm, and I realize she expects me to collapse. She is not wrong. “It’s tonight.”
The man crosses to the shutter and looks through a narrow slit before securing it with a bar. “Any trail?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and my voice sounds strange in this room. “I stayed above the clouds as long as I could and crossed the river before turning lower. I don’t think anyone saw me.”
“You wouldn’t know if they did,” he says.
“Tarrant,” the woman says softly.
He looks back, jaw tightening, then nods once. “Aye. Sit, then.”
I look between them, unable to make my body obey. “I shouldn’t stay long.”
Hedda’s hand tightens around my arm. “You should stay long enough not to drop dead in the snow.”
“I have to reach the Sea Temple.”
“And you won’t reach it if you collapse before the second checkpoint.” She guides me toward the hearth with a firmness that reminds me so sharply of Freya I almost pull away from the pain of it. “Sit.”
I sit.
The chair is rough wood with a blanket thrown over it, and the moment my weight settles, the exhaustion I have been outrunning folds over me.
My wings are gone, but my back burns from the long flight.
My hands won’t go still in my lap. My boots are wet.
Snow melts into the hem of my trousers. I try to hold myself properly anyway, but Hedda sees it and makes a soft, disapproving sound.
“None of that here.”
I look up. “None of what?”
“Trying to look unbreakable when you’re already cracked.”
I have no answer for that.
Her husband, if that is what he is, ladles something warm into a chipped bowl and sets it on the small table beside me. “Eat.”
“I have coin.”
He snorts. “Keep it.”
“But I can pay.”
“We know who you are,” Hedda says as she kneels in front of me and begins unlacing my boots. I jerk back before I can stop myself. She freezes immediately. The man by the hearth goes still too.
No one touches me. No one speaks.
The reaction in the room is so different from the castle that it takes me a minute to understand.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. My eyes burn.