15. Adelina
Adelina
The world turns silver.
There’s no fall, no flight, no ground beneath my boots. One moment Prince Kaedryn’s hand is close enough to catch the edge of my cloak, his voice still moving through me with that single command, and the next, everything I am is pulled apart into light.
I can’t breathe. I can’t scream.
The light swallows the forest, the ravine, the prince, his dark wings, the unbearable pressure of his power.
For one horrifying instant, I feel his command still wrapped around me, trying to hold, trying to make me still, but something inside me tears loose, raw and desperate, and breaks through it like moonlight through ice.
The brightness folds tighter, and my body becomes motion without direction. Silver rushes over my skin, through my bones, under my tongue. It tastes like salt and winter stars. It smells like rain on stone. Somewhere far away, or maybe somewhere inside me, I hear waves striking rock.
Then the world spits me out.
I hit the ground hard.
Pain explodes through my knees, my palms, my already-burning back.
My wings flare uselessly behind me, too weak to catch anything, then flicker and vanish before I can command them to stay.
For several breaths, I can’t move. I lie half-curled on the cold earth, cheek pressed into damp moss, while the night wheels above me in broken pieces between the trees.
The air is different here.
Still cold, but softer, threaded with salt. The pines are thinner, mixed with twisted white-barked trees I’ve only seen in drawings. Somewhere beyond them, hidden by distance and darkness, water moves with a deep, steady voice.
The Celestial Sea.
My heart lurches so hard it hurts.
I push myself onto my hands, and the world pitches sideways.
For a moment, I think I’m going to be sick.
My stomach twists and blackness claws at the edges of my vision.
I drag in one breath, then another, but each one scrapes like I’ve swallowed ice.
The transport magic has left something wrong inside me, something hollow and ringing.
“Get up,” I whisper. My voice sounds ruined.
I press one hand against the necklace around my neck, my mother’s. Then I pat for the satchel to make sure I didn’t lose it in whatever magic brought me here. I take a breath and then look up, trying to get a sense of direction. A branch cracks somewhere in the dark. I freeze.
Every part of me listens.
The forest answers with wind, leaves, and the distant rush of water. No voices. No wings.
I exhale slowly and let myself think of him for the first time since I landed.
I see him again, closer than he should have been. His hand out. His eyes on mine. The Astral Stone on his bracer flaring with someone else’s command. His voice, low and sure.
I’m not taking you back to him.
My throat tightens. Maybe he meant it. Some fragile, foolish part of me knows he might have meant it in that moment. But power doesn’t need cruelty to become a cage. A command can sound gentle and still take choice away.
I can’t let him find me.
I push to my feet. The first step nearly sends me down again.
My right boot is soaked through from the stream, cold biting deep into my foot. My ankle throbs now, sharp and swollen beneath the leather, and when I put weight on it, pain shoots up my leg with enough force that a cry breaks from me before I can catch it.
I clamp a hand over my mouth.
No. No crying out. No giving the woods a reason to betray me.
I lean against the nearest tree, breathing hard through my nose until the worst of the pain eases into a pulsing ache. The next checkpoint. I close my eyes, then open them to the sky overhead. I’m close to the Celestial Sea.
Then I see it. A giant oak, older than anything around it, its branches spreading wide enough to swallow the sky above me. Relief hits so hard my knees nearly give out.
This tree. This is the one. Freya’s book showed it after the old mill road, beyond the ridge.
“Ask for Nara Venn. If she is not there, do not enter.”
The moon remembers what the crown forgot.
I repeat the phrase silently. Then again.
The map is still inside my head, but the transport magic has scrambled the distance. I still do not know what happened, only that I saw the light and my body pulled me toward it like a beacon. Every nerve in my body fired when I reached it.
Now I’m farther along the route than anyone expected. That should comfort me.
Instead, it makes the world feel thinner, stranger, as though the ground may open beneath me again if I put my foot wrong. I walk anyway. There’s no other choice.
The forest slopes downward, and I follow it because the air grows saltier with each painful step.
My cloak snags on brambles. My wet boot slips twice.
Once, my injured foot turns against a hidden root, and I fall hard onto one knee, catching myself on both hands as nausea rolls through me.
For a long moment, I remain there, trembling over the forest floor, listening to my own ragged breathing.
I’m so damn tired. My body has become a thing I have to drag behind me.
I lift my head. Through the trees ahead, a light appears. Small. Yellow. Low to the ground. It’s not a patrol torch. Too steady. Too shielded. A house light, perhaps, hidden behind shutters or thick glass.
Hope rises so fast it almost hurts worse than fear.
I force myself upright and limp toward it.
The closer I get, the more the world takes shape around the light.
A narrow footpath appears beneath leaves and old pine needles.
A stone wall, half collapsed beneath moss.
A small cottage built into the side of a hill, its roof covered in snow and dark slate, its windows narrow and shuttered.
No smoke rises from the chimney, but warmth leaks through the cracks around the door.
There’s a mark carved into the lintel. A crescent moon over three waves.
My breath catches.
Checkpoint.
I reach the door and lift my hand. I can’t remember the knock. Panic flares, hot and senseless.
No. I know it.
I close my eyes and see the page. Freya’s ink. Three soft knocks. Pause. One more. Then the phrase.
My knuckles touch the door.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The pause lasts too long because I nearly fall before I can knock again.
One.
Silence answers.
I sway. The light inside shifts.
A voice calls from the other side, low and wary. “The tide is wrong for travelers.”
The answer. The answer is there. I know it. My mouth opens, but no sound comes out. My vision flickers.
No. No, no, no!
I press my shoulder against the door, trying to stay upright. “The moon…” My voice breaks into almost nothing. I swallow, tasting salt and blood. “The moon remembers what the crown forgot.”
The bolt slides back. The door opens.
A woman stands there, tall and dark-haired, wrapped in a deep blue shawl, her face half-lit by the lamp behind her. Her eyes move over me quickly, then widen.
“Sea and stars preserve us,” she breathes.
“Nara Venn?” I whisper.
“Yes.”
I try to step inside. My body gives up instead.
The floor tilts, the woman reaches for me, and the last thing I feel is warm hands catching my arms before darkness takes me whole.
?
I wake to warmth.
For a few seconds, that is all I know.
Warmth under me. Warmth over me. Warmth wrapped around my injured foot, pulsing gently through layers of cloth and herb-scented paste.
My body does not want to move, and when I try, pain answers from too many places at once.
Back. Shoulders. Ankle. Head. Throat. The pain is duller than before, blurred at the edges, but still there, waiting beneath whatever medicine they’ve given me.
I open my eyes.
The ceiling above me is low and curved, beams dark with age, dried herbs hanging in bundles from hooks. Sunlight spills through a round window covered in wavy glass, turning the room gold. Somewhere nearby, a fire crackles. Beyond it, faint and steady, I hear water.
Not a stream.
The sea.
I turn my head too quickly and regret it at once. A soft sound escapes me before I can swallow it.
Someone moves beside the bed. “Easy, Princess.” The voice is female.
Nara.
Memory returns in pieces. The moonlight. Kaedryn. Falling.
I jerk upright. Or try to. A hand settles firmly on my shoulder, enough to stop me before I hurt myself more, no more than that.
“No. Don’t fight me. You’re safe for the moment.”
My eyes find her. Nara Venn sits on a stool beside the narrow bed, her dark hair braided over one shoulder, her blue shawl replaced with a plain brown dress and rolled sleeves.
She is younger than Hedda, perhaps near Freya’s age when I was small, though the lines around her eyes are deep enough to speak of years spent worrying.
Her gaze is direct, practical, and not unkind.
“Where am I?” I ask, my voice hoarse.
“Checkpoint. About three miles inland from the Western Coves.”
The Western Coves. That means I’m close to the Celestial Sea, close enough that my chest aches with it.
I try to sit up again, slower this time. “I have to go.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You’ve been unconscious for a whole day.”
The words do not make sense. I stare at her.
Nara reaches for a cup from the small table beside the bed. “Drink first.”
“A whole day?”
“Small sips.”
“A whole day?” I repeat, sharper this time, panic cutting through the fog.
Her expression settles. “Yes.”
The room seems to tilt again, though I’m lying still.
Kaedryn could be here. Varek’s men could be everywhere. Freya could be dead. The old couple from the first checkpoint could have been dragged from their hidden house. My brother could have closed every road, every port, every bridge between here and the sea.
My breath comes too fast.
Nara sets the cup down and takes my hand, careful to hold only my fingers, loose enough that I can pull away. “Look at me.”
“I lost a day.”
“You survived.”
“They’re looking for me.”
“Yes.”
“Then I have to leave.”
“You can’t stand.”
“I can.”
“No, Princess. You can barely keep your eyes open.”