Chapter 5
You're Back to Finish the Job?
The transfer from the cave was abrupt, as if she had closed her eyes for one moment and opened them the next to rough hands, a blindfold, and the stink of leather pressed over her nose.
She tried to fight, but her limbs still quivered from that earlier display of force, and the men who lifted her had none of Kael’s measured gentleness.
They handled her as one might a troublesome sack: grip, heave, and done.
She yelped, and not a single one seemed to even notice.
She was loaded into a wagon, a plank biting her spine.
The blindfold held tight, cinched at the back of her head, and over it a hood for good measure.
The effect was total. With sight gone, her other senses rose like crows to pick at her nerves: the jolting rattle of the wheels, the way every rut in the track snapped her neck back, the sharp tang of horsesweat and resin, the distant, barely audible voices in a dialect she could not place.
Her only constant was the cold, creeping in under her ruined dress and up her legs, turning her skin to gooseflesh.
She tried to keep time by the changes in terrain—first the shudder of stone, then the thick, wet drag of mud, then long stretches where the wagon pitched and yawed as if rolling over the broken bones of the earth itself.
At intervals, the men would pause, perhaps to shift the horses or confer, and during these moments Alina could make out the metallic clink of weapons and, once, the soft mewling of an infant, quickly shushed.
She was given food and drink during those stops to consume awkwardly under her hood, and a female rebel guided her into the bushes to relieve herself.
She thought of her mother and felt nothing. She thought of her father and tasted bile. Mostly, she thought about the ever-increasing distance between herself and anything she had ever known. What would await her at the end of that journey?
Eventually, when Alina had lost track of any sense of time or direction, they came to a halt.
The wagon’s gate dropped open with a splintering crash, and hands gripped her again, positioning her upright.
She wobbled. Someone steadied her with a palm against her back—too large, too rough to be Kael’s.
Where had they taken her? There was a command, then a brief and vicious jerk that sent her stumbling forward, blind.
The air here was different: it carried not the floral fragrances of the palace, nor the living warmth of human habitation, but a mineral density that settled instantly in her lungs.
They led her through a series of sharp turns, then a final, ascending path that left her calves burning and her chest rattling with the effort.
Someone rather unkindly removed the blindfold.
The first moment of vision was pure agony, even though the light was minimal—just a scatter of torches, their orange splatter amplified by the mirrored slick of cavern walls.
She squinted and blinked until tears ran freely.
When her vision cleared, she found herself in a corridor not of hewn stone but of living rock, its surface veined with black and blue, and alive with the slow creep of water.
Beside her stood the red-headed archer from the raid, instantly recognizable even in this weird, warped light.
Seraphina; she had overheard Kael calling her.
She looked taller without the mask, or perhaps more dangerous.
Her jaw was marked by a recent bruise, and her knuckles were raw where skin had been peeled away.
She met Alina’s gaze with a look of perfect contempt.
“You walk,” Seraphina said, voice devoid of accent or warmth. “Or I drag you.”
Alina walked.
The hall narrowed, then widened, opening into a chamber as large as the palace’s library.
Its floor was packed with straw and dried moss, and the air vibrated with a dull, persistent hum, the sound of people living just out of sight.
Alina was led down a side tunnel, every footstep echoing twice, until they reached a door that was more a slab of petrified wood wedged into the stone.
Seraphina shoved it aside, ushered Alina through, and closed the slab behind them.
The room was bare but for a few scarce items: a wooden bed with a straw mattress, a wooden stool and a rickety table, and upon this a thin candle stub that Seraphina lit with quick, economic motions.
The ceiling pressed low, giving the room a claustrophobic feel.
There were no windows, no ornaments, not even a bucket for washing.
“This is your cell,” Seraphina said. “Try not to make a mess. You would have to clean it up yourself, for a change.”
She turned to go, then paused. “If you scream, no one will come. If you try to run, you’ll freeze before you reach the tree line.” She said it all with the indifference of a person discussing the weather.
Alina’s voice emerged ragged but unbroken. “Is this your idea of civilization?”
Seraphina arched an eyebrow. “We survive. It’s more than your kind ever gave us.”
With that, she left, the heavy door sealing out what little light there had been.
Alina stood perfectly still for a long minute.
She thought of sitting, but the mattress was a sad, collapsed thing, and the stool looked ready to splinter under the weight of a thought, much less a person.
Instead, she paced the perimeter of the room, fingertips grazing the walls.
Six steps from the door to the bed. Five steps from wall to wall.
The stone was cold. And even though the marble floor of the palace had been cold, too, it hadn’t radiated dampness.
She tried to remember the last time she had been alone, truly alone, with no staff, no maids, no guards lurking at the margin of her existence.
The answer was never. The thought made her knees go soft, and Alina sank, not to the bed or stool, but to the cold stone floor, solid and certain beneath her.
A knock on the door, soft, but not shy, broke through her racing thoughts.
Before she could react, it opened, and a woman entered carrying a bundle in one arm and a bowl in the other.
The woman had the build of a palace seamstress—slight, with clever hands—and hair pulled back into a neat bun.
She neither looked at Alina nor acknowledged her presence, merely set the bowl on the table and placed the bundle beside it.
Then, wordless, she turned to go.
Alina called after her: “Wait—please.” The word felt alien in her mouth.
The woman paused, just barely. Her eyes flicked to Alina’s, then away, as if the very act of seeing the princess was a violation.
Alina reached for some semblance of dignity. “What is your name?”
A pause, then: “Mira.” Flat, final.
“Mira, may I—may I have a blanket?”
“Already there,” she pointed with a callused hand at the bundle. Alina wondered, fleetingly, if she would ever develop such hands.
“Thank you,” Alina said, more quietly.
Mira left, shutting the door with the softest click.
Alina wrapped herself in the blanket. The scratch of it was instantly overwhelming, but also oddly comforting, like a memory of being swaddled, or maybe just the unfamiliarity of discomfort as a sign she was still, in some way, alive.
She eyed the rest of the bundle: clothing. Practical, unadorned, sized for someone her height but with no consideration for shape or color. A tunic of rough-spun wool, brown leggings, a pair of linen underclothes, and boots with mismatched laces. On top was a note, written in a slanted hand:
Change, eat, rest.
Nothing more. She could not say why, but she knew Kael had written the message. She wondered why that should matter at all, but somehow it did.
She took the bowl and, finally daring to trust the stool, sat down to eat.
The stew was thin, more water than anything else, but it had the faint flavor of onion and game, and by the third spoonful she could not stop herself from eating every drop.
She licked the bowl, then laughed grimly at the animal nature of it, the sound—genuine, shocked, absurd—echoing in the tiny room.
She looked around at her kingdom: the shabby mattress, the ancient furniture, the stub of candle already drowning in its own wax.
Then at her body, so completely at odds with the silk and jewel of yesterday.
She thought of her mother, her father, the palace—the gold and the cruelty of it.
She tried to summon hate, or longing, or any feeling at all, and found instead a hollow so vast she nearly wept.
She changed clothes by the flicker of candlelight, peeling off her ruined dress in pieces. She shivered not from the cold, but from the strangeness of standing naked in a hostile environment. It made her instantly feel even more unsafe.
The new clothes felt heavy and unfamiliar. The boots were too large, but she tore her old dress into strips to pad them, filling the gaps around her feet. She made a nest of the blanket on the mattress and laid down, arms crossed over her chest.
For a long time, she simply stared at the ceiling. The rock above was alive with the shimmer of mineral deposits, and in it she saw patterns—maps, perhaps, or constellations. Her breath slowed, and her heartbeat returned to normal.
When the tears came, they were not loud or dramatic. They were quiet, polite, like the tears of someone who had spent a lifetime learning to cry without witnesses.
She let them come, and when she woke later—though she could not say how much—her pillow was damp, but her cheeks were dry. In the dark, she listened to the slow drip of water, the hush of distant voices, the shifting of people whose lives had never once intersected with her own until now.
Alina rolled over, burrowing deeper into the scratchy warmth of the blanket, and wondered what version of herself would wake up in the morning.