Chapter 11 #3
Marcus snorted. “That’s time we don’t have. People are already half-starved as is. And now, with the King’s men crawling around everywhere we can’t risk lifting sheep again.”
“I say we go for the Crown’s supply train,” Tamsin suggested. “We know the route, the day, and the time. They’ve changed schedules, they won’t be expecting us.”
From the far end of the table, Maven Thornheart spoke up: “Assuming, of course, the King’s men don’t have a mole in this very room.” His voice was quiet, but it cut through the other conversations like a blade.
They turned to look at Alina.
What? She kept her face still, though her heart thudded in her chest. She met Maven’s gaze, searching for malice but seeing only a cold, scholarly kind of suspicion.
Maven stood, the movement as deliberate as a judge rising to pass sentence.
“I’d like to hear from the Princess herself,” he said, each syllable laced with contempt.
“How she proposes to keep us safe from the man who raised her to hunt our kind.” Oh dear.
After the safehouse, she’d understand if people hated her.
Being actually openly confronted with it was a different story.
Maven didn’t bother to look at Kael or Marcus.
He was speaking directly to the room, and to Alina, and to some silent tribunal only he could see.
The other rebels reacted with a ripple of shifting weight and sidelong glances: a woman in a patched green cloak sucked her teeth as bearded, middle-aged twins leaned in with matching expressions of hungry anticipation.
Even Tamsin, who rarely let her mask crack, snapped to attention as if scenting blood in the air.
Kael’s jaw went rigid, the muscle ticking along his jawline, but he didn’t intervene. Not yet. He watched Alina instead, and in his eyes she saw something less like doubt and more like a dare. Prove them wrong, it said, or at least put up a hell of a fight.
Marcus’s hands stilled on the tabletop, fingers splaying unconsciously to form a barrier between her and Maven’s words.
He looked at Alina, then at Kael, then at Maven, and for a moment she thought he might actually step in with some kind of joke or broad-shouldered intimidation.
But he didn’t. He just waited, letting her stand on her own.
Elara’s smile flickered, faint as the shadow of a falling leaf. She tilted her head, studying Alina as if she were a glass of rare vintage wine, curious to see if she would settle or shatter. The witch’s violet eyes glinted in the torchlight, as unreadable as ever.
A hush fell. Alina swallowed. For an instant, she was back in Lord Rowan’s study, being pressed for answers to hypothetical diplomatic questions, judged for every word and half-sentence, her outward calm as much protection as the knowledge she presented.
The image steadied her. This was nothing new to her—in fact, it was the opposite.
She was trained in this. She could do this.
Alina drew a breath. “My father hates the Gifted. He would do anything to erase them, even if it meant burning half the kingdom. He raised me to believe his lies.” She let the words settle, then continued: “But I am not my father. I always felt that something in my world was unreal, that something was off, I just did not know what it was. I want nothing to do with his war.” The very second that she spoke, she knew it to be true.
Maven’s lips curled. “You expect us to believe you, just like that? You were brought here against your will, were you not?”
She looked around the table, at the callused hands and scarred faces, at the lives that had been torn and mended by a thousand little betrayals. “I don’t expect anything,” she said simply. “But I’m here. I’m willing to help, however you’ll let me.”
“And when push comes to shove, you will fight against your old life, against your family, against your father? Forgive me, Princess,” he said, spitting out her title like it was an insult, “I find that hard to believe. There has never come anything good from your kind. We should send you back in a bag, that would at least send the right message!”
“That’s enough!” Kael snapped, putting a hand on Alina’s shoulder. “She’s proven herself worthy of our trust,” he said, voice flat and final. “Anyone who disagrees can take it up with me.”
Maven’s eyes flashed, but he said nothing more. He sat, hands folded, but his gaze never left Alina. She knew that while he might have relented for now, he was not done yet.
Kael squeezed her shoulder once, then released. “Let’s focus,” he said, and the meeting resumed, though tension in the air never truly dissipated.
The war room’s torches smoked and popped as the debate grew heated, casting wild shadows that flickered across the maps and the faces bent over them.
Every so often, a shout from the training yard bled through the air vents in the stone, but no one so much as twitched.
The focus in the chamber was absolute and ruthless; these were people who had learned to ignore distractions and tune out discomfort.
Marcus took the lead, jabbing his thick finger at the map’s ragged edge. “If we split the convoy here, we double the odds that at least one group makes it. The old pines run thick enough fighters to carry this out.”
“That’s a lot of ground to cover,” Tamsin said, her voice precise as the blade she wore at her hip.
“And twice as many people to make a mistake.” She leaned forward, knocking aside a spent mug to draw a line with a stub of charcoal.
“The King’s men know what to look for in these woods.
If they catch the scent, we’re rerouted and surrounded before we know it. ”
Marcus grinned, not unkindly. “So, we let ‘em catch the scent. Decoy squads here and here”—his hand swept out to either flank of the winding road—”same as last autumn, when we pinched two wagons of salt from under Lord Vexley’s nose. Never underestimate the power of a good distraction.”
Tamsin’s lips pressed into a straight line. “And when the decoys are caught? What do you tell the families?”
A mutter of assent rippled around the table.
Alina watched, noting which voices joined Tamsin’s side and which remained silent.
There was a pattern to it, rivalries and old grudges that were inked deeper than any map.
She recognized the choreography from her father’s council: the way every argument was only partly about the facts, and mostly about who would carry the day.
Concentrating on the dynamics of the group shifted her own focus away from herself and her fight with Maven. She relaxed a fraction.
Elara, lounging at the table’s edge, broke in with a voice as cold as a falling star.
“The city watch rotation is lighter at dusk; two patrols, both bribed through our intermediaries.” Her finger tapped the capital’s western gate.
“My sources say the garrison’s been ordered to expect a nighttime move, not a day raid.
If we go at first bell, they’ll be hungover and half-blind. ”
Kael gave her a nod of acknowledgment but didn’t interrupt the current.
He let the ideas clash and settle, only occasionally steering the ship with a well-timed word or gesture.
Alina could see why he was leader here; he had the patience to let a plan ferment, rather than forcing it to clarity before it was ready.
Maven Thornheart, silent since his earlier accusation, loomed over the map with barely concealed contempt.
Every so often, he marked a spot with his thumb, as if testing for weakness.
He would not let go of the idea that Alina was a liability, but for the moment, he hunted for flaws in the proposal rather than in her.
Alina kept her face impassive, though the scrutiny scraped at her nerves.
The center table was crowded, the air thick with sweat, rough wool, and something like burned rosemary.
Marcus and Tamsin continued to spar, drawing the rest of the room into their orbit.
The debate was technical, the tension personal.
She caught the way Tamsin’s voice sharpened when Marcus tried to soften the risks, or the way Marcus kept reminding everyone that half the squad owed him a life or a favor.
Alina watched the balance of power tilt and recalibrate with every word.
Meanwhile, she took silent measure of the secondary players.
The messenger boy who had delivered three notes in one hour, always pausing to listen at the threshold.
The two women at the far end, one with a knotted scarf around her head, who traded low-voiced commentary every time the argument reached an impasse.
Elara, always a half-step apart, watching the whole performance with a cat’s amused disdain, while her eyes missed nothing.
It was all so familiar, and yet so much rawer than anything she had known at court. There, the stakes were prestige, favor, and whispers traded in candlelit corridors. Here, every mistake cost blood. It made the air taste metallic.
When the conversation threatened to stall—Marcus having won a concession, Tamsin refusing to retreat—Kael finally intervened. He rapped the table, waited for silence, and said:
“We need a clear plan. Going to the city is too dangerous.” He surveyed the table, then let his eyes rest on Alina, as if he had forgotten she was there until that moment.
She didn’t flinch under his gaze, though she knew every other set of eyes was about to follow.
He seemed to have come to a decision, nodded once, then asked her outright: “You studied at court. If you were in charge of defending a supply train, what would you do?”
Alina hesitated for only a second. “Move in daylight. Use decoys and run two or three empty wagons ahead of the real cargo. Distribute the valuable goods evenly among the real wagons, and make sure the best fighters are distributed to protect the full convoy.”