Chapter 13 You’re A Legend Now
You're A Legend Now
The woods had always been indifferent to pain, and so the clearing where Elara trained Alina was a theater of cruelty made beautiful by sunlight.
Afternoon light fell in hard shafts through the naked winter branches, slicing the world into gold and black.
The trampled grass at Alina’s feet was still wet from last night’s frost. Each time she exhaled, the air clouded and then vanished in a rhythm of becoming and unbeing—which felt appropriate, considering what they were about to do.
Elara did not stand still, instead choosing to prowl the circumference of the clearing, movements stitched together with the same predatory elegance as the cats Alina had watched from palace windows.
Her violet eyes never once left her student.
Elara’s hair gleamed white in the sun, the color almost otherworldly, and the long sleeves of her robe snapped and twisted in the cold breeze with each flick of her hand.
She did not speak, but her expression was one of faint, amused challenge—a test in progress, and so far, Alina had not impressed.
“Again,” Elara said, not pausing her orbit.
Alina braced. She could already sense the pressure building, the way a migraine announced itself with the taste of metal and the flash of white behind the eyes.
She hated that she was learning to predict pain, even though she understood why it mattered.
The enemies she might face outside the woods would not care if she was tired or scared or wished only to hide in bed, pressed warm against someone she loved.
They would come, and they would try to break her.
The first bolt hit her right in the heart. Not real magic, not lethal, but a projection of raw kinetic force, enough to knock her breathless and send her staggering. She caught herself, barely, arms windmilling, and managed to stay upright.
Elara’s laughter, when it came, was like ice fracturing on a pond. “Better,” she said. “But you won’t always have your feet to catch you.”
Alina’s face stung with humiliation and the harsh slap of the cold.
She could feel her pulse at the edges of her vision, thumping behind her eyes.
The sting did not fade as she drew herself up, instead radiating outward in a heat that threatened to betray her in the trembling of her hands, the wobble of her knees.
Elara circled her like a wolf with all the time in the world, and Alina wondered if she would ever stop measuring herself by the standards of people who seemed to relish her weakness.
She drew in a lungful of air so frigid it made her teeth ache, willing the bitterness to steady rather than splinter her.
Above her, the sky was a thin blue, as brittle as spun sugar and just as quick to shatter.
She did not look at Elara, not directly.
She knew the faint twist of her mentor’s mouth would be there, the one that said, not bad, but you’ll need to do better than that.
Instead, Alina forced herself to stare at the trampled grass and the perfect ring left by the sweep of Elara’s robes around the clearing.
She tried, with all the stubbornness she had left, to stop thinking about Kael, the way her muscles ached from last night’s failed exercises, and how, in a hidden corner of her brain she was ashamed of, she missed the easy, unthinking comfort of the palace and its always-burning fires.
She clung to that discomfort like armor.
“Ready,” she spat, trying to make her voice hard as flint. She felt it, too: the way her tongue cut on the word, how the sound vibrated in the air between them before being swallowed by the woods. Her readiness was a lie, but it was a lie she intended to live by.
There was the briefest flicker in Elara’s eyes—something like satisfaction, or perhaps just anticipation of the next test. Alina braced not just her body but her mind, and tried to feel herself into the Gift. She was terrified to touch it, but even more afraid to let it go unused.
She pictured Kael again, unbidden, imagining how his jaw set when he was angry, how he had once told her that pain was just the body’s way of marking progress. She tried to believe that, too.
This time, the attack came from above, a lance of light that split into a dozen shards before arcing down in a ring around her.
Alina reacted—more out of reflex than by conscious thought—throwing up her hands and summoning the shield she’d learned to weave only a short while ago.
The pain was immediate: the shield cost her, every heartbeat a tax paid in muscle and will.
The shards scattered against her defense, every impact still landed like a punch to the ribs.
Elara didn’t wait for her to recover. “Faster. Your enemies won’t wait while you gather your strength.”
Another pulse. This one took the form of a whip of wind, snatching at Alina’s legs to drag her from the ground.
She fought it, pushing against the pull, and wove the wind into a spiral that almost redirected the attack back to its source.
Almost. Elara batted the rebound away with a contemptuous flick, sending it up to shred a branch above their heads.
“You see?” Elara said, pausing now, hands folded. “It’s never about the first spell. Or the second. It’s about what you do when you are exhausted, when you are empty, and when you would give anything to stop.”
Alina’s lungs burned. Her arms felt like sacks of stone, hanging limp by her sides. Sweat pooled under her gloves and down the spine of her back, making her shiver in the frigid air.
“Can we—” she bit the words off. She did not want to ask for mercy, especially not from Elara. She would only turn it into another lesson.
“Again,” Elara said, her voice as flat as a knife blade.
The next volley was a storm. Alina was ready, but only just. She bent, braced, pulled at the well of her power, and felt the old hesitation: the fear that she might lose control, as she had yesterday.
She remembered Elara’s body lifting from the ground, the shock in the witch’s eyes, the way the clearing had gone utterly silent in the aftermath.
She did not want to do that again. She did not want to see fear on Elara’s face, or her own, or anyone’s.
But she was not here to be safe.
She took the pain, let it spark through her nerves, and then twisted it, using the force of Elara’s assault to build her own counter.
Magic was supposed to be an art, but this was closer to wrestling, or bare-knuckled brawling in the palace yard.
The energies collided in the air between them, throwing up sparks that danced and died in the cold wind.
Elara’s lips curled in something like satisfaction. “Finally,” she said. “Now, can you hold it?”
Alina tried. She really did, truly. She pushed the two streams of power together, letting them merge, and for a moment it was almost beautiful—a lattice of light and pressure, humming in her hands.
But it was too much, too fast, and she could feel her own strength burning away, consumed by the effort. Her hands shook, her knees buckled, and the shield she’d crafted flickered, went thin, then snapped out entirely.
The feedback hit her like a hammer. Magic that had nowhere to go turned inward, ricocheting through her chest and down her arms. She gasped, then screamed—a sound she did not recognize as her own.
She fell to her knees, then to her side, curled up against the cold and the pain and the impossible, boiling heat that now poured from her every pore.
For a second, Elara’s face loomed over her, concern blooming behind the mask of detachment. “You pushed too hard,” Elara said, voice now soft. “You fool, you reckless, magnificent fool—”
Then the world went black, and Alina felt herself vanish, atom by atom, into the dark.
She came to with a start, the world contracting to a tunnel of harsh white pain and a vague sensation of motion.
Someone was carrying her, their arms hooked under her knees and shoulders, jostling her body in uneven waves that each sent a fresh spike through her skull.
A familiar scent enveloped her—leather and woodsmoke and herbs and something else, something that smelled like home.
She tried to open her eyes, but found only blur, a flicker of stone ceiling, and then the vague shadow of Kael’s jaw above her.
He was breathing hard, sweat dripping onto her cheek where it mingled with her own.
They moved fast, deeper into the Caves, the familiar geometry of the corridors transformed by her disorientation: torches were angry smears, the walls a feverish maze.
Alina’s whole body burned. She tried to lift a hand and found it trembling, the skin pink and raw where her glove had torn away.
There was a sense of having been boiled alive from the inside out, leaving every bone in her body humming with pain.
Each time she shifted her back spasmed with aftershocks, like a lightning strike that wouldn’t fade.
They rounded a corner, and suddenly she could smell a rush of dried thyme, sweet smoke, and underneath, the iron tang of blood—the infirmary.
The room was all golden light and shadow, alive with the clutter of bottles and tools and dangling bundles of herbs.
She knew the place well; she’d watched Sage Wintermend patch up half the stronghold in this very room.
But now, on the receiving end of business, it seemed more like a place of execution than healing.
Sage was waiting for her. She wasted no time, snapping orders before the rebels had even set Alina down. “On the cot. Gently. And fetch the water barrel, not the pitcher—it’s hotter than she is.”