Chapter 17 You’re Wrong
You're Wrong
The mess hall was ordinarily a vault for secrets and noise, but this morning both clung to the corners with claws out.
Alina hovered at the entrance, the chill from the stone archway bleeding through her shirt and along her spine.
Once, she would have walked into a haze of roasting roots and laughter thick enough to choke on, Finn standing on a bench reciting scandalous versions of the royal anthem while even the most miserable rebel managed a crooked smile.
Now, every table was its own island, ringed with hunched shoulders and hungry eyes that flicked away the instant she tried to meet them.
She pushed into the room, feeling as if she were walking into an inquisition stark naked.
It was all wrong. The walls seemed closer than before, the torchlight a sickly yellow that exaggerated every bruise on her skin and every shadow under her eyes.
The benches, worn to a greasy polish, felt hostile and cold, the surface of each one scored with cuts deep enough to draw blood.
The rebels themselves had changed, too: instead of the usual jostling and banter, they sat in tight clusters, heads bent close enough to knot their hair together, voices dropped to a cadence that only grew louder when Alina was not within earshot.
But as soon as she entered their radius, those voices fell silent. It was louder than any shout could be.
She collected her breakfast from the battered line of cauldrons near the door.
The porridge was thinner than usual, the ladle handled by an old woman with a scar across her face who, instead of meeting Alina’s gaze, kept her eyes glued to the floor.
Alina waited a heartbeat, hoping for the half-smile the woman had given her yesterday.
The only response was a tremor in the hand and a sudden, deliberate turning away.
She carried her bowl to the nearest empty spot, feeling every stare as a physical weight against her ribs.
The room’s sound crept back, but it was a different song than before: a kind of whispering tide, ebbing and flowing, words slithering just below the threshold of recognition. Here and there, she caught fragments, barbed and sharp:
“…saw her yesterday with him—”
“…loyalty’s to her father, not us…”
“…should never have let her stay, not after what happened at Fenbridge…”
The words stung, but it was the venom in the delivery that did the real damage. Where once she’d felt the hostility as a distant, impersonal thing, today it was aimed directly at her, knives drawn and ready.
She tried to focus on the food, though her stomach had already knotted itself into a fist. The porridge had gone cold in the time it took her to cross the room. She raised the spoon, hands steady by force of will, and forced down a mouthful. It tasted of ash and salt and nothing else.
A young rebel—Freckle, she’d been referring to him as, because his face was a constellation of sunmarks—usually met her eyes every morning.
Today, as she looked up, he slid his gaze away quickly, unable to look at her.
She watched the color rise in his cheeks as he pretended to find something on the table infinitely fascinating.
He hunched closer to the girl at his side, and Alina felt a pang so sharp she wanted to snap her spoon in half.
She forced herself to eat. She would not give them the satisfaction of seeing her break.
Across the hall, Maven leaned in close to Seraphina, his voice pitched just loud enough to carry without being obvious.
Alina tracked the pattern of his words, the way his fingers drummed the side of his cup as he spoke.
Seraphina nodded, slow and deliberate, her eyes never leaving the battered tabletop.
Alina remembered the night of the raid—the way Seraphina had looked at her, half-camaraderie, half-contempt.
Now the contempt was winning.
Someone snorted near her shoulder, a muffled sound that made Alina’s skin prickle. She turned to see two men, old enough to be her father’s age, their eyes yellowed from too much sleeplessness, passing a chunk of bread between them. One leaned over, not bothering to keep his words from her:
“Surprised she has the guts to eat with us. Must be used to poison by now.”
The other laughed, a dry cackle. “Maybe she’s immune.”
Alina considered hurling the bowl at them, but instead she let the comment slide off, pretending to find the blank wall across the room the most fascinating sight in the world. That was what her tutors had taught her: never let your enemies see the wound. Never give them the leverage.
She scanned the hall for Finn, hoping for a friendly face or even a distraction, but he was nowhere. Not among the tables, nor by the kitchen. His absence stung, a raw spot on the inside of her chest. She wondered if he was avoiding her too, or if he’d simply found it safer to keep his distance.
Another absence hurt even more, like a thorn embedded deeply in her heart.
She hadn’t seen Kael since they had come back from the raid, when he had said goodbye to her with a face full of worry and calculation and had never turned up since.
What had happened between them? The hours spent together felt unreal to her now, as if she had just dreamed them up.
Why was he so distant? How could he act like that, as though she meant nothing to him?
His behavior then and now simply didn’t add up.
It was almost as if there were two wholly different Kaels, one of whom she didn’t like very much.
Now, the rumors had found her before she’d even had a chance to hear them.
She wondered what Maven had told them. That she’d tried to escape?
That she’d passed information to the palace?
That she’d killed one of their own? The lie almost didn’t matter—the shape of the suspicion was enough to redraw every friendship in the room.
She poked at her porridge, appetite gone.
The next table over, someone muttered, “…spoke with someone from the palace, I heard it myself…”
Another voice, softer: “Kael should have known better than to trust her. She’s a snake, just like her father.”
Alina flinched at that one. It wasn’t the insult—she’d heard worse, and from people who mattered more—but the sense that, somewhere in this hall, her fate was already being written in someone else’s hand.
The walls seemed to close in further, the cold seeping from the stone straight into her bones.
She finished what she could and stood, scraping the bench back so hard it squealed across the floor.
Every head snapped up at once, and for a moment the only sound in the mess hall was the drip of water from the ceiling and the thud of her own heartbeat.
She stood her ground, refusing to shrink.
If they were going to hate her, they could do it to her face.
A few rebel voices continued murmuring, but most watched her openly now, the suspicion thick as mud.
She set her bowl on the slop shelf near the door. The old woman there looked up, and for a second her eyes softened. “Eat,” she whispered, voice barely audible. “You’ll need your strength.”
Alina nodded, unable to muster a reply. She pushed out into the corridor, the air heavier out here than it was inside, hands shaking in a way she couldn’t hide.
Why wasn't she able to make people like her? To establish friendships? What was it about her that made everyone—maybe with the exception of Finn—reject her?
Once again, she was on her own. An outsider for life.
The air in the outdoor training yard was sharper than a knife, the wind off the mountain cutting through every layer Alina wore until it found bare skin.
She ducked her head, arms folded tight, and tried to remember what it had ever felt like to be warm.
The yard was empty—no clatter of sword on shield, no Finn mimicking the fencing instructor with a broomstick, no Marcus showing off his strength at the weight rack.
Just rows of battered dummies and the ghosts of old pain, the kind that clung to the stone long after the blood had been scrubbed away.
She had come here because she thought the emptiness would be a comfort, or maybe a shield. But it only made the echoes louder.
She picked up a practice blade and swung it in the air, testing the balance.
The hilt was slick with someone else’s sweat, but it fit her hand perfectly.
She set her feet, raised the sword, and ran through the drills—strike, parry, recover, again—trying to lose herself in the rhythm.
After a few passes, her shoulders loosened, and her breath evened out.
She was halfway through a sequence when a shadow flickered at the edge of her vision.
Seraphina stood at the mouth of the yard, boots planted in a fighter’s stance, red hair drawn back so tight it looked painted on.
Her hand rested on the hilt of her dagger, thumb tapping a rapid beat against the worn leather.
She didn’t bother to announce herself, didn’t even blink.
She just watched, eyes narrow and predatory.
Alina felt her grip tighten on the blade, but she forced herself to finish the drill nonetheless. She would not give Seraphina the satisfaction of seeing her rattled.
When she finally stopped, Seraphina stalked forward with the casual menace of a cat who'd cornered something small and breakable. She circled the practice dummies until she stood a few feet away, blocking the only exit.
“Sunrise training? How dedicated,” she said, voice dripping with fake sweetness. “Couldn’t wait to practice your backstabbing form?”
Alina kept her tone neutral, though her pulse jumped. “Just wanted some quiet before everyone shows up.” She set the practice blade on the rack, careful not to let it clang.