Chapter 23
It's Over
Alina stood on the knife-edge of the ridge, the battered rebel stronghold sprawled below her in the half-light.
The passage from the hidden valley had indeed spit her out in one of the many small caverns on the mountainside above the Caves.
The morning sun had not yet burned away the valley mist, but smoke already rose in frantic, uneven pillars from the mouths of the Caves.
Her eyes drank in every detail: the way the dark firs shivered in the updraft, the warped shimmer above an outbuilding that had caught fire, the sickly pulse of orange where flames licked up the scaffolds built for last month’s expansion.
Shouts echoed up the stone, too disjointed to form words, but thick with panic and fury.
What was happening? She couldn’t see any soldiers.
Surely, if there had been an attack by the Crown, there would be large numbers of the king’s men to be seen.
So, if it wasn’t that, there was only one other probable explanation. Maven.
On her way back, her sense of belonging had been strengthened with every step.
When she had emerged in the familiar landscape, it had added another spring to her step.
Against all odds, she felt like she was coming home.
Of course, not everybody would love to see her back.
There would be difficult situations to weather, there still was trust to be gained.
And yet, seeing the Caves now had given her a ridiculous bolt of joy that faded as soon as she registered the flames, replaced with a sick anxiety.
She could smell the chaos as much as see it—the sour tang of burning sap, the raw, meaty bite of blood, and beneath it all the ancient, ammoniac stench of the Caves themselves. Every sense was open, tuned high. She was at one with the world.
The path down to the stronghold was a bastard: loose rock, clay slicked from the last storm, switchbacks interrupted by drops she once would have been forced to navigate on hands and knees.
Today she moved with a kind of precision she would have called arrogance a month ago.
She set her feet where she wanted them, and if a stone looked too eager to slide out, she asked it—soft, inside the bone—to wait a heartbeat longer.
The stones listened. The air thickened or thinned as she willed it.
At every step, the world adjusted itself to the fact that she was passing through it.
Halfway down, she heard the telltale scuff of boots and the heavy breathing of someone walking uphill at a high pace. Not the careful tread of a tracker, but the frantic, undisciplined scramble of someone desperate to move on.
She stopped in the shadow of a boulder, behind a bush, and held her breath.
Let the presence reveal itself. A figure in dun-gray rags—barely more than a boy, but with the starved, predatory look that turned children into wolves—picked his way between two outcrops, glancing over his shoulder every second step.
He wore no visible weapon, but the bulge at his belt said otherwise.
He was heading away from the Caves, not toward, and he was moving way too fast for someone with nothing to hide.
Through the brambles, Alina watched him approach, let him close within three paces before she spoke.
“You’ll break your neck if you’re not more careful,” she said, tone casual, as if discussing the weather, as she stepped out from her hiding place.
The boy yelped and froze. His right hand flashed to his belt, closing on the hilt of a knife that had probably never been used on anything bigger than a rabbit.
She could see every tremor in his body, the twitch of decision playing out in the veins of his neck.
For a heartbeat, she considered letting him go.
The old Alina might have. The new one did not.
“Who are you running from?” she asked, quieter now. “Or is it toward?”
His eyes skittered across her, not recognizing her or—worse—thinking he did, but not believing what he saw.
“Get out of my way,” he spat, voice cracking.
“Come here,” she said. The words landed with a physical force, not a shout but a push in the center of his back.
The boy stumbled forward, knife out, but she was already moving.
A slip of air nudged his foot just enough to trip him, and as he fell she reached out and caught him by the collar, twisting hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs.
He writhed, tried to jab the blade up into her side, but she took his wrist in her other hand and bent it backwards until the knife dropped with a soft, disappointing thunk into the moss.
He gnashed his teeth and tried to headbutt her, but she evaded him easily.
She let him try again, and when he failed, he sagged, the fight draining out of him as quickly as it had arrived.
She knelt, holding him by both wrists. His skin was hot, fevered; there was a rash of old burns on his right forearm, and a scar across the left thumb that looked like a brand. She leaned in, letting him see her face, letting him remember.
“I know you,” he said, not quite a question.
“You should,” she replied, gently. “You’re one of Maven’s, aren’t you?”
The boy sneered, but there was no confidence in it. “We’re all Maven’s now.”
Just as she had feared. She smiled, sad and cold.
“That’s what he’d like you to think.” She let go of one wrist and reached down to his belt, not caring about the flinch when she found the pouch there.
She untied it and dumped its contents into her palm: two sticks of sealing wax, a roll of notes wrapped tight and bound with a piece of blue string, and a small, battered signet ring.
She cracked the seal on the notes, scanning the topmost page.
Her heart dropped. The message was simple, written in tidy, efficient hand:
All is ready. Await the signal. Do not hesitate.
Underneath, the initials: M. T.
She read through the rest of them, then shoved the notes into her jacket and stood, pulling the boy up with her. He resisted, but she shook him once—hard, but not cruel—and his legs obeyed.
“We’re going to the Caves,” she said. “If you try to run, I will make you regret it.”
He glared at her, but wisely stayed quiet.
The last switchback to the stronghold was choked with smoke.
The air here was thick and greasy, making it hard to breathe without coughing.
The first bodies appeared at the mouth of the lower tunnel—two men and a woman, all rebels she’d known by face, one by name.
Elias, who had sneered at her at every opportunity.
So, not only Maven’s supporters had hated her.
Still, she wouldn’t have wished this fate on him.
They had been left as a warning, slumped together in a tableau of defeat.
Their wounds were deliberate and ugly. Alina looked away, unwilling to give Maven the satisfaction of her horror.
They entered the Caves through the old kitchen entrance, a low, cramped corridor that twisted and doubled back on itself.
The boy tried to keep pace, but she was faster and surer than she’d ever been.
The darkness was nothing to her now; she felt the shape of the tunnels as if they were mapped on the insides of her eyelids.
As they moved deeper, the sounds of battle sharpened—shouting, the crash of stone, the crackle of the Gift turned wild and out of control.
They emerged into the first antechamber.
The smoke had filled it so completely that the walls were nearly invisible, just the suggestion of stone in a swirling brown fog.
Three rebels crouched behind an overturned table, makeshift spears pointed at the corridor beyond.
One of them—Liska, the girl with that bright, infectious laugh—saw Alina and her prisoner, eyes going wide with recognition and relief.
“Liska,” Alina called, her voice slicing through the haze, more commanding than ever. “Report.”
Liska hesitated, mouth open, then remembered her training.
“It’s chaos,” she said. “They’re splitting us up, isolating the Gifted and taking them out first. There’s fighting in every quarter.
We’ve lost the mess and the main armory.
Some people switched sides”—she shot a glance at the boy, who glared back—”but most are just hiding. No one knows who to trust.”
Alina nodded. “Where’s Kael?”
“Last I knew, the mess,” Liska replied. “He’s holding it with Marcus and maybe eight others. But Maven’s pushing hard. He wants the hall, badly.”
Alina looked at the prisoner, then back at Liska. “Tie him up and gag him. He’s a courier. Check him for hidden blades.”
Liska blinked, then scrambled to obey, calling for the other two rebels to help. They pinned the boy’s arms behind his back and trussed him with the efficiency of people who had been on the wrong end of an ambush before.
Alina wiped sweat from her brow, surprised at how clear-headed she felt.
She was not afraid, there was no hesitation.
She was at one with herself and with her surroundings, steady and sure.
She could sense the tension in the stone around her, the way the very bones of the Caves shivered with anticipation.
It was as if the ground itself was waiting for her to decide what to do next.
She could do this.
She moved through the corridors, letting the Gift guide her.
She needed no light; she could feel the air shift before every junction, could taste the presence of enemies ahead.
When she rounded a corner and found three of Maven’s loyalists blocking the way, she simply exhaled, and the dust in the air surged forward in a blinding, suffocating cloud.
The men clawed at their eyes, hacking and coughing.
She slipped past them, silent as breath, and continued toward the mess.