Chapter Fourteen – The Breath of the Realm
The violet sun dipped below the jagged horizon, and with its departure, the warmth of Aurelion vanished as if it had never existed. In the village, night meant the hoot of an owl or the low crackle of a hearth. Here, night was an active predator.
As the temperature plummeted, the silver moss beneath Elaria began to stiffen. A thin, crystalline frost crept up from the soil, coating the blades of grass in a layer of ice that looked like jagged glass. The air, which had been thick and nourishing during the day, grew sharp. Every breath felt like swallowing needles.
Elaria kept her eyes closed, but she could hear the struggle around her. To her left, Miri was shivering so violently that her teeth clicked together like rhythmic stones.
"Do not... fight the cold," Elaria whispered, her voice barely a thread. She remembered what the Trialmaster had said: Become the kingdom. She shifted her internal hum. During the day, she had hummed with the deep, slow pulse of the earth. Now, she sought the frequency of the frost. She imagined her blood slowing, her heartbeat syncing with the stillness of the ice. She wasn't trying to stay warm; she was trying to become cold enough that the frost would recognize her as part of itself.
Slowly, the stinging in her lungs faded. The ice creeping toward her ankles slowed, then stopped, forming a protective ring around her instead of consuming her.
But others were not so fortunate. A scream tore through the silence thin, desperate, and abruptly cut off. Elaria didn't look. She knew that another candidate had been found "wanting" by the night. The Sentinels would be moving through the shadows soon to collect the remains of those who had frozen.
High above, on the stone balcony, Lord Malrec watched the frost-covered meadow. He leaned against the railing, his face a mask of calm concern. Beside him stood a Sentinel, a being clad in armor that seemed to be made of frozen smoke.
"The girl Noctyne is holding her resonance," the Sentinel observed, its voice a hollow metallic rasp.
"She is," Malrec replied, his eyes fixed on the small, still figure of Elaria. "She has an instinct for survival that the high-born candidates lack. Hunger and cold are old enemies to her. She doesn't fear them; she bargains with them."
"And the others?"
Malrec glanced toward Serapha, who sat perfectly still, her body glowing with a faint, blue aura that pushed the frost back by force. "Serapha is powerful, but she uses her strength like a shield. Elaria uses hers like a bridge. One survives by mastery, the other by harmony. It will be interesting to see which the throne prefers."
While the candidates in Aurelion fought the freezing night, a different kind of ice was settling over the village.
Inside the small cottage that Lady Virelle called home, the air was suffocating. Lyssara sat at the heavy oak table, staring at a pile of white silk that seemed to glow mockingly in the candlelight. It was the wedding shroud the dress she was expected to wear when she walked into Elder Covain's house as his property.
"I won't do it, Mother," Lyssara said, her voice trembling but defiant.
Lady Virelle didn't even look up from the stew pot. "You will. The announcement is made. The village believes Elaria is dead, and Covain has already paid the first half of the dowry. That money is the only reason we have meat in that pot tonight."
"He's a monster!" Lyssara stood up, knocking her chair over. "I've seen the way he looks at the young girls in the square. I've heard the stories of what happened to his first wife. I'd rather throw myself into the Black Vein Ravine like you told everyone Elaria did!"
Virelle dropped the ladle and turned, her eyes flashing with a sudden, terrifying cruelty. She crossed the room in two steps and grabbed Lyssara's arm, twisting it until the girl winced.
"You listen to me," Virelle hissed. "Elaria was the one meant for this. She was the sheep. But she had the nerve to vanish, and now you are the only currency I have left. If you run, if you fight, I will tell Covain you stole his gold. He'll have you in the stocks before dawn, and believe me, what the village men do to a thief is far worse than what an old man does to his wife."
Virelle pushed her away. Lyssara fell against the wall, sobbing. Her mother's heart was as dead as the ashes in the hearth.
Late that night, after Virelle's heavy snoring filled the cottage, Lyssara crept toward the back door. She carried nothing but a small kitchen knife and a crust of bread. She couldn't stay. She knew the forest was dangerous everyone said the shadows there had teeth but the shadows in her own home had already bitten her.
She stepped out into the mud of the village street. The wind was howling, carrying the scent of rain and rot. She looked toward the dark silhouette of the forest.
"Elaria," she whispered into the dark, a strange mixture of hatred and envy in her heart. "Wherever you are... I hope you're suffering as much as I am."
Lyssara took a breath and ran. She didn't head for the ravine. She headed for the deeper woods, hoping to find a trade caravan or a traveler anyone who could take her far away from the Elder's reach.
But as she entered the tree line, the wind suddenly changed. It didn't feel like a normal breeze anymore. It felt like a voice a low, melodic hum that vibrated in her teeth. The same hum that had called Elaria was now sensing another soul from the same bloodline, one filled with a different kind of desperation.
Lyssara froze as a pair of glowing, violet eyes opened in the darkness of the brush.
"Who goes there?" she gasped, raising the small knife.
The eyes didn't blink. A figure stepped out of the mist not a man, but a creature with limbs like twisted silver wood and a face like a porcelain mask. It was one of the lesser guardians of the gate, a scout for the kingdom of Aurelion.
"Another of the marked?" the creature clicked, its voice like breaking glass. "The blood of the vanished girl runs thin in you... but it runs nonetheless."
Lyssara didn't have time to scream. The ground beneath her feet softened, turning into a swirling vortex of leaves and light.
The village was losing its second daughter. And back in the Enclave, Elaria felt a sudden, sharp pang in her chest, as if a string she didn't know existed had just been pulled taut.