The council chamber doors had closed behind her with a finality that made Alina’s skin prickle. Their faces still hovered in her thoughts—lined with suspicion, sharpened by fear. They hadn’t said she was failing, not outright, but the way they lingered on her mark, the way they spoke of balance as if it were already lost… it left her throat tight and her stomach hollow.
She walked until the voices blurred into memory. Through stone passages, past high-arched windows where moonlight carved pale shapes across the floor. Every step away from that chamber felt necessary, as though distance alone could strip their judgment from her.
When she reached the outer gardens, she didn’t stop. The ordered hedges and sculpted fountains felt like another form of scrutiny, a world still curated, still wa
