CHAPTER 4
1235 Words
The Border Passage
Sloane's POV
The passage was exactly what Darian said it would be.
A narrow stretch of old stone, barely wide enough for one person to walk through. It ran deep under the earth, quiet and dark, smelling like cold water and dust that had been sitting there for hundreds of years.
There were no torches.
No light.
Just darkness.
I ran anyway.
My boots found the ground by instinct. One hand stayed on the wall as I moved, sliding along the rough stone so I would not lose direction.
I counted my steps.
I always counted.
Counting meant you knew where you were.
And knowing where you were meant you still had some control over the situation.
The shackle still on my left wrist pulsed again.
I pressed my arm against my side, trying to ignore it.
Behind me, far back near the forge room, I could still hear voices echoing faintly through the tunnel.
Darian’s voice first.
Light. Casual. Like he was making jokes in the middle of a storm.
Then Kael’s.
Cold. Tight with anger.
Their voices overlapped for a moment.
Then something crashed loudly.
Stone? A table? I had no idea.
After that there was silence.
I ran faster.
The tunnel sloped downward for a while. My breathing grew heavier, my chest tight from the cold air and the speed.
Then the ground leveled out.
Something changed in the air.
I slowed slightly, noticing it.
The feeling was hard to explain. The magic around me shifted somehow. The cold controlled energy of the Winter Court began to fade, replaced by something older.
Wilder.
The border.
I was getting close.
Even my blood seemed to feel it. A strange vibration moved through my chest like a warning I could not quite understand yet.
Light appeared ahead.
Not torchlight.
Real light.
Thin grey morning light slipping through a narrow crack.
Dawn.
“Almost,” I whispered.
I hit the exit door with my shoulder.
It burst open.
Cold wind rushed over my face as I stumbled out into open land.
Scrub grass stretched across the ground. The sky above was wide and pale as dawn slowly pushed away the night.
For the first time in hours, I took a real breath.
Fresh air filled my lungs and I nearly laughed from the relief.
The shackle on my wrist pulsed harder.
I had only made it about twenty feet away from the door when I heard it open again behind me.
I spun around instantly, knife already in my hand.
Darian stepped out of the passage.
There was a cut above his right eyebrow that definitely had not been there earlier. Blood ran down the side of his face, but he looked mostly amused about it.
He pressed his sleeve to the cut and gave me a crooked smile.
“He’s fine,” Darian said.
“Who?”
“My brother. Prince Iceberg himself.”
He dabbed the blood again.
“Angrier than usual, but fine. I didn’t hit him that hard.”
I blinked at him.
“You hit him?”
“We fought.”
He shrugged casually.
“It’s something we used to do growing up.”
He looked almost nostalgic for a moment.
“Don’t worry. He hit back. I’m not sure this—” he pointed at the cut “—was entirely his fault though. It was a messy moment.”
I stared at him.
The man had just fought a prince and was standing here smiling like this was normal.
His eyes dropped to the shackle still hanging from my wrist.
“There’s still forge heat in the wall of the old granary,” he said, pointing east. “About a hundred yards that way. Should be enough to break the last one.”
I studied him carefully.
“Why are you still here?”
“I told you already.”
He shrugged again.
“I want to see what you do next.”
“I’m going to run,” I said.
“That’s the plan?”
“That’s the whole plan.”
I wiped my bloody palm against my jacket.
“I’m going to run, find my partner, and figure out how not to die in three days.”
“And then?”
I hesitated.
There was no “then.”
I looked away.
“East, you said?”
“East.”
We walked together.
The sky slowly shifted from black to grey as the sun prepared to rise. The land around us was quiet and empty.
After a short walk, the old granary appeared. Its stone wall still held faint warmth from the forge that must have burned there long ago.
I pressed the shackle against the heated stone.
The ice cracked.
A sharp edge sliced my wrist again as it broke free.
I pulled my hand away and shook off the sting.
Now both of my wrists were bleeding.
I stood there in the pale morning light with a prince I had met less than an hour ago.
“He’ll come after you,” Darian said quietly.
“I know.”
“He won’t stop.”
“I know that too.”
He looked back toward the distant horizon where the Winter Court had disappeared behind miles of land.
“The fever,” he said after a moment.
“Three days is the optimistic version.”
I didn’t answer.
“Without the bond,” he continued, “the magic inside you will start fighting itself. It had something holding it steady before.”
His eyes met mine.
“I don’t know if there’s a cure.”
He didn’t try to soften the words.
“I want to be honest about that,” he added. “I really don’t know.”
Strangely, I appreciated that more than false hope.
“There are people,” I said slowly.
“Outside the courts.”
I thought of everything Finn and I had learned in the last two years. Rumors about bloodline magic. Scholars who worked beyond the reach of royal magic.
“Enchanters. Researchers.”
Darian nodded slightly.
“I have contacts in the neutral territories.”
He touched the cut above his eyebrow again, almost absently.
“Some people there owe me favors.”
He gave a small smile.
“A few of them are even useful.”
I looked at him.
“You’re offering to help me.”
“I’m telling you what I have,” he replied calmly.
“You decide what you want to do with it.”
His voice sounded relaxed, but his eyes were watching me carefully.
“You don’t know me,” he added. “You don’t have to trust me.”
“I don’t,” I said.
Then I paused.
“Not yet.”
I turned toward the east.
That was where Finn would be.
The safe house.
The maps.
The half-finished plans that might keep me alive.
“Try to keep up,” I said.
Darian smiled.
Not the big playful grin from earlier.
This one was smaller.
Real.
“Yes, ma’am.”
We started walking east into the pale grey morning.
I pressed my bleeding hands against my jacket as we moved.
And while I counted every step of the distance ahead of me, I tried not to think about the warmth in my chest.
The warmth that was slowly, little by little, beginning to fade.
- Writer
