make a choice. I am making that choice now.” He stood, straightening his reedy frame and adjusting his white alchemist’s cloak. A silver Deys’krug circlet hung over his neck, half-hidden beneath his worship robes. “I’m going after the Princess. And I’m going to help her.”
Your choices, whispered a small voice. Jonah’s voice. Your heart is your compass.
He’d known for some time now, felt the irrepressible tug on his chest toward her. With each smile, each frown, each word, she’d drawn him in, slowly, irrevocably. And that slow, smoldering flame had roared to life beneath a winter sky of snow, glowing brighter than anything else in his life. She was the bearing to his compass, the dawn that his ship had been chasing for so long over an empty horizon.
My heart is my compass.
Ramson’s mind cleared. In the darkness of the dungeons, he could barely make out the retreating outline of the alchemist, the white flashes of his cloak as he hurried in the direction where the escape tunnel lay.
“Wait,” Ramson said.
Ana awoke to silence, snow, and stars. A cold draft stirred through the broken windowpanes of the dacha she and Linn had found. The fire in the hearth had gone out. From the soft, silver-blue glow of light beyond the tattered curtains, she could tell that it was still night. Dawn lingered, just out of reach.
Yet something had shifted in her senses. It took her a moment to realize that her Affinity was back.
Relief flooded her, and she sat up in the rugs and furs she and Linn had piled together for a makeshift bed. The girl was nowhere to be seen, but the soft whickering of their horses near the door told Ana that her companion would not be gone for long.
Ana clutched her head in her hands. She always felt off balance when her Affinity returned; it was like being able to see again, darkness slowly giving way to patches of light and blurred movement.
It had been a day since they’d ridden from the Kerlan Estate and escaped Sadov in the Syvern Taiga. In the semidarkness, she could still taste the nauseating fear that had coated her tongue, the hiss of Sadov’s voice from the shadows.
In five days’ time, your brother will announce his abdication due to ill health and appoint the Kolst Contessya Morganya as Empress Regent of Cyrilia.
The world drew into sharp focus. She had four more days to get to the capital of her empire.
She reached under the pile of blankets until her fingers grasped the beaded purse that had been tied to her wrist when Sadov had abducted her. Now ragged with dust and blood, it still held the last of her belongings.
Ana dug out a globefire and shook it. The chemical powders inside the orb rattled, and eventually, a spark caught on the oil coating the inside of the glass. Light lanced across the small cabin, and she held it close as she rummaged through her purse.
Her map was still in there, tattered and stained. Holding the globefire over it, she found the name of the village they’d passed last evening before settling into this empty dacha: Beroshk.
With her thumb, she traced the distance to Salskoff, and calculated.
Exactly four days of travel by horse. Her stomach tightened. They would just make it; they needed to be on their way soon.
She shifted her position, and the remaining contents of her purse spilled out. A copperstone and a silver pocket watch glinted in the light of the globefire. The sight of these objects brought back memories that ached like fresh wounds.
She held a purse full of things that belonged to people who, no matter how hard she tried, she would never be able to bring back.
Ana hurled the purse across the room.
The door opened behind her, bringing a breath of cold wind. Ana turned to see Linn clutching a satchel to her chest. Her knives were strapped to her waist, her movements sharp and lithe.
Ana looked away, ashamed to be seen crying.
Without a word, Linn crossed the room and plucked the scattered belongings up and carefully tucked them back into Ana’s purse. She hesitated, her eyes searching Ana’s face. “These seem precious to you,” she said.
Ana wiped her tears, reeling back the dark well of her grief. “What’s the use of holding on to these things if the people who owned them are gone?”
Linn laid the purse by Ana’s mess of blankets. “Do you know what I have learned?”