My fingers were frozen into numb, useless claws, the charcoal stick snapping between them for the third time. The draft was a mess of gray smudges on the back of a stolen shipping manifest, but the math was solid—a new road, a bypass through the salt-flats that wouldn't corrode. Alaric was outside the abandoned shed, his boots crunching in the snow as he checked the perimeter, his shadow a constant, suffocating reminder that I was supposed to be his "nameless" fugitive.
If I don't get this proposal to the village elder, they'll starve, and Alaric will drag me to a ship where I'll rot in silence.
The nausea hit me, a cold wave of dread. I wasn't just hiding from the King anymore; I was hiding from the man who claimed to be my shield. I tucked the charcoal into my bodice, the rough wood biting into my skin, and frantically smoothed out the crumpled paper.
"Elowen."
The door creaked open. Alaric stood there, the winter wind whipping a dusting of white onto his dark cloak. He didn't look at me. He looked at the floor, at the stray charcoal dust I hadn't swept away.
"You're supposed to be sleeping," he said, his voice flat and dangerous.
"I can't sleep in this cold," I snapped, my heart hammering against the ribs that felt too tight for my chest.
"You're scratching again. I can hear it." He walked over, his heavy hand coming down on the table. He didn't find the paper—I'd shoved it under my thigh—but he found the charcoal smudge on my thumb. "I told you. No more drawings. No more 'fixes.'"
"It's a road, Alaric! A way to get food to the valley! Your sister's letter said—"
"My sister is a pawn of the Inquisition!" He grabbed my arm, hauling me up. The paper fluttered to the dirt floor, the secret laid bare in the dim light of the dying hearth. "You think she wants to help you? She wants the 'Red Key' drawings, Elowen. She'll use that village as bait to pull you out of the shadows, and you're walking straight into it."
He's lying. He just wants to keep the secret for himself. He doesn't want the world to work; he just wants me to stay in his cage.
"I'm not a soldier," I hissed, struggling against his grip. "I'm an architect. I don't know how to exist without building something."
"Then learn to exist as a ghost." He kicked the proposal, the dirt marring the beautiful, precise lines of the bypass. "Because the second you send this, you're dead. And I won't be able to stop them."
"You don't want to stop them! You just want me to stop being a problem!"
I lunged for the paper, but Alaric was faster. He stepped on it, the heavy leather of his boot grinding the charcoal into the mud until the proposal was nothing but a black smear.
I could give up. I could let him lead me to the coast. Or I could take the one thing he hasn't checked.
I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I reached into my cloak and pulled out the small brass firing pin I'd hidden—the one with the sharp, jagged edge. I didn't aim for his heart. I aimed for the leather strap of his primary supply bag, the one holding our only remaining coal and the maps to the coast.
I sliced.
"What are you—"
The bag hit the snow, the contents spilling out. Alaric lunged for it, but I didn't wait. I bolted out the door, my boots skidding on the ice. My ears were ringing, the high-pitched whine of panic drowning out his roar.
I screwed up. I have no coat. I have no food. But I have the numbers in my head.
I ran toward the treeline, the freezing air burning my lungs. I knew where the elder's house was—the third hut with the red ribbon. If I could get there, if I could just tell them the bypass coordinates, the road would live even if I didn't.
"Elowen! Get back here!"
His voice was closer than I thought. He was a predator, built for this terrain, and I was a girl in a torn gown with a head full of useless geometry. I tripped over a hidden root, slamming into the snow. The cold was a physical weight, pinning me down.
Alaric was on me in seconds. He didn't hit me. He did something worse. He pinned me to the frozen ground, his body a crushing heat against my shivering frame, and he grabbed my hands, binding them together with a strip of leather from his own belt.
"You want to save them?" he hissed, his face inches from mine, his breath a white plume in the dark. "Look at the village, Elowen."
I looked.
Orange light was blooming in the distance. Not torches. Not hearths.
Fire.
"The Inquisition didn't wait for your proposal," Alaric whispered, his voice cracking with a raw, brutal honesty. "They burned the bypass route. They're purging the 'heresy' before you can even draw it."
"No... no, the people..."
"They're gone. Because they were associated with you." He pulled me up, his grip on my bound wrists so tight I thought the bone would snap. "Your sister didn't send that letter to help. She sent it to track the ink. They know exactly where we are."
My work didn't save them. My work was the beacon that killed them.
The nausea finally won. I retched into the snow, my body shaking with a violent, soul-shattering grief. Alaric didn't comfort me. He just held my wrists, watching the horizon with a cold, professional detachment.
"Now we run," he said.
He dragged me toward the blackness of the forest, the glow of the burning village reflected in his eyes like a promise of hell.
I looked back at the smoldering ruins of the place I tried to save, and I realized Alaric hadn't been protecting me from the King.
He had been protecting the King from what I could do.