I reach the great wooden gates without incident, acknowledging the guards with a raised hand. They nod and go back to their conversations, used to my heading out for a solitary ramble now and then.
Outside, a wood warbler’s high twittering call carries across the cleared, grassy land from the surrounding forest. I turn toward it, taking a half-worn path through the grasses, ignoring the road down through the village. I want only to get away.
Walking is easier now that some of the sting from my fall down the stairs has faded. I know I could have stopped at the stables and asked the hostlers there to saddle Acorn, but I don’t want to see anyone right now. My mother’s words ring in my ears, my cheeks are damp, and there is a hollowness in my chest that threatens to swallow me.
As I reach the woods, I hear other birds—sparrows, a goldcrest’s distinctive chattering call, and further away, a woodpecker. At the edge of the forest, there is plenty of undergrowth, but as I follow the twisting trail into the deeper wood, the canopy blocks out the light. There are fewer low-growing bushes here, the walking easier.
I wander without direction, or rather, with only one direction: away from the hall. Away from my family who would discard one of their own so easily, and from a friend whose caring carried so little substance, and from the memory of Valka.
My eyes blur again, and I swipe at them often until finally I stumble to a stop, sinking down to rest against a tree. I’ve found a little dell, partially wooded with grasses and shrubs growing up where the sunlight falls at the center of its slight valley. There is peace here, and a faint, skipping breeze that blows past me and then funnels around again, hemmed in by the dell.
I rest my head against the tree, listening to a quiet beat. A beat that grows steadily louder. I go still. That is not a bird, not any creature but a horse, trotting through the woods. Without thinking, I scamper down, past my tree to a dense tangle of blackberry bushes at the bottom of the dell. I cannot push within their thorny bramble. But the hoofbeats are coming from the same direction I did; I hurry to the other side of the brambles and hunch down behind them.
I’m being stupid, of course. There is no reason to hide from a rider here. There are no bandits so close to my mother’s hall, no rogues or outlaws who might attack. But it’s not them I fear as I crouch down on all fours, sheltered by the brambles, the young leaves unfurled just enough to hide me.
My cloak catches on a single thorny stem that extends past the rest. I tug the fabric free and then tilt my head, listening. The wind slides past me again, quieter now. I hear the distinctive clomp of a horse coming to a stop up above, among the trees. Can the rider see me from their vantage point? Almost, I look up—but the movement would call their attention if they haven’t already seen me. No, better to stay still.
“I know you’re out here, Alyrra.”
My shoulders hunch instinctively against the threat in his voice.
“Do you think you can run from me? Mother told me you came to complain about me.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, willing him away. My fingers dig into the damp earth, claw-like.
“No one complains about me.”
“Go away,” I whisper softly. “Please. Please.”
The wind, a gentle breeze slipping past me, pauses. I blink my eyes open, but here is the truth of it: not a single blade of grass stirs, not a leaf on the bushes moves. And then it starts up again, flowing smoothly through the dell.
“A-lyr-ra,” my brother calls in a singsong voice that is still slightly fainter. Is he turning? Searching for me? But then his voice returns, clear as ever. “I’m not letting you get away from me as well.”
As well? With a sudden, sinking sensation, I think of the serving girl, the one Valka chose to blame. Surely he doesn’t mean her? But even if he does, she must have evaded him somehow or he wouldn’t have spoken so. Please let her have gotten away.
With unexpected suddenness, the wind whips through the bushes at the end of the dell, cutting through them so that their branches rustle along a single, clear line, as if marking the path of a fleeing creature. Or person.
My brother gives a shout and sets his horse after it. I stare, my gaze moving from him to the bushes, now still. It was only an errant wind, wasn’t it? But what wind blows so strangely?
Wind sprite, I decide. Fickle creatures of the air, they are as likely to hinder as to help, or so the stories say. I don’t know why this one aided me, and I don’t have time to worry over it. I start to my feet and scramble up the gently sloping side of the dell, moving as quickly as I can in the opposite direction from my brother. I stop only when I reach the undergrowth that marks the edge of the forest, the hall just visible through the branches of the remaining trees.
I drop to the ground, my cloak pooling around me, and try to catch my breath. So long as my brother did not turn back after me, I should be safe. I press my hand into the stitch in my side and focus on breathing as I watch the wood. There is no sign of him. No movement in the forest, only the leaves of a branch waving there. Then, again, closer to me, the leaves on another branch flutter.
The wind. Has it come back to check on me? Does it expect something of me now? No, that makes no sense, for what can I do for an element of the air?
“Hello,” I say softly as it reaches me. It makes a single circuit around me, a quick rushing passage, and then slows to rustle through the new growth upon the bushes around me. Almost certainly a wind sprite. I’ve heard of such things, magical creatures with changeable temperaments, their only body the movement of air. I’d thought them folk tales, but there’s no arguing with the breeze before me.
Nor is there any doubt that it helped me. I cannot understand why it would, but I am grateful to it, so grateful—for the aid it rendered me, and because it did so without knowing me, or having any reason to other than that it could.
“Thank you,” I tell it, and find I am crying again, only this is not the heartbroken sorrow of earlier. This a strange, warm feeling, tears slipping down my cheeks as I smile at the air—at nothing I can see.
The wind fans around me, cooling the tears upon my cheeks, and I smile back at it. “Thank you,” I tell it again. “I don’t know if I can do you a good turn, or if you need one, but I am grateful for your kindness.” I needed it today, this reminder that I am not alone, that there are allies and friends around me, whether I can see them or not, from this kindly wind to the boy who helped me up at the foot of the stairs.
“I hope we will meet again,” I say, wiping my cheeks. The wind only rustles around me again. It has no words to answer, but it flutters along beside me as I make my way out of the woods, and leaves me only as I near the gates.
I whisper a goodbye after it, certain it understands, and hurry to the stables. It’s foolish, perhaps, for it’s the first place my brother will come when he returns. But I must ask someone, and there is the young woman who generally looks after my horse. Redna is her name.
“Please,” I say as she steps out of an empty stall, a pitchfork in her hands. “Do you know where the girl is—the one whom Valka blamed yesterday?”
Redna is tall and tanned, her brown hair always braided back, and her plain features usually smiling. Now, though, she studies me silently, then shakes her head. “Can’t say, Highness.”
“I just—I wanted to make sure she was safe.”
Redna’s brows rise, and then she smiles. “She is, Highness. We all put in to give her some money, and she left before the sun set yesterday. Can’t say where she went, though I’m sure someone knows. No good letting that information out, if you know what I mean.”
I do. I wouldn’t want my brother to be able to track her down either. “I’m glad, then,” I say.
Redna reaches out and gently plucks a leaf from my hair. “You’d best go on, Highness.”
I blink at her, taken aback by the care in her actions coupled with the dismissal in her words.
She gestures with the leaf toward the back of the stables. “That way to the kitchens. If your brother comes in behind you, it’s best not to be here.”
“The kitchens?” I repeat.
“You’ll be hungry,” Redna says, letting the leaf fall and turning once more to the stall. “And I don’t know that I’ve heard of your brother stopping into the kitchens of his own accord.”
She’s right. That is the realm of servants, and my brother would never deign to set foot there. But I cannot imagine it will be a place for me, either.
“Go on,” Redna says, flapping her hand at me.
I mumble my thanks and take her advice, following the servants’ path from the back of the stables around the hall to the kitchen. It’s a noisy, warm place, filled with conversation that dies at the sight of me.
“Highness?” a woman asks, tall and well-built, her work dress patched but sturdy, her front dusted with flour. “Can I help you?”
I glance around. The remaining servants all watch me in return. Perhaps she is the head cook. I have never met her before.
“I wondered if I—well, I’m a little hungry.”
“I can have some food sent up to your room for you,” the cook says, her tone uncertain.
“I—yes, but . . .” But my brother will easily find me there. “I wondered if I could just stay here for a few minutes? By the fire, perhaps?”
The cook looks at me with dawning comprehension, but there is no pity in that look. Instead, her eyes sharpen and she says, her voice steely, “You’ll always be welcome to warm yourself here, princess. Dara, set a stool there for Her Highness and get her some fresh bread rolls and a pat of butter.”
“Thank you,” I say, but the cook just waves a hand at me, not unlike Redna, and turns back to her work.
I perch on the stool that the girl, Dara, moves near the fire for me, and accept with gratitude the plate of bread and butter she delivers. Around me, the kitchen staff fall back into the rhythm of their work, and after a time, as I finish my first roll and begin on my second, the conversation starts up again.
I lean against the warm stones behind me, resting my head as I watch the servants preparing the midday meal. Dara catches my eye and flashes me a smile before returning to her chopping. Cook brandishes a large wooden spoon at another girl who, apparently, should know better what size pieces to chop an onion into.
When I turn to set my plate down, I find another one has been placed there, a single slice of honey cake set upon it. A special treat, one that no doubt the queen might have had set aside for herself. I look up again, but everyone is busy, leaving me to wonder at their kindness.
I pick up the plate with a sense of hope. There are consequences to silence and consequences to speaking. I do not regret speaking up to defend the serving girl, or stopping Valka before she could finish walking the path from prank to murder, though every action has its consequences.
But, as I sit with my honey cake in the warmth of the hall kitchen, I know that my mother was wrong. I may have fallen, fallen from my family and, no doubt, from the court’s favor—but I am far from alone.
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed meeting Alyrra, and will check out her novel-length story in Thorn, a retelling of the Grimm’s “The Goose Girl,” that picks up three years after this tale ends.
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A princess with two futures. A destiny all her own.
Between her cruel family and the contempt she faces at court, Princess Alyrra has always longed to escape the confines of her royal life. But when she’s betrothed to the powerful prince Kestrin, Alyrra embarks on a journey to his land with little hope for a better future.
When a mysterious and terrifying sorceress robs Alyrra of both her identity and her role as princess, Alyrra seizes the opportunity to start a new life for herself as a goose girl.
But Alyrra soon finds that Kestrin is not what she expected. The more Alyrra learns of this new kingdom, the pain and suffering its people endure, as well as the danger facing Kestrin from the sorceress herself, the more she knows she can’t remain the goose girl forever.
With the fate of the kingdom at stake, Alyrra is caught between two worlds and ultimately must decide who she is, and what she stands for.
Find Thorn at your preferred retailer and add it to Goodreads here.
Also by Intisar:
The winding streets and narrow alleys of Karolene hide many secrets, and Hitomi is one of them. Orphaned at a young age, Hitomi has learned to hide her magical aptitude and who her parents really were. Most of all, she must conceal her role in the Shadow League, an underground movement working to undermine the powerful and corrupt Arch Mage Wilhelm Blackflame.
When the League gets word that Blackflame intends to detain—and execute—a leading political family, Hitomi volunteers to help the family escape. But there are more secrets at play than Hitomi’s, and much worse fates than execution. When Hitomi finds herself captured along with her charges, it will take everything she can summon to escape with her life.
Find Sunbolt at your preferred retailer and add it to Goodreads here.