Chapter 6 The Plateau

Night wrapped itself around the mountains like a second skin, cold and absolute, the kind of darkness that swallowed sound and made the world feel older than it was. My fingers were numb by the time I reached the top of the plateau, but exhaustion wasn't enough to stop fear from dragging me forward.

The plateau stretched wide-a flat expanse of stone and low brush lit only by thin moonlight. Up here, the air tasted different. Sharper. Cleaner. Every breath felt like it scraped the inside of my chest.

But it was open.

Exposed... but open.

I could see everything around me: the curve of the forest below, the faint outline of foothills beyond that, the distant shimmer of the river I had crossed. No riders. No torches. No sudden movements in the trees.

Just space.

Space to think.

Space to plan.

Space to breathe without the weight of Draven's shadow pressing against the back of my skull.

I walked across the plateau carefully, my feet aching with every step. My nightshirt-once soft, now torn and stiff with mud-whipped around my legs each time the wind cut across the stone.

Halfway across, I paused.

The stone beneath my feet was etched with shallow grooves-long, deep scratches that dragged in parallel lines across the plateau. Not natural erosion. Not wind patterns.

Claw marks.

My stomach tightened, but I forced myself not to back away. They weren't fresh. The edges were dulled, softened by time. Wolves hunted in these mountains, and some were bigger than the forest wolves near the villages.

It didn't matter.

A wolf was easier to face than Draven.

I finally found shelter near two massive boulders leaning against each other like ancient guardians. A narrow gap at their base formed a shallow hollow-just barely big enough for me to crawl inside.

I edged in slowly, ignoring how my scraped arms burned. Inside, the air was cold but still. Protected. The stone felt like it pressed the world out and left me suspended in a fragile pocket of safety.

I curled up, hugging my knees to my chest.

Only then did the shaking begin.

It crawled up my spine, into my jaw, into the chattering of my teeth. Whether from cold or fear, I didn't know.

Maybe both.

I had escaped the first wave of riders.

I had crossed a river in freezing darkness.

I had climbed a mountain until my legs nearly gave out.

But the truth settled like iron in my bones:

This was only the beginning.

Draven would not abandon a search once he began it. When the Moon Tyrant wanted something, he would raze villages and pull down mountains until he had it in his hands.

I had seen that.

Lived it.

Died because of it.

A faint, unsteady laugh slipped out of me-or maybe it was a broken breath.

"I'm alive," I whispered into the hollow darkness. "I'm actually alive."

Not a prisoner.

Not a sacrifice.

Not a condemned woman awaiting her execution.

Alive.

But the night didn't care.

It didn't answer.

It didn't comfort.

The hum beneath my skin stirred again-soft, faint, like a spark warming the edge of a dying fire. Not awakening. Not shifting. Just... awareness.

I pressed my hand against my chest.

"Stay quiet," I murmured. "Please... just stay quiet."

If anything inside me changed too drastically, if fate twisted too sharply, Draven would feel it. I didn't know how-but I remembered that moment years from now, when he once said he could sense the presence of "his marked" across miles.

I thought it was arrogance.

Now I wasn't so sure.

I stayed awake for a long time, watching the slice of moonlight that seeped through the boulder gap. When sleep finally dragged me under, I dreamed of nothing but cold stone and distant footsteps.

And for the first time since waking in my childhood bed, I didn't dream of dying.