A Shadow Crown

Chapter 8, I didn't speak to anyone for the next three days. Without Nikolai, Cyra, or Killian by my side, the cautious glances had turned to hushed whispers whenever I was in sight. Lash didn't speak to me once. Each morning, he would point at the pile of vegetables he wanted me to slice or peel, the knife already sticking out of the mountain. When the other kitchen workers arrived, they didn't speak at all. By the third day, I considered it progress that they joked and laughed like I wasn't in the room. By the time I finished kitchen duty, I would already be sweating from the heat of the fires. I took my breakfast to the training fields and ate by myself. After, I would train until my legs shook, and I had to nap before making the journey up the Myram tree. At night, I studied the map. I memorized the paths until I knew exactly where each of the dozens of portals were, and where each one connected. A few were marked in black ink instead of gold or silver, and others were marked in red. There was no legend along the bottom, and I was too stubborn to ask Lash what they meant. With only the silver and gold portals, there were enough that with the right strategy, you could travel to any part of the continent within a day. Organized strikes could happen simultaneously across the kingdom, and the teams could scurry away without a trace. Having each route memorized would be life-saving in the war to come. We could ferry halflings to safety, the wounded to healers. And if we found the Light Fae, their healers could be stationed at nearby portals, close enough that even those on the brink of death could be saved, without having to risk the lives of the healers too. Tarvel and Colin may have thought it was a childish hope, but it was one that I wanted to explore. I needed to. I carried enough proof on my skin that too many halflings had died under Amon's rule. I would do everything I could to keep their deaths to a minimum in the war to come. I laid awake, trying to remember anything from my past. A shadow of a face, the faintest hint of a memory, but nothing came. Whoever my parents had been, their faces were lost in the darkness of my childhood. Part of me was glad I would have to find some other way to search for the Light Fae.