Her fingers lingered at her cheek long after he’d gone, as if the warmth of his kiss might still be there if she pressed hard enough. She watched until the curve of the road swallowed him whole, until horse and rider became nothing more than memory and hope tangled together. His voice echoed in her chest..
Katja.. The way he'd said her name, like it was a promise rather than a goodbye.
“Soon… Alistair,” she murmured into the cold air, a fragile thing she set loose and prayed would find him.
She did not linger after that. There was nothing left in the estate that belonged to her, not truly. She packed what little she needed, layered herself against the cold, and turned her face north. The journey home was brutal. Snow battered her like an enemy, wind cut through her clothes and into her bones, and more than once she wondered if this was how people simply vanished from the world, one white road at a time. Inns were few and far between, and she slept poorly when she did find them, dreaming of music, of dancing, of glass and blood and laughter twisted into screams.
What should have taken three weeks took five.
And then, one quiet morning, the storm finally broke. The sky was pale and still, the snow untouched. Katja stood at the path she had once run barefoot as a child, the house at the end of it small and achingly familiar. Home. Or at least, what had once been.
She could not move. Her heart felt wrong in her chest, either racing so fast it might burst, or frozen solid, she wasn't quite sure. What if they still didn’t know her? What if Evander’s shadow stretched even this far, even after his death?
She raised her hand and knocked before she could think better of it. It opened just as she'd turned to leave.
A man stood there, unfamiliar, older than she remembered her father ever being. He looked at her with polite confusion, waiting. She stared back, mute.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“I..” Her voice caught. She swallowed. “I was hoping to find Fabius
Vale. Is… is he here?”
The man’s brow furrowed, his head shaking slowly, regret already forming in his eyes. “Fabius was my cousin.”
Was.
The word hit her like a physical assault. Her knees went weak, her hand brushing the doorframe to keep herself upright.
“Lianna,” she said quickly, desperately. “His daughter. Is she here?”
The man’s expression softened into something painfully gentle. “I’m sorry, love. They died. Drowned in the ice.” He hesitated, then added, “How did you know them?”
Katja didn’t answer. She couldn’t. The world had gone distant, muffled, as if she were hearing it from underwater.
“When?” she asked, the word barely more than breath.
“Long time ago now. Almost four years.”
Four years.
The number rang in her skull. Four years ago, after she’d been taken. After Evander had erased her from her father’s memory. After she had stayed, endured, obeyed, believing she was protecting them. Her people did not drown in the ice.
It had all been a lie.
A scream clawed its way up her throat, but she swallowed it down, turning away before the man could say another word. She did not hear him call after her. She did not stop. Her feet carried her blindly down the path, past the fence, past the place where her life should have been waiting.
Only when the house was out of sight did she collapse.
Katja fell to her knees in the snow, the cold seeping through her clothes, through her skin, until it felt like punishment. Her hands fisted in the freezing powder, shaking, as grief tore through her in great, heaving waves. She sobbed until her chest ached, until her throat burned raw, until rage joined the sorrow, hot and sharp.
Evander. He had taken everything. And she had let him live.
Her cries were swallowed by the open land, by the snow and the sky, but she wept anyway, mourning a father and sister she would never hold again, both a past and a future that had been stolen from her, and the terrible, burning truth that there had been nothing left to go home to at all.
