Chapter 18 The Hooded Girl

Chapter 18 The Hooded Girl

I didn’t lie down. Once the door shut, my back stayed pressed to the wood for a few breaths, then my muscles refused to stay still. The window called louder than any bed ever could.
I stepped toward it. Cold stone pushed through the thin fabric under my feet. I pulled the curtains aside. Daylight stabbed in.
Evrithall sprawled below me.
My palace sat on the hilltop like a crown forced to carry too much weight. From my window, the main road wound downward, carving the rocky slope into three layers of city: a ring of towers and stone manors at the top, rows of timber houses and shops in the middle, and low roofs crowding the edges against the inner wall.
Thaldrun rose in the distance, a colossal line of stone circling our world. Sunlight slapped its side, making it look like a scab hardening on the earth’s skin. Here and there, small towers jutted from the wall’s crest, miniature fortresses with Caeloria’s banners flickering like tiny flames along its jagged edges.
Between the palace and the wall lay a patchwork of green: noble gardens, a pocket-sized forest trapped inside Thaldrun, clusters of trees the builders had spared as if pretending nature still had a place here. In the streets, people moved like ants, heads down, baskets in hand. Thin trails of kitchen smoke drifted above a handful of roofs, dragged off by the wind.
That view should've soothed me. It should’ve.
My neck tightened instead.
Rest.
Duke’s command hovered in the room.
I pressed my lips together. “Sure,” I muttered at the window. “Because obedience is definitely my strongest trait.”
The reflection stared back at me: hair in a wild tangle down my back, a palace gown too heavy for breathing and too tight for reason.
I loosened the laces at the back. The fabric slid to the floor at once, leaving my skin exposed to the cold bite of the room. My heart thumped against my ribs. Not from embarrassment I was alone but because something else clawed at memory: a black iron bed, a window full of stars, a hand around my throat.
Enough.
I reached for another dress from the wardrobe: a simple dark-blue linen piece, loose to mid-calf, no choking corset. Three-quarter sleeves, enough room to move. The one I usually wore when I just happened to wander into the kitchens or training yard acting like I wasn't a princess.
The fabric brushed my skin, cool and light. More honest than ballroom silk.
Next, my hair. Brunette, streaked with blonde lines like threads of sunlight that forgot to fade.
They’d tried covering them with dye when I was little. The result: High Priestess Ylena got a five-year-old who looked like a drowned crow and cried for two hours because her scalp itched. They never tried again.
“A blessing of Elyra,” Duchess insisted.
“A defect,” Duke countered.
I combed my fingers through the strands, twisting them into a gathered knot at the back of my head. A leather tie held it in place. A few blonde strands escaped at my temples. I let them.
Under my bed, a small box shifted when I pulled it forward. Wrapped in old cloth inside it sat a dagger.
Slimmer than most of Gerald’s training blades. The metal tapered like a leaf, sharpened on both edges, the point needle-sharp. The hilt was slick dark wood, carved with waves and a small seabird with open wings.
My other uncle had given it to me. Not Duke Hayward. The other one: Uncle Kaelren, Duke of Stormgarde on the southern coast. A man with loud laughter, scarred hands, and the terrible habit of teaching his nine-year-old niece how to throw knives at barrels.
“For the times your tongue won’t cut deep enough,” he’d said as he slipped the dagger into its sheath. “And don’t tell my brother you got this from me.”
His brother. My father.
I had never shown it to anyone here. Not the Duke. Not Gerald.
It fit my grip perfectly. Weighted just right. I strapped the sheath to my thigh beneath the skirt, leather tight and cold for a moment before warming to my skin. The window remained open. Thaldrun still carved the horizon.
“Well,” I whispered to the world. “See you outside.”
The window ledge was wide enough for two feet. I knew, because I’d measured it at fifteen, right after realizing my door was guarded more strictly than the outer walls.
I climbed up, one foot secure, one hand gripping the frame. Wind slid along my exposed leg through the dress slit. The height prickled at my skull: two floors above the side courtyard. Not a deadly drop, but high enough to snap a neck with one wrong landing.
I’d done this many times. Not the neck-breaking part. The jumping.
“I really hope Solarian isn’t looking this way,” I muttered to the stone.
Then I pushed forward.
The world tilted. Wind slapped my face. My skirt snapped around my legs. I aimed for the narrow ledge below, a service balcony where servants hung linens.
My feet hit stone with a jolt that buzzed through bone. Knees bent. One hand braced the wall. Air hissed between my teeth.
“I still got it,” I whispered to myself.
From that balcony, the way down got easier: a stone drainage pipe to grip, a jutting ledge, a kitchen rack outside the lower window. I climbed, jumped, slipping down the palace wall like someone who’d memorized every angle of a lover’s body.
On solid ground, I landed in a narrow passage beside the west wing, a place servants rarely crossed unless hauling waste to the kitchens. Burnt bread lingered faintly beneath the smell of lye soap.
I drew a breath, straightened my dress, then slid through a small door leading back inside. The lock was always loose, a kindness from the young maid whose milk jug I’d shattered once and repaid with a gold ring.
Within minutes, I cut through the kitchen, dodged the head cook’s stare, and slipped out the palace’s side gate. The guards knew me, of course. But a simple dress and tied hair kept them from blurting “Princess” the moment they saw me.
One only nodded, eyes lowered. I smiled.
Gerald had trained them well. Or maybe they were just too afraid of the Duke to question anything that left the palace.
I walked out alongside a wagon hauling vegetables to the lower market. It rattled over stone, wheels groaning, cabbage and onion stinging the air. I kept beside it, head down, one hand resting lightly on the back boards, as if I were just a helper getting a ride.
Evrithall unfolded around me.
In the middle ring, shops lined the main road: cobblers, tailors, a tiny jewelry stall with glass beads glinting wild in children’s eyes. Street vendors called out. Laughter. A crying infant. The clang of a hammer kissing iron. Dust and flour drifted everywhere, mixed with honey and sweat.
At a crossing, I slipped away from the wagon and took a narrower street. The houses here wore peeling paint. Small windows held scraps of cloth trying to chase off drafts.
Lower still. The bottom ring. Roofs sagged. Stone streets turned to packed earth studded with gravel. Thaldrun felt closer here. Not a sound. A presence. A cold shadow stretching across rooftops as the sun shifted.
Their home sat in a small alley right where the stone became earth stamped by boots. I recognized the door before I saw it: gray wood worn soft, an iron hook for a handle, a cracked clay pot beside it that yesterday held a dead plant.
The door stayed shut.
My heart pressed against bone.
I knocked once. Twice. Waited.
Silence.
The third knock came harder. Still nothing.
My throat tightened. I almost pressed my ear to the wood when another voice came from behind me.
“They aren’t home, dear.”
I turned slowly.
A middle-aged woman stood in her doorway. Her hair was tied back, hands dusted in flour, apron smeared with dough. Her face looked broad, lines of exhaustion circling her eyes, but something softer rested at the edge of her mouth.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m… looking for them.”
“Sure you are.” She spoke like it made perfect sense. She wiped her hands on the apron and stepped closer. Her gaze skimmed my face, my dress. Recognition flickered there. Quick, and then gone. People from the bottom ring were skilled at hiding what they knew. Sometimes pretending ignorance kept you alive. “You’re a friend of them?”
Friend.
The word fit strangely around someone I’d once held down while golden light crawled from my skin. But I nodded. “I… know them.”
She exhaled, flour drifting from her fingers like tiny snow. “Jerome and Elysa went to the fields early this morning,” she said. “Stubborn boy. His legs only held his weight again last night and he insisted on going.”
Jerome. Elysa.
Hearing their names pressed something tighter inside my chest. Yesterday in this tiny house, they were just “my brother” and “her.” Now they carried names, and names carried gravity.
“Where are their fields?” My voice rushed ahead of me.
She pointed toward Thaldrun, looming at the end of the street like it was listening. “Far,” she said. “They keep a small patch near the water trench inside the wall, just before the east watch post. Hard soil, but close to the market. And close to… that.”
She didn’t need to say Morvane or dragon breath. I still saw Jerome’s darkened flesh, the swollen blue veins, the shudder of his broken breathing.
“Why did you let him go?” The question cut sharper than I meant.
Her eyes hardened for a beat. “Because if he didn’t, they wouldn’t eat,” she answered. “Yesterday the priest ignored them when Elysa called. The healer ignored them. The only one who came was a girl with her hood pulled low. Today Jerome said the world needed to see he could still stand, and Elysa refused to let him go alone.”
A hooded girl. Heat crept up my cheeks.
“If you’re their friend,” the woman went on, “tell Jerome that if he faints in that field again, I’ll drag him home myself and crack his skull with stale bread.”
There was rough warmth wrapped inside the threat. I smiled. “I’ll tell him.”
She studied me a few seconds longer, like she wanted to slot my face onto the right shelf in her memory. Then she gave a small nod and stepped back to her doorway.
“Walk straight downhill until the soil smells stronger than the fish,” she said. “Then turn left at the leaning tree. Follow the sound of water. Their field is near the last trench before the wall.”
“Thank you.”
“If you really are their friend, bring them home before the sun touches the top of Thaldrun,” she added. “The forest isn’t the only thing out there with a temper.”
With that, she closed her door, leaving me alone with Jerome and Elysa’s empty house. I turned toward the road leading to the wall.
My steps moved faster than they should have for someone not being chased. Every time my feet struck the ground, images flashed behind my eyes: Jerome’s blackened flesh yesterday, the gold light leaking from my skin, threads of it wrapping around the dark veins and pulling them back. His breath returning. Elysa crying, clinging to me like someone clinging to an altar.
And Ylena’s words, only hours ago: cleansed. Burned, if needed.
The water trench appeared like a strip of silver cutting through brown earth. The sound of it swallowed a bit of the city noise. The closer I got to Thaldrun, the fewer houses I saw. Fields spread on both sides. Some freshly tilled. Some already planted. Farmers bent low, their backs shaped like stone, faces hidden.
The air here felt different. The smell of soil grew stronger, mixed with something that always lingered near the wall: old stone, dust, and… a residue. As if the world beyond Thaldrun breathed through hairline cracks, and that breath curled at my ankles.
I followed the woman’s directions. Straight until soil overpowered fish. Left at the leaning tree. Its trunk bent toward the wall, like it once tried to touch it but didn’t quite reach. Follow the water’s voice.
The last trench before the wall ran deeper than the rest. Its water moved slow and dark. Beside it lay a freshly worked plot, furrows still sharp.
And two figures standing in it.
Elysa stood with her hands on her hips, brown hair tied at her nape, skirt hitched to keep the mud off. Jerome crouched beside her, one knee in the dirt, a sprout in his hand. From here, I could see the side of his body that had blackened yesterday, now only marked by a faint greenish pattern on the skin visible beneath his sleeve.
I drew a breath. Something in my chest eased.
He stood. He moved.
My steps slowed.
The ground shifted slightly under my shoes, damp and soft.
I tried approaching like an ordinary person. Not the Princess of Caeloria with foreign light in her bones. Not someone who could summon the fire of purification with one confession at an altar.
“Jerome!” Elysa spotted me first. Her voice sliced the air, sharp but bright with something contagious. Her eyes widened when they landed on me. Her mouth opened. “You—”
Jerome lifted his head. His brown eyes locked on mine. Recognition flickered. And something else: wonder, a little fear, a little gratitude, all wrestling in the narrow space of his stare.
I raised a hand and gave a small wave. “I hoped you weren’t dead,” I said. “I’m glad that hope survived today.”
My breath finally sank all the way into my lungs.