The afternoon did not get any easier.

  Zemmal led Lavender back to the training chamber as if food was merely fuel and fatigue just noise. The stone corridors warmed faintly beneath Lavender’s palms when she brushed the wall for balance, but she refused to call it comfort. Comfort could get her killed now.

  Brute paced at her heel, quiet until they reached the courtyard. “You ate,” he said if only to fill the silence.

  “I noticed,” Lavender muttered.

  “Dying hungry is stupid,” was all he replied.

  Zemmal’s voice came to her, hard as granite. There will be no dying.

  “None of you get to promise that” Lavender said aloud and stepped into the center.

  Training became a loop: open, hold, withdraw. Again. Again. Zemmal altered only the conditions. Kneeling, standing, walking slow circles so her body could not anchor to a single posture. Eyes closed. Eyes open. Breath counted. Breath ignored. He demanded that she widen, listen, feel.

  Brute’s job was simpler and crueler. Keep her human.

  When Lavender’s attention drifted toward the seam in the mountain, Brute said, “No,” like a leash snapped taut.

  “I wasn’t reaching,” she snapped.

  “You were thinking about it,” Brute answered. “Same direction.”

  When she withdrew cleanly and pride rose, Brute said, “Don’t get cocky.”

  Lavender scowled. “I’m allowed one emotion that isn’t terror.”

  “Pick a useful one,” Brute replied, unbothered.

  Zemmal corrected. Again, he would say, and she would obey, because obeying was easier than admitting she wanted to be good at this.

  By late afternoon her wrists ached and her scars felt tender, as if the pale lines had been rubbed raw by invisible hands. She managed pure magic four times. Each thread n thicker than a strand of hair, each held for barely a heartbeat before it snapped away.

  The first time, she laughed. The second time, tears ran down her face without permission. By the final time she felt nothing at all. She closed the door gently and sat before her knees decided for her.

  Enough, Zemmal’s voice finally intoned gently.

  Lavender stared at him defiantly. “That’s it?”

  For today, Zemmal answered.

  Brute sat in front of her, head tilted. “Are you alright, Lav?”

  “I feel broken,” Lavender said.

  “But you are not. Feeling and being are two different things,” Brute replied.

  On the walk back, the castle dimmed around them, as if it recognized depletion. Lights softened. Air became crisp and cool like a clean cloth pressed to a fevered forehead.

  Dinner waited in the small chamber, quick, plain, and efficient. Stew thick with roots. Bread. Water that tasted like minerals and snow. Reibella was absent, and Lavender both resented and appreciated the mercy.

  They ate without conversation for a while.

  The Lavender said, quietly, “Tomorrow we’ll do all of this again.”

  Brute glanced up. “Yes.”

  Zemmal’s voice followed, Tomorrow we will refine. We stabilize.

  Lavender’s jaw tightened. “And then we walk out and die heroically.”

  Brute’s mouth twitched. “Maybe. Or maybe you irritate the universe until it changes.”

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  “That’s not a plan.” She pushed her bowl away. Her stomach was full; her chest was not. “I’m going to sleep.”

  Brute hopped down immediately. “Good.”

  Zemmal paused at her door, head lowered in something that was almost a bow. Rest. I will be nearby.

  Lavender wanted to thank him. She settled for a single nod because her throat refused to cooperate.

  Her bed waited, low and wide. Brute climbed up without asking and curled against her ribs with familiar certainty.

  “You’re heavy,” Lavender murmured, sleep seeping into the edges of the words.

  “You like it,” Brute teased.

  Lavender made a sound that might have been laughter. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t speak.”

  “Coward,” he replied, and his tone was warm.

  Sleep took her fast.

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  She dreamed of ash first, because her mind always returned to the Barrens when it ran out of safer places. Then, the dream shifted. Warmth replaced cold so abruptly she almost flinched.

  She stood in her old hut. Her father’s hut.

  Not the one hunger and grief had hallowed, but the one that had existed before the world cracked. The table was repaired. The hearth was lit. The air smelled of smoke and soap and dried herbs.

  Conner sat at the table with a cup in his hands.

  Her father.

  Older than she remembered, touched by time in small, believable ways. Grayer, more lines, the same steady eyes that had watched her through fevers and storms. Lavender didn’t know if it was her own memory of him or if he had never really left.

  Lavender stopped breathing.

  Conner looked up and smiled. “Hey, Lav.”

  “Dad?” She whispered, and the sound broke.

  “Come here,” he said, palms open on the table like an invitation.

  Lavender crossed the room as if wading through deep water. When she reached him, his arms closed around her, and she pressed her face into his shoulder. Breathing him in; the scent of heady musk and mountains streams. Warm. Solid. Real in a way nothing had been for years.

  “I missed you,” she managed.

  “I know,” Conner murmured into her head, kissing her hair. His hand moved through the strands, slow and steady. “I’m sorry.”

  Lavender pulled back, desperate to memorize his face. “Is this… you?”

  “As much as it can be,” Conner said, and sadness lived behind the words.

  “Death did this,” Lavender said, the title still foreign.

  “She made space,” Conner replied. “I asked for it.”

  Lavender’s throat tightened. “Why now?”

  “Because you’re standing on a ledge,” Conner said gently. “And you always did stubborn things better when you thought I was watching.”

  She let out a laugh. A genuine one. “That’s manipulative.”

  Conner shrugged. “You come by it honest.”

  Her hands clenched. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  Conner covered her hands with his own. Rougher than she remembered. “You do,” he said. “You just don’t like what it costs.”

  “If I do this,” Lavender whispered, “I’m going to die.”

  Conner didn’t flinch. He never lied to make pain smaller. “Maybe,” he replied. “But you’ve been living like you were already dead since I went. Survival isn’t the same as living.”

  Lavender’s eyes stung. “I’m scared.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m angry.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “And I’m tired,” she admitted, voice thin.

  Conner’s eyes softened. “Then rest when you can. Let them hold you when you can’t.”

  Lavender swallowed hard. “I don’t deserve that.”

  He smiled, weary and kind. “Everyone deserves love. That’s why it’s love.”

  The hut brightened at the edges, as if the dream itself was flashing a warning.

  Lavender panicked with understanding. “You’re leaving.”

  Conner closed his eyes for a moment. “Yes. I’m leaving.”

  “Don’t,” she said, the word small.

  “I can’t stay,” he whispered. “I just needed to see you. Needed to know you’ll be alright.”

  “I won’t be,” she said.

  Conner’s voice was firm but tender, “You will. Maybe not unbroken. But still you.”

  She gripped her hands like a lifeline. “Will I see you again?”

  “Not like this,” he replied cryptically. “And that’s alright.”

  “It’s not,” Lavender choked.

  Conner kissed her forehead. “It will be. Not now. Later.”

  He lingered long enough to watch her breathing steadily. Long enough to hold her gaze as If he wanted to memorize her, too.

  Then he squeezed her hands once. “Be kind,” he said softly. “Even when it hurts. Especially then.”

  Lavender tried to speak, but the words tangled in her mouth.

  Conner’s smile stayed as his edges blurred. “I’m proud of you,” he told her. “Always. I love you, Lav.”

  “I love you too, daddy.”

  Then he was gone.

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Lavender woke with a gasp, hand pressed to her chest as if she could keep the warmth from leaking out.

  The room was dark, the castle quiet beyond the walls.

  Brute was against her ribs, eyes open, watching her like he’d been awake the whole time. “You’re back,” he said.

  She felt her blood pounding at the sides of her temples in rhythm with her heart. “Yeah.”

  Brute’s tail thumped against the bed slowly. “Good. Sleep more.”

  Lavender stared into the dim ceiling, grief sharp and fresh. Tried to follow the map the images made above her. “I said goodbye,” she whispered.

  Brute pressed closer. “You needed to.”

  She listened to the mountain’s pulse and tried to imagine the world outside. Authority’s light, their machines. How winter never seemed to end even after the snow was gone. Fear rose, then settled. She touched Brute’s fur, grounding herself. “I’m going to help,” her voice resolute.

  “I know.” Brute’s voice was quiet. “Even if it kills you.”

  Lavender closed her eyes. Tomorrow waited: training, widening, choices with teeth. But for a few more hours, she let herself rest. Held by warmth, companionship, and the last echo of her father’s hands.

  Thank you for reading my story. I spent a long time working on it and am glad I get to share it with others. Not your speed though? Check out another cool author below to give a try!