Preparations to leave escalate faster than Nura can keep up. Talon travels to Emerald to organise a way to move inconspicuously to Giem while Canaan gathers together supplies for the long journey.

Leaving Nura alone with her mother, struggling to wrap her head around where they're going and why they're doing it.

Nura is engrossed in her work of crushing herbs and mixing tonics and doesn't notice the light tapping on the stone until it stops beside her. Lifting her head, she glances at the woman who peers at the ingredients strewn across the table.

"You're a healer," she murmurs and Nura shrugs, shoving a cork into a glass bottle to slot it neatly into a pouch.

"I know my way around medicine," she admits, though she knows it's more than that. She wouldn't have been accused of being a Witch if her skills didn't go beyond knowing a poisonous mushroom from an edible one.

"I used to be a healer."

Nura pauses and flicks her gaze back to the woman. "Used to be?"

She leans on her cane and nods. "Before Rólin, I had the healing powers gifted to some Ice Elves."

"They're gone?"

Tilting her head, Elice meets her eye. "How much do you know about Elves?"

"As much as I needed to know to survive as a Halfling."

Elice sighs and shakes her head. "I'm sorry I wasn't there to teach you—"

"Don't," Nura interrupts, her features twisting. "Talon already explained to me that you were protecting me by not being in my life. There's no need to apologise because even if you could go back, you wouldn't change anything."

Elice stares at her for a long moment, her features unreadable. But she nods. "After I tried to kill Rólin, he imprisoned me. He forced me to give up my powers. I'm mortal."

Nura presses her lips together, understanding dawning on her. Her mother no longer has her Elven immortality or powers. She's just as vulnerable to Rólin as Nura is. Nura isn't quite sure how she should feel about that considering what they're up against.

"I planned to give them up anyway," she continues with a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "It would have taken a few years, but eventually I would have started aging with your father."

"You were willing to give up that part of yourself for him?"

"And for you. I didn't want my daughter to grow up and look the same age as her mother."

Nura's hand goes to her stomach. She can't imagine watching her child age and eventually pass away while Nura stays the same. She wants children, her and Rephas had been trying. Thinking about suffering such a loss makes her look at her mother with new eyes.

Would Nura go to the same lengths Elice did to protect her child?

"I may not have been given the chance to know you growing up," Nura says, "but I do know my father loved you."

"And I love him. I'm here because I owe it to him to succeed where I once failed. I owe you."

Nura looks down at her herbs, rubbing a leaf between her fingers as her previous doubts rear their head. She can't escape them, no matter how deeply she buries herself in her work. "Do you think the empress will help us?"

"I hope so."

"But you have doubts."

Sighing, Elice leans her hip against the table to face Nura more fully. "Cirallian was a very different land before the Abyssal War. Things were... worse than they are now."

Nura presses her lips together. She can't imagine things being worse, but maybe that's just her resentment for the war and what it took from her. She's never been able to reconcile all that suffering being worth it.

"Lila was one of the few Elves in power that didn't want to totally annihilate Humans. She was heavily contested, her union with the emperor was questioned. The only thing that gave her power was her alliance with Rólin." Elice shakes her head, a twist to her lips like she's eaten something sour. "She made deals with him, sacrifices, so she could be on the throne and have some outcome of the war and the fate of Humans."

"Why did she want to save us?"

Elice shrugs. "I have no idea. Lila is... a secretive woman. But Canaan might know."

Nura raises a brow.

"Canaan is her spy. Lila trusts Canaan for whatever reason. I believe they have a history together but in the past thirty years I haven't been able to get answers from either of them."

Curiosity nagging at her, Nura has to bite her tongue to stop herself from bombarding the woman with questions.

Empress Lila Avarae isn't a woman Nura ever expected to meet. She forced the signage of the White Rose Treaty. She's been seen in battle wielding both ice and fire. And she's survived multiple coups against her throughout the past six years.

People don't want her on the Elven throne, but it seems like she's not going anywhere.

Nura's lips twist as she thinks about the dangerous world she's becoming tangled within. She never intended to even cross the border, now she's thinking about meeting the Elven empress.

That question surfaces in Nura's mind again. How much further can she go into her Elven side before she can't come back?

"Are you ready to go?" Elice questions from beside her as she pushes away from the table.

Nura shakes herself from her thoughts and nods. "Just about." She turns back to her work and tries to ignore the worries that plague her. She knows they're only going to get worse.

Just beyond the village of Emerald, Talon leads them to a small caravan. The woman who waves at them in greeting isn't who Nura was expecting to see.

"Hello again," Sara greets from the front of her cart.

"Sara," Nura answers, offering a tentative wave as her gaze flicks to Talon in question.

"Sara's agreed escort us to Giem," Talon says. "We should be able to escape Rólin's notice easier as travelling merchants."

Nura draws in a breath and nods, running her hand along the broad neck of her mare. They're leaving. They're going to Giem. Nura still struggles to comprehend such a thing. For most of her life she lived in Hold Tiore, seeing nothing beyond its wooden walls and rows of tents. And now she's over the border and is travelling across Cirallian.

How things have changed, in more ways than one.

"How are you feeling?" Talon asks, moving closer to her side so the others who prepare for the journey don't hear.

Nura offers him a smile. "I'm still adjusting to... everything. But I'll be alright." She pauses as she looks back the way they had come, the bumpy road shrouded in trees and snow. "I have to be."

"You don't have to be anything, Nura," he murmurs, dipping his chin, causing the pale curls of his hair to shadow his gaze. "The things you've learned recently... I know it's not easy. You're allowed to be shaken."

"But I can't afford to be." Swallowing, she forces her emotions back down as she's had to do countless times since the Harvest Ceremony that changed everything. "Rephas needs me and I won't fail him. I've had my lapses of weakness and it's gotten me nothing. Rephas needs me strong."

Talon looks at her, his gaze steely amongst the darkness of the woods. "Why do you think you owe him this?"

She narrows her gaze. "Owe him? Even if I didn't owe him anything for all he's done for me the last few years, I still love him." Her gaze darts to her mother where the woman leans heavily on her cane, bundled in furs and Nura is reminded that she's not an Ice Elf anymore, that she was willing to give that up for her father. "I think we all know what love makes us do."

Before he can reply, Sara speaks up, "Let's get a move on before I freeze my arse off."

Nura sighs and turns away from Talon to pull herself into her saddle, her body already dreading the long journey ahead.