The Pale Light of Dawn

The night did not end.

Lia lost track of how many times she changed the compresses, how often she checked to see if Kate was still breathing. The fire she built while anxiously waiting had burned down to a faint orange glow, just enough to keep the cold from sinking too deep into the crumbling walls.

Kate lay motionless on the cot, her armor stripped away, her skin pale beneath the fever. The only sign of life was the shallow rise and fall of her chest - fragile, uneven, stubborn.

Lia dipped a cloth into a bowl of cooled water, wrung it out, and pressed it against Kate’s forehead. The scent of dried mint and willow bark clung to her hands. She had mixed what herbs she could find into a poultice for the wound, with crushed leaves, honey, a few drops of resin to keep infection away. Lia still had the stings and cuts in her hand from her recent gathering trip. But all of it was guesswork at best.

“Come on,” she whispered, voice hoarse. “You’re supposed to be the strong one.”

Outside, the wind sighed through the trees. Somewhere far away, an owl called. The world felt impossibly distant, as if Lumenór had burned not days ago but in another lifetime.

Lia leaned back, exhaustion pulling at her eyes. She couldn’t sleep; every time her head dipped, she imagined waking to silence. To stillness. To no breath at all.

The hours stretched thin. She refilled the bowl, changed the bandage, fed the fire another stick bundle. Each task blurred into the next until it felt like prayer more than work, something to keep her hands moving when her heart wanted to stop.

When dawn finally came, it wasn’t golden like in Lumenór. It was gray: a weak light struggling through smoke and frost, painting the cabin in muted silver. Lia sat still and watched it spread across the floorboards until it touched the edge of the bed.

Kate didn’t stir, but her breathing held steady.

Time blurred into quiet days.

The sky stayed the same color, a soft, endless gray throughout the days and nights. The forest outside held its breath as if mourning. Inside the cabin, Lia moved like a shadow, her voice rarely breaking the silence.

Every morning, she checked Kate’s pulse. Every night, she cleaned the wound again. Between those moments, she worked, because working was easier than waiting.

She gathered herbs from the edge of the clearing where the cabin was, learning what survived the ash: fever root, golden fern, and a small patch of wild mint pushing stubbornly through the cold soil. She ground them together with honey and tree resin, making pastes that smelled sharp and earthy.

When she warmed the mixtures over the fire, the air filled with the scent of rosemary and smoke. Sometimes the blend turned too dark and bitter, and she would start over, muttering apologies to no one in particular. The table near the wall became her workshop, with jars, cloths, bits of bark and stone, all arranged with quiet precision.

She discovered that work brought a rhythm to the silence. The crackle of fire. The scrape of a knife on wood. The soft drip of rain outside.

The rest of the cabin began to change too. Lia swept away the cobwebs, patched the broken window with fabric and bark, and set bunches of drying herbs along the rafters. It wasn’t beautiful, not like the glass halls of Lumenór, but it was alive in its own, stubborn way.

By the third day, she’d made a habit of opening the door every morning just to listen. The forest was still half-choked with smoke, but somewhere beyond it, she could hear water running, a thin stream, persistent and clear. And once, just once, she heard a bird call.

It made her stop what she was doing and close her eyes.

The sound was faint, but it felt like proof that the world hadn’t ended. Not completely.

She went back inside and adjusted the cloth on Kate’s forehead.

“Hear that?” she whispered. “It’s still here. So you should be too.”

Kate didn’t stir, but Lia smiled anyway - a small, tired smile that carried the weight of hope she didn’t dare speak aloud.

Outside, the gray light softened, and the forest breathed again. Lia went back to her remedies.

The smell of herbs always brought memories with it.

As Lia crushed fever root between her fingers, the scent opened something in her chest, a doorway to a time when her hands were smaller, steadier, and unafraid. She could almost hear her mother’s voice beneath the whisper of the fire.

‘Plants don’t obey; they trust,’ she had said once, kneeling beside her in the palace gardens. The sun had caught in her hair like strands of gold. ‘If you rush them, they close their song to you.’

Little Lia had frowned, trying to copy her mother’s motion, grinding petals into a salve that came out too watery.

‘So I have to wait?’

‘Healing takes time,’ her mother smiled. ‘And time asks for patience.’

Now, years later, Lia repeated those words aloud - half mantra, half memory - as she stirred a pot of herbs and water over the fire. The mixture hissed softly, filling the air with the scent of rosemary, mint, and smoke. She dabbed the paste onto Kate’s wound with slow, careful hands.

Her movements mirrored her mother’s: gentle, precise, deliberate. But there was no warm hand guiding hers this time, no soft voice reminding her when to stop.

Only silence.

She looked toward the cracked window where dawn was breaking yet again, a dull, silver light catching on the jars she’d cleaned. She’d arranged them just like her mother used to: tallest in the back, smallest near the fire.

Her thoughts drifted to Adrian then. He had been sixteen when their mother died, trying so hard to look unbreakable. She remembered finding him in the solar garden that night, kneeling beside the empty flowerbeds.

‘We’ll keep it alive, Lia,’ he had said, his voice shaking even as he smiled. ‘The kingdom, the light… her.’

He had always believed that. She envied him for it.

Now she was the one kneeling in the dirt, keeping something - someone - alive because she refused to let go.

The fire cracked softly. Lia brushed a stray lock of hair from Kate’s forehead and replaced the cooling compress.

“Healing takes time.” she whispered again.

And outside, as if to answer her, a breeze slipped through the cracks, carrying the faintest scent of growing things.

Another day passed, and the gray in the sky got darker. Then, the rain came softly at first.

Lia woke to the sound of it tapping against the roof, steady, patient, the first true rain since the fire. The air in the cabin was cool, the scent of wet earth mixing with the sweetness of drying herbs.

For a moment, she didn’t move. Her body ached from days without sleep or sleeping in that damned stool, her mind floating between dreams and memory. Then she heard it: a faint rustle, a breath drawn sharper than before.

Lia’s eyes snapped open.

Kate’s hand had shifted, fingers twitching against the blanket. Lia sat up so quickly the stool scraped the floor.

“Kate?” She whispered, voice breaking.

The knight’s eyelids fluttered, slow and heavy. Her lips parted, dry and cracked.

“...Princess?”

Lia’s breath caught.

“I’m here.”

Kate’s eyes opened fully; unfocused, but alive. She tried to sit up and failed, grimacing at the pain. Lia caught her shoulders, easing her back down.

“Easy,” Lia murmured. “You’re safe.”

Kate exhaled shakily, eyes flicking to the bandages, then to the window, as if trying to piece together how much time had passed.

“You should have left me.” She rasped.

Lia met her gaze, firm.

“I don’t leave people to die.”

Something in Kate’s expression faltered, the part of her that always hid behind armor and duty. She looked away first, her voice a rough whisper.

“That wasn’t your burden to carry.”

“Maybe not,” Lia said softly. “But I carried it anyway.”

Silence settled between them, but it wasn’t the heavy kind that filled the nights before. It was gentler, like an understanding neither of them had words for.

Lia changed the compress, wrung out the cloth, and helped Kate drink a few sips of water. The knight’s hand brushed hers, weak but deliberate, and for a heartbeat the air between them felt warmer than the fading fire.

“Where… Did you get this? All of this?”

Lia hesitated.

“I… Went outside.” Kate frowned, but before she could say anything, Lia kept talking. “I know, I know. Not safe and all of that. But… You needed it. And I didn’t go far - most of it was growing wild either in the clearing or near it. Even the water. There’s a small creek nearby.”

Kate released a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“It was… Reckless. But… Thank you.”

Lia gave her a small smile. Outside, the rain slowed. Light began to filter through the cracks, not golden, but soft and pale, like the world trying to remember how to glow.

Lia crossed to the window and pushed it open. Cool air rushed in, carrying the scent of rain-soaked leaves and clean soil. The beams of dawn caught on the rows of herbs she’d hung to dry, their green turned silver in the dim light.

Behind her, Kate stirred again, eyes half open, watching her.

“It’s morning,” Lia said quietly. “You made it.”

Kate managed a faint smile - the first Lia had ever seen from her.

“So did you, princess.”

The fire crackled once, steady now, no longer dying. The rain eased into mist, and a thin line of sunlight stretched across the floorboards, touching the bed, the herbs, and both of them in turn.

The world outside was still broken, uncertain. But, inside the cabin, life had begun to breathe again.

That light might be pale, trembling - but it was theirs.