As she recorded their details, Thalia caught snippets of grief from the hall around her—a woman wailing for a missing husband, a child asking when they could go home, an old man muttering the names of those left behind like a prayer.Each story pressed against her own buried fears, the uncertainty about her mother and Mari's fate that she had pushed deep beneath layers of duty and discipline.
Near the back of the group, a girl of about sixteen stood alone, her thin frame hunched as if to make herself smaller.Her dark hair hung in snarls around a face that might once have been pretty, before hunger and hardship had carved hollows beneath her cheekbones.Something about her struck Thalia—perhaps the set of her shoulders, or the wary intelligence in her eyes—and reminded her inexplicably of Mari.
But this girl's eyes were shadowed, too old for her age.They held none of Mari's brightness, none of her mischievous spark.Instead, they seemed to have seen things no sixteen-year-old should witness.
Thalia approached her, ledger in hand but her official demeanor softening."What's your name?"she asked gently.
The girl hesitated, studying Thalia with a caution born of recent trauma."Zanaya," she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper."Zanaya Valewood."
"Where are you from, Zanaya?"
The girl swallowed, her throat working visibly."Verdant Port."
The words hit Thalia like a physical blow, stealing her breath.Verdant Port.This girl had been there during the attack.Had seen what happened.Might know—
"Your family?"Thalia asked, struggling to maintain her professional tone.
Zanaya shook her head, a single sharp movement."Gone."
The word hung between them, heavy with implication.Thalia forced herself to breathe, to focus, to ask the questions she was supposed to ask rather than the ones clawing at her throat.
"Occupation?"she managed.
"I worked at the docks," Zanaya said."Sorting fish.Sometimes mending nets."
Thalia nodded, writing the information in the ledger with a hand she barely kept from shaking.Then, unable to contain herself any longer, she stepped closer, lowering her voice.
"I'm from Verdant Port too," she said urgently."My family is still there—at least, they were when the city fell.My mother, Celeste Greenspire.My sister, Mari.They lived in the eastern slums, near the harbor.A small herb shop with blue shutters."The words tumbled out, each one weighted with desperate hope."Did you see them?Do you know if they escaped?"
Zanaya looked startled at the sudden torrent of questions, her eyes widening as she took in Thalia's intensity." I-I don't know them," she said slowly."I'm from the western quarter, by the shipyards.I didn't know many people from the eastern slums."
Disappointment crashed through Thalia, leaving her momentarily speechless.Of course.Verdant Port was a sprawling city of distinct districts, separated as much by wealth and status as by physical distance.The slums where she'd grown up might as well have been another city entirely to someone from the western quarter.
"Please," she said, her voice roughening with emotion."Tell me what happened there.How the city fell."
Zanaya's gaze dropped to the floor, her fingers working nervously at a frayed edge of her sleeve."They came in the middle of the night," she said, her voice hollowing as she recalled the events."The Isle Wardens.There was no warning—just the storm that appeared from nowhere.The sky had been clear, stars out.Then...darkness."
She looked up, her eyes distant as if seeing it all again."The military tried to meet them at the harbor's inlet.We have—had—warships stationed there.But the Wardens tore through them like they were made of paper.The lightning..."She shuddered."It filled the air, struck the water, set ships ablaze.And the wave they called—it came out of nowhere, higher than the seawall, flooding the lower streets."
Thalia's mind filled with images of the eastern slums, situated in one of the lowest parts of the city.If a wave had breached the seawall…
"The storm spread inland," Zanaya continued, her voice gaining a hollow steadiness as she recounted horrors that seemed to have numbed her."Lightning striking towers, wind tearing roofs from houses.People ran in every direction, trying to get to higher ground or out of the city entirely.But the Wardens—they were everywhere suddenly.Moving through the streets like shadows, bringing the storm with them."
She drew a shaking breath."They took the city in hours.There was so little resistance.I saw people..."Her voice broke."I saw them die.In the streets.In their homes."
"My family," Thalia pressed, her voice cracking."The eastern slums—what happened there?"
Zanaya shook her head, tears welling in her eyes."I don't know.I never made it to that part of the city.The Wardens were between me and there.I escaped with a group heading north, through the hills."She looked at Thalia with genuine sorrow in her expression."I'm sorry.I don't know what happened to your family."
The uncertainty was almost worse than confirmation of the worst.Thalia had spent weeks imagining all possible fates for her mother and sister—that they had escaped, that they were imprisoned, that they were dead.Each scenario had played out in her mind with vivid detail.But none of them had the weight of truth, and the not-knowing was a constant, gnawing ache.
"I'm sorry," Zanaya whispered again, tears spilling down her cheeks."I wish I could tell you more."
Something in the girl's expression—the genuine anguish, the weight of all she had witnessed—broke through Thalia's practiced reserve.Without thinking, she reached out and pulled Zanaya into a tight embrace, holding her as the girl's thin shoulders began to shake with silent sobs.
"It's all right," Thalia murmured, though nothing was all right, and perhaps nothing would be again."It's not your fault."She had to fight the urge to cry herself, to let loose the grief and fear that had been building since she first heard of Verdant Port's fall.
"Greenspire!"
