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The map lied.
Ava stood in front of what the deed called Windstone Hollow Manor and tried not to laugh. Or scream. The stone foundation was real enough—moss-choked and crumbling at the corners, but stone. Everything above it was kindling. The roof had caved in on the left side, taking half the second floor with it. The windows were empty holes. The door hung from one hinge.
She'd left the capital three days ago with a trunk, a horse, and her father's parting words still ringing in her ears. *You want independence? Fine. Prove you can manage something besides embarrassing this family.*
Well. Here it was.
The wind cut across the overgrown yard, sharp enough to sting. Late autumn already, and she could see her breath. Her cloak wasn't thick enough for this. None of her things were right for this. She'd packed for a country estate, maybe a little rustic, sure—but not a ruin at the kingdom's edge where the trees grew dark and the road turned to mud.
Ava walked closer. The ground squelched under her boots. She pushed the door. It scraped inward, groaning, and fell flat inside with a crash that sent birds screaming out of the rafters.
No rafters. Just sky.
She stepped over the door. The entry hall was a shell. Leaves piled in the corners. Something had nested in the stone fireplace—she could see the twigs and dried grass spilling out onto the floor. The air smelled like rot and old smoke. There was a staircase, or there had been. Now it was just the first three steps and a lot of broken wood.
"Manor," she said out loud. Her voice echoed wrong. "Right."
She walked through what might've been a sitting room, then a kitchen. The kitchen still had an iron stove, rust-red and listing to one side. No pump. No cistern she could see. She'd passed a creek on the way in, maybe a ten-minute walk back down the trail. That was something.
The back door was missing entirely. She stepped out into the yard.
Three smaller buildings sat behind the manor. Shacks, really. One had a roof. The other two were open to the weather, their thatch rotted through and collapsing inward. A fence ran the perimeter—or the skeleton of one. Most of the posts had fallen. The rails were gone, probably burned for firewood by whoever'd abandoned this place.
She turned in a slow circle. Hills rolled away to the north, thick with pine and bare-branched oak. To the south, the road she'd come in on, barely more than a track. West, the creek and more trees. East, a rocky slope that climbed toward the ridgeline.
No neighbors. No smoke from other chimneys. No fields, no barn, no people.
Nothing.
Ava's chest tightened. She forced herself to breathe slowly. She would not cry. She would not give him that.
Her father had done this on purpose. She'd refused the marriage to Klaus Ironcrest—refused to be another token in the Ironcrest alliance, another noble daughter sold off to keep the council happy—and this was her punishment. Exile in everything but name. A dead fief, a failed title, and when she came crawling back in the spring, he'd be waiting with the contract and a pen.
*I won't,* she thought. *I won't go back.*
She pulled the deed from her coat pocket. The wax seal was still intact, her family crest pressed into the red: a tower and a hammer. The Windstone line. Builders, they'd been called once, back when bloodlines still meant something. Before the gift thinned out and her grandfather locked the family records away and told everyone to stop asking.
Ava traced the hammer with her thumb. She'd never shown any sign of it. Not a flicker. Her older brother had been tested and come up empty, too. The bloodline was dead, her father had said. Better to forget it and focus on money and influence like normal people.
Normal people who shoved their daughters into dead fiefs and called it a learning opportunity.
She folded the deed and shoved it back into her pocket. Fine. She'd learn.
The horse was still tied where she'd left it, cropping at the weeds near the fence. Her trunk sat in the wagon bed, strapped down and covered with oilcloth. She'd paid the driver extra to help her unload, but he'd taken one look at the manor, shaken his head, and told her he wasn't staying past sundown. Bandits, he'd said. Or worse. The frontier wasn't safe for a woman alone.
He'd been gone an hour.
Ava untied the horse and led it around back. The shack with the roof looked the most stable. She pushed the door open—this one actually had a door, though it dragged on the dirt floor. Inside was dim and smelled like dust and mouse droppings, but it was dry. There was a wooden bench against one wall and a shelf that might hold supplies if she had any.
She tied the horse outside and went back for the trunk.
It took three tries to drag it off the wagon. When it hit the ground, the impact rattled up through her arms and into her shoulders. She sucked in a breath and planted her hands on her knees. She wasn't weak. She'd grown up riding and dancing and holding herself upright in a corset for ten-hour council dinners. But she'd never hauled a trunk full of books and clothes and her mother's old jewelry box across a muddy yard by herself.
She grabbed the leather handle and dragged it toward the shack. Her boots slipped. Her fingers cramped. The trunk carved a long gouge in the mud behind her.
By the time she wrestled it through the door, the sun was sinking behind the ridge. The temperature dropped with it. She could feel the cold creeping under her cloak, into her gloves, through the wool of her dress.
She needed fire. She needed food. She needed a plan that went beyond *survive tonight.*
Ava opened the trunk and pulled out a blanket, then another. She spread one on the bench and wrapped the second around her shoulders. There was a candle in the trunk, two apples, and a chunk of hard cheese she'd bought at the last village. She ate half an apple and a corner of the cheese and told herself it was dinner.
Her hands were shaking.
She pulled out the smallest item in the trunk, wrapped in linen at the very bottom. She unwrapped it slowly.
Her family crest. The real one, not the seal on the deed. A bronze medallion the size of her palm, the tower and hammer raised and polished smooth by generations of hands. Her mother had given it to her the morning she left. *You're still a Windstone,* she'd said. *No matter what he calls this.*
Ava closed her fingers around it. The metal was cold at first, then warm. She felt something—just a flutter, like a second heartbeat under her ribs.
She opened her hand.
The crest sat there, dull bronze in the candlelight. Nothing glowing. Nothing magic. Just old metal and older pride.
*I'm not dying here,* she thought. *I'm not going back, and I'm not dying here.*
She wrapped the crest and put it back in the trunk. Then she blew out the candle to save it, pulled both blankets around herself, and lay down on the bench.
The darkness was absolute. The wind hissed through the gaps in the walls. Somewhere far off, an animal called—low and rough, nothing she recognized.
She closed her eyes.
She'd figure it out in the morning. She had to.
The coughing started just as she was drifting off.
Ava's eyes snapped open. She held her breath, listening.
There it was again. Small, wet, desperate. A child's cough.
Just beyond the broken fence.