The days that pass are an absolute crawl with Alicia confined to bed, watching Kathryn go about her days. She leaves for long hours, hours that Alicia spends flicking through the grand duke's journal. And when the older woman comes back, she's grubby and exhausted, discoloured liquid splattering her bronze cheeks, a liquid Alicia recognises from what stained the queen's carpets.

Alicia has to force herself not to drown in those memories.

Pulling up her bandages, Alicia finds the exit wound of the bullet she took to be healing well. Movement is still limited for her, but her muscles itch to get up and get moving again. She needs a distraction, something other than the notebook.

Most of it is filled with theories. Mentions of long-forgotten traveller stories that Alicia already knows too well. Not only was the duke searching for a way to control the Ghuls, but he was also searching for a cure to the Reaper's Curse. The two goals confuse Alicia in their contradictions, and nowhere in the journal does it say what the duke's plans were after he succeeded in procuring such things.

All of it leaves a sharp pain behind Alicia's eyes and she usually ends her nights by shoving the book back into her satchel with a frustrated sigh.

It's during the hours where Kathryn is gone that Alicia attempts to stand and move. Sweat makes the shirt on her back cling between her shoulder-blades and her teeth grind together as pain arks through her side. Every muscle in her body is stiff, having turned to lead from being crippled for so long. But she manages to slide her bare feet along the rough floorboards, past the fireplace and towards the small kitchen to lean against the table.

Breathing sharp breaths through her nose, Alicia approaches the stove to light the wood with kindling and a match that shakes in her hand. Once it's going, she drags the full kettle of water over the warming iron before slumping against the bench to catch her breath.

She doesn't remember the last time she felt so weak, but she knows it was a frequent lethargy when she was a hungry child in the slums.

On days when the world around her is quiet, Alicia is plagued by the thought that she misses those days. The days of hunger and hurt and seeing her family suffer. But in those days she had her soul and she didn't have the Reaper whispering in her ear. In those days, she was just Alicia Zalana, nothing more.

The whine of the kettle yanks her from her thoughts and Alicia rubs her tired eyes as she turns to the stove. Alicia takes the steaming kettle from the stove, snuffing out the flame before pouring the water into the pot that already has Kathryn's favoured leaves in there.

Making herself a cup of tea, focusing on something other than herself, helps her find some semblance of normalcy again. She may be an exile and how she got here may be a nightmare, but at least some things in life will never change.

She wraps her cold hands around the mug, letting the warmth seep into her bones as she blows on the steaming tea.

Kathryn doesn't know that her brother is dead. Alicia hasn't been able to tell her. The guilt of it is slowly eating her alive and the only thing that's stopping her from letting it, is ignoring it.

She's an exile. She's out here now. Nothing that happened within those walls will ever matter out here.

"Alicia."

Lifting her gaze, Alicia finds her aunt standing before her, a frown on her face, a sack slung over her shoulder.

The mug of tea is cold between Alicia's palms. She hasn't even taken a sip.

How long she's been standing, staring at nothing, lost in her own guilt, she can't say.

"Are you alright?" the older woman asks.

Alicia can't find the words to answer that truthfully, so instead she turns and sets her cold mug on the counter. "I felt well enough to walk around," she says.

"Would you like me to take a look at the wound?"

"No, I'm fine."

"Alicia," she chides, but there's no real heat in her words, like she's reprimanding a small child.

Alicia needs to tell her. She needs to tell her everything that happened within those walls, but the words feel like glass lodged in her throat.

She can't speak them. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

"Are you alright?" Alicia questions as she turns back to face her aunt, grubby as always, but the blood on her isn't the usual splattered grey, but streaks of crimson.

Kathryn looks down at herself, splaying her stained fingers. "If you're feeling well enough, there's something I need your help with."

"Out there?"

Nodding, Kathryn approaches the barrel of water to scoop some into a bowel and take it with her to the table.

"What is it?"

"Supplies," she murmurs, scrubbing her hands with a dampened cloth. "More supplies than I can take back on my own and I don't want to risk another trip." Her dark eyes lift and meet Alicia's.

Alicia hasn't been outside of this cabin since Kathryn dragged her in here a week ago. Going back out there isn't something she particularly wants to do, but if she's going to accept her life as an exile, then she has to.

Because it is her life now. She made her choice and she has to live with it.

"Okay," she says with a waver in her voice that she doesn't acknowledge. She'll go out there and she'll face the choice she made. Or she'll die within these walls having not breathed fresh air again.

The stench of smoke is what hits her first. After wandering through the woods, trailing after Kathryn and her knowledge of the Dead Lands, Alicia's been surrounded by nothing but the scent of vegetation and the chirp of birds high in the pines.

So, when the acrid reek of smoke comes to her on the breeze that ruffles her hair, it hits her like a blow to the cheek.

Alicia glances at the trees around them, the afternoon sun piercing through the dense leaves to dapple the thick underbrush in a dulled glow. She can't find the source of the smoke, but Kathryn continues onward and Alicia follows.

With a lump forming in her throat, they step onto a bumpy road, more overgrown than an actual road. Carriages wouldn't be able to pass through here with ease anymore, and as her gaze lifts, she realises that a carriage had attempted to go through here.

She notes that the wheel is broken, the rest of it tangled in vines. The first of their errors was trying to drive through here, the second was that they didn't stop to fix the problem, but instead pushed onwards.

The carriage has been tipped onto its side, trunks and belongings strewn in the mud. One of the barrels had caught fire, singing some of the trees and supplies, but a downpour must have put it out before it could spread.

Alicia swallows as she sees the bodies. Dozens of Grey Bloods caught in the underbrush, half sunken into the muddy divots in the road. They're all dead.

"Where are the people?" Alicia dares to ask, sick already stinging the back of her throat.

Kathryn waves a hand and Alicia follows her gesture to the freshly dug graves on the side of the road. Three of them, one of them smaller than the others.

"They put themselves out of their misery before they turned."

Alicia tears her eyes away from the graves. "What now?"

"Now we see what's left before Greys or exiles come."

Nodding, Alicia does as she's told. She kneels by one of the trunks that have been tossed from the carriage and pries it open with the knife from her boot.

She doesn't glance at the bodies around her. She doesn't acknowledge the stench of corpses that lingers in the air. She doesn't focus on anything beyond the supplies she sifts through.

Maybe one day she'll be able to accept the reality of the world she's thrown herself into but right now... right now if she thinks too much, her mind will go back to that smaller grave and the fact that some things never change. Those that are innocent will always get caught within the crossfire.

It's a lesson she learned four years ago and one she doesn't need to learn again.

As she digs through the linens and clean cloth, her hand brushes against something rough. She pulls it out and her breath stills in her lungs. The small picture is held in a frame of glass and gold, but Alicia cares little for the frame. Within is a family of four, two little girls beaming before their parents.

Blinking, Alicia catches a glimpse of two little girls behind her eyelids, their once beautiful dresses scorched and torn. Alicia swallows the whimper that swells in her throat as she remembers those girls, their reddened flesh shining, their skin singed, blistering in some places. The stench of charred flesh that surrounds her makes her want to vomit.

Alicia shoves the picture into the bottom of the trunk and shakes the memories from her head as she stands.

"Just tell me what you need me to carry back to the cabin and I will," Alicia blurts, her stomach twisting in painful knots, her legs begging her to run from this place and the memories that demand her attention.

"Are you alright?"

Shaking her head, Alicia turns away and intends to walk, but her boot crunches on something. She glances down and frowns at the muddy paper beneath her boot. She bends to pick it up, shaking the dirt off it to see it's a newspaper article.

Alicia's teeth sink into the inside of her cheek as she sees a grainy picture of the royal family, Sebastian in it. She can't read what the article is about, but she can read the scrawl that's been written on it in bold lettering. Royal scum.

Dropping the paper, Alicia is all too eager to abandon this place when Kathryn tells her what to haul back.

She looks back to the felled carriage that they leave behind, the remnants left to the mercy of the Greys and the crows. The graves are unmarked, a reminder of the fate that awaits all exiles in these lands.

She's beginning to realise the high price this place is going to demand of her if she chooses to survive it.