The road carried Aster farther from home than she had ever been allowed to travel alone. Each step felt strange and liberating. Mud where polished marble had been, wind where chandeliers once hung. She had traded gowns for sturdy boots, influence for anonymity, and a future shaped for her for one she shaped herself.

She took any work that kept her fed: hauling crates, delivering parcels, helping repair nets, guarding small vessels moored at rickety piers. Her hands blistered, then strengthened. Her arms grew lean from pulling ropes instead of signing edicts.

Through it all, her bow remained her constant companion.

She practiced in the evenings, sometimes on quiet stretches of shoreline, other times in the shadow of abandoned warehouses. She let her magic dance along the bowstring, feeling it respond more freely without noble eyes judging her. Her arrows flew straight and true, trailing faint hints of light when she lost herself in focus.

After months of wandering, she arrived in a small port town where the city's stone roads gave way to dirt paths and sailors and traders from Katashaka and other lands unloading cargo with wary glances at passing soldiers. The place was rough, worn, and honest. It had no use for noble manners, and she had no interest in revealing them.

She slept in a tavern attic in exchange for work, swinging between barmaid, harbor runner, and, on rougher nights, bouncer.

Mereth, the tavern owner, hired her after watching her intercept two drunken sailors before either threw a punch. Aster’s years in the Astravere yard served her well; her speed, balance, and instinctive precision far beyond any dockhand’s.

She wasn't the only refugee. There was a Katashakan boy who washed dishes for scraps and a warm place to sleep. He was quiet and careful, his eyes always drawn toward the soldiers who came through the port. Aster grew protective of him without even noticing at first; showing him safe paths through the crowd, teaching him how to dodge a grab or slip behind her when the tavern grew rowdy.

In some ways he reminded her painfully of home.
Of cousins she taught to draw a bow or climb the orchard trees, or maybe of herself being taught by the yardmasters.

Aster found peace here. Real peace.
No courtly performances.
No inherited destiny.
Just the messy, noisy rhythm of the tavern, and evenings spent practicing on empty docks with the ocean wind brushing through her hair.

Her father faded from her thoughts. Not forgotten, never forgotten, but distant enough that the guilt no longer swallowed her whole.

She believed she’d disappeared well enough.
That no one would search for her here.

She couldn’t imagine that someone had picked up her trail.
That someone watched her from crowded tavern on busy nights or on the docks as she ran errands.
That someone saw the glimmer of arcane in her arrows flashing in the night.
That someone waited for the moment she let her guard fall.

The port town felt like a refuge.