Chapter 3

The pebble sat next to my hand, warm from my pocket. Dr. Azdra had said rocks have memories. Perhaps this one held the key to reading the map. I closed my eyes and pressed the pebble against my forehead, letting its cool surface ground me. Nothing came—no vision, no sudden understanding. But when I looked at the map again, I noticed something I had missed before: a faint line, almost invisible, that connected the star at the center to a small dot in the corner. The dot was labeled with a single word: Kristiania.

I knew the city by that name. It was the old capital, the seat of the first kings. But according to the histories I had been taught, it had been abandoned centuries ago, its buildings crumbled to dust. Why would a map lead there? And what did it have to do with the figure?

I pulled out my grandmother’s journal from the drawer—the one I had hidden after her death. She had written in it during her final years, filling page after page with strange symbols and fragmented memories. I had never understood most of it, but now I turned to a page where she had drawn a crown much like the one on the figure. Beneath it, she had written in shaky script: They tried to make us stone, but stone remembers what the law forgets.

The same phrase echoed in Dr. Azdra’s words: The cracks are where the light gets in. My grandmother had known something. She had tried to tell me, but I had been too young, too afraid of Judge Thorne’s disapproval to listen.

A knock on my door startled me. I folded the map and tucked it into my coat, the figure already secure in the inner pocket. I opened the door a crack to find a servant, pale-faced and trembling.

“Your Highness, Judge Thorne has sent word. He demands you attend him in the Hall of Records immediately. He says it is a matter of law.”

My stomach tightened. He had not given up. Of course he hadn’t. I thanked the servant and closed the door, leaning against it. I could not go to him. If I did, he would take the map and the figure, and everything I had discovered would be buried again.

I looked at the pebble. Dr. Azdra had given it to me for a reason. I remembered her words: When you are lost, let the stone find the way. I held it in my palm and whispered, “Show me.”

For a moment, nothing. Then I felt a faint vibration, like a heartbeat, and the pebble grew warm. I set it on the map, and it rolled, almost of its own accord, to the corner where Kristiania was written. It stopped there, pulsing with a soft light.

I had no time to marvel. Another knock, harder this time. “Your Highness, the Judge is insistent.”

I grabbed my coat, the map, the figure, and the pebble. I could not leave through the main door—there would be guards. But my grandmother had shown me a secret passage once, when I was a child. She had said, Every princess needs a way out when the walls close in. I had thought it was a game, but now I prayed it was real.

I moved to the far wall, behind the tapestry of the old kings. I pressed on the stone where the mortar was a different shade, just as she had shown me. With a groan, a section of the wall slid inward, revealing a narrow staircase spiraling down into darkness.

I took a breath and stepped inside, pulling the wall closed behind me. The darkness was absolute, but I felt the pebble in my hand, glowing now with a faint bluish light. It illuminated the steps, just enough to see.

I descended for what felt like an eternity, the air growing cold and damp. The stairs ended in a tunnel, its walls carved with the same symbols from my map. I followed the tunnel until it opened into a small chamber, lit by a single shaft of moonlight from a crack in the ceiling above.

In the center of the chamber stood a stone pedestal, and on it lay a thin book, its cover bound in cracked leather. I approached and opened it. The pages were filled with my grandmother’s handwriting—not the fragmented notes of her journal, but a coherent narrative. She had written the story of our lineage, the truth that had been hidden for generations.

I read by the pale light, my hands trembling. She spoke of a queen who had defied the law, who had refused to be turned to stone—the phrase again—and who had fled to Kristiania, carrying a secret that would shatter the foundations of the kingdom. The carved figure was her seal, the map her legacy. And I, Anya, was the last of her line, the one chosen to restore what had been lost.

Tears blurred my vision. I had always felt like a stone in a palace of gold, but now I understood: I was not a stone to be shaped by others. I was a stone that held a memory, a key to a door that had been sealed for too long.

A sound echoed from the tunnel—footsteps, many of them. Judge Thorne had found my passage. I closed the book and tucked it into my coat, my heart racing. I could not go back up. I had to go forward.

The chamber had another passage, a narrow crack in the wall that I had missed. I squeezed through, the stone scraping my shoulders, and emerged into a moonlit courtyard. The palace loomed behind me, its towers dark against the stars. Ahead lay the forest, and beyond it, the road to Kristiania.

I ran. I did not look back. The pebble glowed in my hand, lighting my way. I had no plan, no certainty—only the knowledge that the truth was waiting, and I would not let the law bury it again.

The stones remember. And I was their voice.