The first thing I learned about travel was that I didn’t care for it.

  My noble posterior was used to plush chairs and the softest of beds. It did not like bumpy rides on a wooden plank with a bit of fabric stretched over it. Apparently, cushioning enchantments were not a priority for people doing business over long distances. Somehow.

  And of course I’d never learned household spells, which meant I couldn’t cast a cushioning charm myself.

  It wasn’t just physical discomfort that made the journey harrowing. In spite of my quick escape, I spent the first six days terrified that I’d wake up to grasping hands, ready to drag me back to my former life kicking and screaming.

  Yet on that sixth day, when I slipped out of the wagon just as the caravan was leaving some random village, I started to relax. With how reclusive I’d been, it would take the caravan a while to realize I was gone. Hopefully, by the time they did, they’d have passed several more settlements. That would muddy my trail even further.

  Hiding in an alley, I swapped out my black cloak for a brown one and changed into some clothes of lesser quality. Then I found an inn and paid for a room, along with some information.

  The food was mediocre and the room rather smelly, but the proprietor was more than happy to chat about the latest news in exchange for a bit of coin. Of particular note were the newly established initiatives to expand the reach of civilization and push back the borders of the frontier. Best of all, I learned that Snowdrop, one of the younger and much more ‘pleasant’ kingdoms around, was doing a fresh frontier settlement drive of its own.

  The fae kingdoms always wanted to claim more land from the monster-infested wilds. It was just a dangerous business. The ‘initiatives’ essentially amounted to an official blessing from the various rulers for people to go forth and risk their lives, accompanied by a pittance of resources.

  These initiatives were fairly common, but successful settlements were rare. That was why I couldn’t just look at a map to find a decent destination for myself. New settlements were only added to the maps after a solid ten years of continuous existence, and the vast majority of them petered out long before then. Mostly because the new arrivals disturbed one of the particularly powerful, feral locals and got wiped out in turn.

  As I said: a dangerous business. Yet if there was one place where even a Noble Fae could disappear into anonymity, it was the frontier.

  I went to sleep that night planning a route I could take to a promising frontier town, wondering all the while how I could possibly identify such a place among the dozens of settlements that would disappear as quickly as they sprang up.

  It was a good thing I'd never expected my life after escaping from home to be easy.

  —

  The kingdom of Snowdrop was young. It had been founded on resistance, freedom, and a tiny bit of spite. After all, its original batch of settlers came from the Winter Court.

  Winter had a nasty habit of ‘acquiring’ servants by force. And once you were ‘theirs,’ that was it. Generation after generation would be born into servitude, bound entirely to the will of their fae masters.

  That’s probably why they’d had no fewer than six revolutions in the last five hundred years.

  Most of those revolutions ended the same way: tragic losses for those who dared defy the Winter Court. Snowdrop, though, was different. Its people didn’t try to storm the Winter Court capital or slaughter all the Noble Fae. Instead, they focused on getting out and earning what they longed for.

  Freedom.

  In the two hundred years or so since, the Snowdrop kingdom had proven itself a bastion of acceptance, progress, and resilience. The latter was most impressive by far, considering that the Winter Court had tried to organize a Wild Hunt on three separate occasions as retaliation for the gall of running away. But with the aid of the kingdoms between them and Winter, Snowdrop had managed to keep its independence. By now, it was even thriving.

  Its people were pressed for space, of course. Every new kingdom had to eke out an existence at the fringe of civilization before it could spread. But as the current ‘frontier settlement drive’ proved, Snowdrop's citizens were doing well for themselves.

  Well enough that stories of success had already begun to circulate.

  Another week into my journey, I finally deemed it safe to stop being so antisocial. Once I switched carriages yet again to continue heading to Snowdrop, I ditched my hood, put on my most confident smile, and actually conversed with the other travelers packed into the carriage with me. That’s how I learned about the four new frontier settlements that seemed poised to succeed within Snowdrop’s wilderness.

  One of them caught my attention immediately.

  Swiftband was located right at the intersection of two massive rivers that came down from the large, icy mountains dominated by the Winter Court. The constant ice melt fueled the rivers into swift, frothing monstrosities, even long after they’d meandered away from their sources. The river they merged into was reportedly a somewhat calmer beast, much more convenient for both fishing and sailing.

  As such, the nascent town was both in a rather defensible position (so long as they didn’t have a population of monsters lurking in the river) and had a decent source of food to tide them over during the initial growing pains of a young settlement.

  I would have to plan my approach carefully. Frontier settlements weren’t open to just anyone. They were too far away to depend on supplies from their sponsoring kingdom, so they needed to provide for themselves. Every individual had to contribute something useful to balance their personal drain on the community resources.

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  So, I would contribute something. I would state my case. I would find a way to be useful.

  One point that might work against me was my ancestry. But with my poison rendering my hair black and my eyes a murky yellow, no one could identify me as a Noble Fae. Considering that the common fae were all descendants of purebloods mixed with the ‘lesser species’, my disguise might even endear me to them.

  To maintain the charade, I couldn’t pull on the racial talents my lineage afforded me, but I could live with that. My training and family had already poisoned that particular well. (Literally.)

  I mulled this over one night as I tried to rest in my tent. The small space was kept at a cozy temperature by an enchanted warming rock, but the aches of constant travel wouldn’t let me get comfortable.

  Eventually, I slipped out and ventured into the forest the caravan was camping next to.

  I found my first ingredient quickly. The nettle was a bit wilted and not in great condition overall, but that just made me smile. Gently, I laid a finger on one of its leaves and let my mana drip out in carefully measured amounts.

  The plant perked up instantly. Traces of green flashed through the darkening leaves, and the whole thing shot up several centimeters in height. I also felt its poisonous properties strengthen, moving quickly from ‘merely unpleasant’ to ‘dangerous without treatment.’

  Sighing, I cut off the flow of mana and knelt to extract a portion of the leaves. Mana coated my hand to prevent any poison from harming me. Since the plant had grown from my own mana, I was safe anyway, but it was just a good habit to avoid handling plants barehanded.

  From there, I widened my search. I would have loved some lavender, but failed to spot any. This wasn’t really a surprise. Far from the Spring and Summer Courts, the climate was noticeably harsher and colder.

  In this part of the continent, the year was divided between Autumn and Winter. This wasn’t as harmful as it could have been. Some small flows of magic from the Autumn Court twisted their way through the land, so the corresponding season was always far richer and more bountiful than it had any right to be. Winter also choked the life out of plants quickly and effectively, enriching the land further with every cycle.

  If I wasn’t a Belladonna, I could have used the fertile soil to nurture any number of useful plants, like fruit trees or berry bushes. But thanks to my family and training, poison was permanently bonded to my mana. That meant I was limited to the hardier plants with vicious defense mechanisms.

  In other words, the toxic ones.

  Lost as I was in my thoughts, I almost walked right past a patch of feverfew. I spotted it at the last moment, thankfully, which meant I got to continue with another smile and a bit of a spring in my step.

  Not too much of a spring, however. My aching noble posterior saw to that.

  A couple more plants later, and I had everything I needed to start working. Still, once I was back in my tent, it was with a bit of reluctance that I reached into my storage bag for the tools required to do some quick and dirty alchemy on the road.

  A mortar and pestle, a small cauldron, a roll of knives and other such implements, and a small enchanted jar of everflame. The flame fed exclusively on mana. And while maintaining it long-term out on the frontier was going to be a pain if I couldn’t get mana crystals consistently, there were few better tools for an alchemist. I could make it flare or die down simply by manipulating its feed of mana.

  It didn’t take long to reduce the nettle into a paste, or to boil feverfew carefully in a mixture of herbs that strengthened its properties. Despite all the unpleasant feelings and memories associated with these familiar actions, I caught myself almost smiling again as I worked.

  Really, why did everyone see alchemy as something special and arcane? It was, to be sure, harder at the higher levels of mastery. But the very beginnings of the art?

  You could easily mistake it for cooking.

  Boil this, grind down that, mash this into paste, learn how to properly mix the result (after carefully rendering the stuff you’d boiled, of course), and you now had a decently effective cream.

  My concoction had one simple goal: soften the effects of sitting on a cold, hard, jostling seat for days on end. Let me tell you, the cream’s sweet relief was worth every bit of irrational reluctance I had to fight through about using alchemy.

  Besides, as odd as it was for me, it was genuinely nice to use the art for something that wasn’t making poison.

  The activity had also dredged up a couple decidedly pleasant memories. I’d almost forgotten all about them, but there they were: my mother, struggling not to laugh after I fell into a patch of unfriendly plants in my ‘baby’s first herb garden.’ The hours she’d spent with me afterwards, teaching me how to make salves to treat the various effects of mild poison or other irritants I was likely to encounter while playing.

  It was nice, remembering her like that. Tender, attentive, loving… The older I got and the busier my parents grew, the rarer such moments had become.

  I blinked back the irritation my eyes were, apparently, suffering from the onset of chilly air outside (no matter that I’d been in my tent for the last half-hour or so). Then I began filling more small jars with the cream I’d made, carefully setting aside the one I’d used first.

  After washing my hands, obviously. I wasn’t some uncultured barbarian!

  Incidentally, the jars of the wonderful, relief-offering cream were a huge hit the next day. I could fight through a few complicated feelings about alchemy for the chance to supplement my funds with some more local coinage.

  —

  It took me another eighteen days to reach my destination. Fourteen days of riding, and another four of trudging along after the last carriage I managed to hire came to a stop at the end of a well-used path. The driver pointed down a faint road that was only just starting to get beaten through the dirt and informed me I’d have to walk the rest of the way.

  I was indignant at first. But then I remembered that when I’d convinced him to drive so far out of his regular route, for me alone at that, he never did promise to get me the whole way there. Nevertheless, it was with some grumbling that I departed his torture rack of a seat and started the final stretch of my journey on foot.

  I didn’t sleep much those last four days.

  I felt comfortable being outside, despite my upbringing in the center of the Autumn Court. Nature was just in my blood. Typically, I would have relished it.

  The trouble was, this wasn’t the tamed, tidy nature you’d find between cities or within the kingdoms. We had passed that point a few days ago. All around me, the forest felt alive and feral. I kept looking around cautiously, taking careful steps to avoid rousing the anger of some local creepy-crawly.

  I couldn’t really fault my hired driver for ditching me.

  Yet my excitement and determination weren’t quenched. After all, what influence did my family have out here in the wilderness, where anything from wendigos to slumbering gods of old might be found? None.

  It was with this cheerful thought keeping me warm that I first saw the town.

  One second, I was absently wandering through the brush, following something that might have been the beginnings of a local trail. The next, I looked up, and my eyes fell on a collection of houses puffing warm air into the sky. They were separated from me by only a somewhat shoddy bridge.

  My heart practically leapt out of my chest, and a smile stretched across my lips.

  I was ready. I would approach Swiftband, earn their acceptance, and finally start the kind of life I’d yearned for. I would settle for nothing less.

  “Whatcha doing?”

  The chipper voice that suddenly popped up by my side was surprising, yes. But no matter what its owner might say, I did not, in fact, ‘yelp like a startled fox’!