The things that remain.

The king studies me for a long moment. Then he says, "Then we find out."

There is no grand promise behind the words. No certainty that we'll succeed. Somehow, that makes them worse. I've spent my entire life believing there were answers.

Not good answers, necessarily. Not answers I liked. But answers.

I was an orphan because my parents were dead. I was an Illarion because that was where I had been raised. I was a soldier because the kingdom needed it.

Clouds cover the sun just enough beyond the city, leaving the glass dark enough that I can see my own reflection. The girl staring back at me looks exactly the same. Same uniform. With the same auburn hair. The same face. And yet I don't recognize her. "Why do you care?" I ask.

Time has taught me that nobody cares without a reason, a selfish reason. Silence. Emris looks at the king.

The king doesn't look back. He keeps his eyes on me. "I don't know if I care about you." The honesty catches me off guard.

"But I care about what happened to you."

"Because if someone is taking children for a purpose neither kingdom understands, this stopped being a matter of war a long time ago."

A cold feeling settles in my chest, the same cold frost that ravages the nation. I feel like a doe before the slaughter, bracing for the arrow after viewing the hunter.

In this instance I know my world will never be whole again, never make sense. Emris walks toward the desk.

He reaches beneath it and pulls out a narrow wooden box. Older than the journal. He sets it on the desk between us. I stare at it.

"What is that?"

"Something we found with the journal." My fingers curl around the worn gold clasp that closes it.

I hook my finger and open it slowly, like it may explode under the weight of reality. Inside, is a gold medallion— a symbol.

I recognize it, though I don't know from where. All the mystery is becoming increasingly frustrating. I recognize it immediately.

Not from Valaria.

Not from Illarion.

From somewhere else. Somewhere I can't remember. My fingers go cold.

"I've seen that before."

Neither of them moves. Emris looks at me.

"Where?"

I stare at the symbol. My mind reaches for the memory, but something seems to stand between us.

A wall.

A locked door.

And behind it, something breathing.

Something is whispering in a growling voice, shadows growing from under the door. I feel something rotting in my ribs. Something festering.

It's painful. It burns.

I force the box closed, I've had all I can handle. "What was that?" Emris says, grabbing the box from my shaking palms.

Sweat beads down my face, I don't answer. I don't know what to answer with. Emris doesn't ask again. That scares me more than if he had.

He stands in front of me with the box clutched in one hand, his eyes fixed on my face as though he's waiting for something else to happen.

I wipe the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand.

"I'm fine."

The lie comes automatically.

Emris doesn't believe me.

Neither does the king.

"You were not fine a moment ago."

My voice is sharper than I intend. "I'm fine now."

Emris's jaw tightens, but he doesn't argue. He sets the box back onto the desk and closes the lid.

The small click of the clasp sounds impossibly loud. "Don't open that again." I take a slow breath, my hands are still shaking.

I tuck them beneath my arms so neither of them can see. "We won't," Emris says. There is something different in his voice. Not pity.

Something closer to concern. I don't want it.

I don't want anyone looking at me like I'm something fragile.

I've survived without it.

"I need air."

I turn toward the door, neither stop me.

My legs feel strangely distant beneath me, like they belong to someone else. The unbearable feeling that something had been waiting for me.

I walk into the hallway alone, unsure where to head.

The palace is quieter now, but I can still hear footsteps somewhere beyond the walls. Guards changing posts. Servants carrying dishes. Doors opening and closing. My fingers still remember the cold sensation that had spread through them.

The locked door. The whisper. Whatever had been behind it. I don't want to touch that medallion again.

Not until I understand why some part of me already knows it. I sit in an empty hall, completely lost in the vast castle, and the dark ocean of information I've been given.

Except, I don't feel lost. I feel hunted. That's worse. I pull my knees toward my chest, resting my arms across them as I sit against the wall. The stone is cold through my dirty, muddy shirt.

I have no idea how long I sit there.

Eventually, my thoughts wander somewhere I don't want them to go.

Home.

Not my kingdom.

Not the barracks.

The orphanage.

I used to hate the word.

It made me feel different from everyone else. Like it was something I carried on my back for people to see.

But when I think about it now, I don't remember the things that made it an orphanage.

I remember the kitchen.

The old woman who ran it always complained that there were too many mouths to feed, then gave us seconds anyway. She'd pretend not to notice when someone stole a piece of bread from the counter.

I remember winter mornings when the windows frosted over so completely that we couldn't see outside, little white veins spreading. We would breathe against the glass and draw shapes with our fingers. Sometimes we'd make little faces with the fog, I remember the other children.

One boy used to hide underneath the dining table whenever he was upset. He'd stay there until someone crawled beneath it with him.

There were nights when we would sneak out of our beds and sit together beneath the blankets, whispering stories long after we were supposed to be asleep.

We made up lives for ourselves. One would become a queen. Another would become a merchant. Someone always wanted to be a soldier.

I never wanted to be one. I wanted a horse.

I wanted a little house somewhere far away from the war, with enough land for a garden and enough food that nobody had to count every piece of bread before giving it away. For a moment, I can almost hear them again.

The laughter. The whispering. The creak of the old floorboards. The woman— Myranda— who raised us, shouting from the hallway that if we didn't go to sleep, we'd all be scrubbing the kitchen in the morning.

I smile.

It's small. Almost nothing, but it's something real.

I open my eyes. The palace hallway is empty. It feels less like a home— or even a palace, and more like a maze built to remind me that I don't belong here.

I stare at my hands. Maybe the worst part isn't discovering that I was stolen. Maybe it's wondering how much of the girl I remember being, was ever mine to begin with.

Those things happened, they have to have.

No one can take memories away simply by writing something different on a piece of paper.

At least, I hope they can't.

A sound pulls me from my thoughts.

I straighten immediately and Emris appears at the end of the corridor. He stops when he sees me sitting on the floor. "I got lost," I whisper, I feel small.

A faint smile touches his face.

There it is. Something normal. Something familiar, I look away before he can see how much I needed it. Something in my chest aches, the something rotten from before.

He walks closer, his footsteps quiet against the stone. When he reaches me, he doesn't offer his hand. He simply lowers himself against the wall a few feet away, leaving enough space between us that I don't feel crowded.

For a while, neither of us speaks.

The silence is different here.

Not the suffocating silence from the king's study, where every pause seemed to hide another terrible truth. This silence is almost gentle.

"I wanted a horse," I say. He looks at me, and waits for me to keep talking. I don't know why— among many other things, he's leaving space for me.

"When I was little," A smile threatens at the corner of my mouth. "Apparently, orphanages aren't particularly generous with horses."

He lets out a quiet breath that might almost be a laugh. "I imagine not."

I laugh, a small bitter sound. "I had a whole plan."

"I'd only seen soldiers with horses, so I planned to steal one. Then, I was going to leave! I'd have a little house. Nothing impressive. Just enough room for a kitchen and a bedroom. I'd grow vegetables in the garden."

A few hours ago, I was standing in front of the king with my entire life laid out like evidence on his desk.

Now I'm sitting on the floor telling Emris about a dream I had when I was a child. For a moment, I almost forget.

Then I remember.

My smile fades.

"I don't think I ever told anyone that."

Emris studies me.

"Told them what?"

"What I wanted."

His expression becomes thoughtful.

"Why not?"

I shrug, the words coming easily now. "People don't really ask children like me what they want."

The sentence leaves a bitter taste behind.

Somewhere far away, a bell sounds through the palace, deep and resonant, its echo rolling through the halls like distant thunder. "I think I'm afraid." I confess, and it feels heavier out loud.

Emris doesn't tease me.

"That's reasonable."

I almost laugh.

"That's a terrible thing to say to someone."

"Would you rather I lie?"

"No."

"Then it's reasonable." He settles. All of the day waits somewhere inside me like a storm beyond the horizon. But beneath it is something smaller.

Something warmer.

A kitchen.

A piece of stolen bread.

Children whispering beneath blankets.

I don't know who I am, but those memories are still mine. And today, in the face of it all, that has to be enough.