The soup.

Valaria is still awake. I along with it.

Lights burn in scattered windows, small and warm against the darkness. Beyond them, the palace walls descend toward the streets, and farther still, the horizon disappears into the night.

Beyond that horizon is Illarion, what I thought was my home.

Again, I lie beneath unfamiliar blankets, staring at a ceiling I don't recognize, listening to a palace settle around me. Somewhere beyond the walls, footsteps pass at measured intervals. Guards changing shifts. Doors opening and closing. Voices lowered into whispers.

At least the noise keeps the pain at bay. Quiet leaves too much room for thinking. I turn onto my side and close my eyes. The king's voice comes back immediately.

'You were born here.'

I open them again. No. I could be halfway back to Illarion before anyone realized I was gone.

Except I don't know where I am.

And even if I did, I don't know what I'd be returning to. I was raised to believe Valria was the enemy. That the kingdom beyond the border was responsible for everything we'd lost. Now, I'm lying in a beautiful, bountiful, nation.

The streets should be filled with starving children. The buildings should be crumbling. The fields should be gray and empty, just like the ones I remember from home. There should be some mark of the cruelty I was taught to expect. I grapple with it all.

What was I supposed to think when I crossed that border?

That the enemy would look human?

That their children would run through the streets with the same dirt on their knees as the children in Illarion?

I press my palm against my forehead, trying to fight the familiar pressure of a migraine.

Maybe that is what frightens me most, not that the king might be telling the truth. Because if I was born here, then everything I thought I knew about myself has to make room for something else.

And I don't know where that leaves me.

I was an Illarion soldier before I ever knew what the word meant. I wore their colors. Learned their history. Learned who I was supposed to hate.

I would have died for them.

A knock echoes from the hall, and I acknowledge it quickly. A maid— I think, opens the door slowly. Half her body peaks in.

"Forgive me, I know you must be exhausted, but the king charged me with making sure you had supper." She says, pushing the door the rest of the way open after announcing herself.

The smell hits me before my sight can catch up. Soup.

Warm, chestnut soup is what she rolls in. I fight the urge to trample toward her and down the whole pot on the cart she's pushing. "Thank you." I respond before she's even reached my bed side, and I think I responded too quickly because she starts giggling as she makes a hearty bowl.

"Of course my lady, all friends of the king are friends of mine."

I feel out of place again, I'm not a friend.

Despite that, she puts a tray over my lap with bread, soup, and cutlery. Then she tucks the blanket around my sore legs and backs away, admiring her work.

The soup is still steaming, thin curls of heat rising from the surface. Beside it sits a piece of bread, still warm enough that I can feel it through the cloth beneath it.

It is more food than I have eaten in one sitting in months.

"I'm not a lady," I say.

The maid pauses.

She looks at me, then at the tray, as though she isn't sure which part of my statement she is supposed to answer.

"You are now." She smiles a warm smile, then straightens the edges of my blanket once more. "I'll let you eat, and I'll be back to collect your dishes and tray in a few moments."

I look down at the soup again.

"Thank you," I say, quieter this time.

She nods.

"You're welcome." She reaches the door before I speak again.

"Wait."

She turns. I hesitate.

There are a dozen questions I could ask her. Where am I supposed to go tomorrow? What happens when the king leaves? Why does everyone here seem to know something about me that I don't?

Instead, I ask the smallest one. "Do you know who I am?"

Her expression doesn't change, she's still smiling warmly, touching the door handle like she has other duties that are yelling down the hall, guilt twinges in my chest.

"I know what I was told."

I don't press further.

"You are to be treated with kindness here." She says, opening the door and slipping back into the hallway. The door closes behind her.

My stomach growls loudly enough to embarrass me despite being alone.

Apparently, whatever else I may have forgotten about myself, my body has no interest in waiting for answers.

I pick up the spoon.

The first mouthful nearly makes me cry.

I eat slowly at first, trying to convince myself I don't need to rush. By the third spoonful, that restraint disappears. Hunger takes over, and soon I'm tearing pieces from the bread between bites, barely noticing the ache in my legs anymore.

For a few minutes, there is nothing else. When the bowl is nearly empty, I stop.

My hand rests against the side of the dining tray.

Something about the meal unsettles me, like everything else. Maybe because I cannot remember the last time someone brought me food simply because they thought I should eat.

Not because I had earned it.

Not because I was a soldier who needed enough strength to return to the field. Just because someone cared whether I was hungry.

There is still a smear of soup along the bottom, and I consider scraping it clean before deciding that would be undignified.

Then I remember I have spent most of my life eating whatever was put in front of me.

Dignity has never been particularly useful when you're hungry.

I set the spoon down and lean back against the pillows.

The room feels warmer now.

Or perhaps I am simply not cold anymore.

I glance toward the window again. The city beyond it hasn't changed. Lights still flicker behind distant windows, and somewhere below, a carriage rolls over the stone streets before fading into the night.

I wonder how many people are awake down there.

How many know the war is still happening,

How many have never seen the battlefield at all.

In Illarion, war was everywhere.

It lived in the empty houses and the missing names. It lived in the faces of soldiers returning through the gates and in the mothers who stopped asking whether their sons were coming home.

It sank to the foundations of our society.

"Fight for Illarion, live by Illarion, die for Illarion." Was everywhere, senseless sayings for senseless violence.

Painted across barracks walls. Carved into the stone above military gates. Spoken by commanders before sending us beyond the border. Sometimes I heard it in my own head without realizing I was repeating it.

I stare at the empty bowl in my lap, turning the spoon between my fingers.

If Valaria is not what I was taught, then what else isn't?

The thought settles somewhere deep in my chest.

I don't want to question everything.

Questioning meant uncertainty, and uncertainty was dangerous. A soldier survived by knowing which direction to face and who stood on the other side.

For most of my life, I simply accepted that there was nothing to remember. My parents were dead. I was an orphan. That was the beginning and the end of the story.

I worry now that I'm going to have to discover what being an orphan really means, to unload the past brick by brick and be a martyr.

Tomorrow, I can decide what to do with the answers.

For tonight, I am tired.

I let my head sink into the pillow.

The palace continues moving around me.

Footsteps pass beyond the door.

A guard murmurs something to another.

Somewhere farther down the corridor, a door closes softly. It's strange how ordinary everything sounds. A kingdom I was taught to hate is beginning to sleep around me.

And for the first time in my life, I am sleeping inside it. I don't know what that makes me.

Enemy.

Stranger.

Valarian.

Illarion.

Or something caught between the two. I pull the blankets closer, tomorrow can decide.

Tonight, I just need to sleep.