The letter

For several seconds, I forget where I am. I stare at the canopy above my bed and wait for the panic to come. It doesn't. Not immediately, anyway.

Valaria. The word settles over me with the same uncomfortable weight it carried yesterday.

My legs ache beneath the blankets, though the sharpest pain has dulled into something manageable. I shift carefully and sit up.

Someone has left clothes folded neatly on the chair beside the bed, the dishes from the night gone.

I stare at them for a moment. They aren't mine.

The realization should feel insignificant. Instead, it leaves me strangely unsettled. Everything in this room seems to belong to someone else—the clothes, the furniture, the pale curtains stirring faintly with the morning breeze.

Even the sunlight feels unfamiliar.

I reach for the clothes and unfold them piece by piece. A simple dress, soft enough that I suspect it cost more than anything I've ever owned. Beneath it is a pair of trousers and a clean shirt, practical enough that I almost laugh.

I dress slowly, wincing whenever I bend my knees. By the time I finish, the room has grown brighter.

There's a knock at the door. I freeze.

A moment later, it opens.

Emris stands on the other side.

He looks exactly as he did yesterday, as though the morning has had no effect on him at all. Dark hair, dark clothes, that same unreadable expression that makes it difficult to tell whether he is concerned or simply observing.

Though, something almost resembling amusement touches his face. "The king wants to see you." He speaks finally, of course he does.

The words make the knot in my throat return.

I look back at the room, at the bed that had somehow begun to feel safe during the few hours I had spent in it.

"Now?" I gasp out, gripping the sleeve of the simple garment I'm wearing. "After you eat." He replies with certainty.

"I don't think I can eat."

"You can." There's something frustratingly set in stone about the way he says it. The palace is different in the morning.

Yesterday, I had seen it through exhaustion and disbelief. Today, there is enough light to notice everything I missed.

White stone stretches beneath my feet, as I follow Emris, polished until it reflects the tall windows lining the corridor. Frost flowers have been carved into the walls, their delicate shapes repeating around doorways and arches.

I follow because, apparently, that is what I have become good at. Following people who know more about my life than I do.

We reach a set of tall wooden doors guarded by two soldiers. They step aside without questioning us.

The doors open before either of us can knock.

Warmth rolls into the corridor, carrying the faint scent of something sweet and spiced. I hesitate at the threshold.

The room beyond is not the grand hall I expected. It is smaller, quieter. Morning light spills through tall windows and settles across a long table set with bread, fruit, and steaming cups. The king sits at the far end.

He looks up when I enter.

I become painfully aware of everything at once. The unfamiliar clothes against my skin. The ache in my legs. The soldiers standing behind me. Emris at my shoulder. The king gestures toward the chair across from him.

"Sit." I do.

Emris remains standing. I look at the food but make no attempt to touch it. The king clears his throat, and I take it as an invitation.

I reach for a piece of bread simply to give my hands something to do. I tear it apart without eating it.

The king waits. I become aware of the leather binder resting on the table.

The same one from yesterday. I take a bite of the loaf in my hand, the white bread melting in my mouth.

"I told you. I don't remember anything." I finally say, with a full mouth. I cringe at myself, I'm in the face of royalty and still I can't act anymore than I am. "Not consciously." He replies, unfazed by my lack of manners.

I frown.

He opens the binder.

The sound of leather shifting against the table seems far too loud in the quiet room. "There are things about your childhood that were hidden from you," he says. "Some intentionally. Some because you were too young to understand them."

I stare at him.

"Why would anyone hide my childhood from me?"

His eyes flick briefly toward Emris. I feel a little dumb watching them go silently back and forth. I swallow the bread, and slide an egg onto my personal plate.

Then dipping another chunk of the bread into my egg yolk, I speak again. "And you expect me to believe it because you have a piece of paper?"

The king smiles that familiar warm-heart broken smile that he did, and it plucks at something deep in the pit of the sky that is me.

I ignore the feeling and wait for him to speak, consuming chunks of yolky-loaf.

"I expect you to question everything." He continues, "Question me. Question Emris. Question every document, every story, every memory you have."

He leans back slightly.

"But don't dismiss something simply because it frightens you."

My jaw tightens.

"I don't know what is supposed to frighten me anymore."

"No," he says quietly. "I imagine you don't."

The words settle between us.

Outside the windows, somewhere beyond the palace walls, the city has begun to wake. I can hear distant voices and the faint rumble of carts moving along the streets. I had heard it fall asleep, and now, in this strange place I hear it wake.

Life continuing as though mine hasn't just been turned upside down.

I look at the binder again. I sigh.

Everything is heavy. The thought settles somewhere behind my ribs, too tired to become anything more than that.

I pick at the edge of the bread with my thumb.

The king doesn't rush to fill the silence. Maybe that's what makes sitting across from him so strange. In Illarion, silence usually meant someone was waiting for you to explain yourself, confess something, or apologize.

Here, it seems to mean he is willing to wait. "And you're the one who gets to decide what the truth is?" I finally say. This conversation is proving very difficult.

"No." The answer comes simple to him, but it only makes me more frustrated. "I can only show you what I know."

I sit back in my chair, copying his posture.

The egg on my plate has gone mostly untouched and is growing cold. I don't feel hungry anymore, but I keep the rest of the bread in my hand anyway.

I look toward Emris.

He has barely moved since we entered. He stands near the doors with his arms folded, watching the conversation with the same maddening calm he seems to carry everywhere. He turns his eyes to me, a glimmer in them that once again makes him look slightly human.

Something primal in me jumps in fright.

The king speaks, causing me to break eye contact with the other man. "You deserve answers, even if you don't feel like it— you're my subject." The word subject curls in my soul like smoke from a fire.

I glare at the king, "What if I don't want the answers?" I ask. The king shrugs and stands, "Then I suppose you can return home, but you'll return as a traitor."

I swallow his verdict, he's right. I can't go home. The letter is still open, I still technically abandoned a mission. I'm still technically committing treason.

Only, my commander— nor my Illarion king, will see the technicality of it.

"What do you know?" I ask the king.

"I know I can take you to the farm you were born at— it's been preserved. As a cold case."

I crush the bread in my hand. Emris speaks up, "Aspen—" He addresses the king by name and the king's head snaps toward the other with fury. Yet the king waits. "I don't think she's ready for that." Emris finishes.

The king stands with calmness, but he's breathing heavy. "Did I ask you to question me?" He asks, and the other shakes his head and falls silence once more.

The silence that follows is different from the one before.

It has teeth.

Emris lowers his eyes, though I catch the faint tightening of his jaw. The king remains standing at the end of the table, one hand resting against the back of his chair.

For a moment, neither of them moves.

I look between them.

There is history here.

Not the kind written in a binder or preserved on a piece of paper. The kind that lives in the pauses between words and the way one person can make another fall silent without raising his voice.

I should probably be intimidated.

He sits again, though the tension doesn't leave his shoulders.

"The farm was abandoned years ago. After you disappeared, your family was never seen alive again."

"My family?"

The word feels foreign coming from my own mouth. He nods. Everyone has parents.

But hearing it spoken aloud makes the room feel strangely distant. "Your father's name was Caelan. Your mother's was Elira."

I repeat them silently. Neither means anything to me. And somehow, that hurts.

"Were they good people?" The question slips out before I can stop it. He nods, I look down at the table. The bread in my hand has been reduced to crumbs. My heart gives a strange, heavy beat.

He pulls out a folded piece of parchment, older than the others.

He places it on the table but doesn't push it toward me. I can see long writing. "This was found in the farmhouse." It's a letter, I must look as anxious as I feel because he says his next words rushed. "You don't have to read it now."

Emris exhales quietly, almost too quietly to hear.

The king's fingers remain on the parchment for a moment longer than necessary, as though he is weighing whether to let it go.

My chest tightens.

I don't reach for it.

I can't.

The seal is broken, but the paper has been refolded with unusual care. One corner bears a faint dark stain, nearly hidden beneath the crease.

Things keep getting worse. I wish I could go back to the bed upstairs. Back to the unfamiliar room.

Back to not knowing.

Yesterday, I thought the worst thing that could happen was discovering I belonged to the enemy. I was wrong.

The worst thing is discovering that I might have belonged somewhere once—

and that someone took it from me.

That things could've been different, I didn't have to be an orphan. I belonged to two people, Elira and Caelan.

They could've loved me, someone could've loved me. Maybe they did.

And it was taken, forced from me.