"She's four, Kaelren."
"Four-year-olds have excellent reflexes."
I feel Elle's breath catch. A small, involuntary sound, half laugh, half something else.
The next memory. Faster now.
I am eight. Running through a garden that looks like the Verdance but smaller, wilder. The man is behind me, gaining. This is a game we play. He chases. I hide. The rules are: he can use his marks, I can use mine, and whoever reaches the Heartwood first wins.
I've never won. He's faster, stronger, and he cheats. He uses corruption to sense my footsteps through the ground, which I've told him is unfair at least a hundred times.
Today is different. Today I reach the Heartwood three full seconds before he does, and when he rounds the corner and sees me standing there with my hand on the bark, the look on his face is pure, undiluted pride.
"When did you learn to mask your footsteps?"
"Mom taught me."
He laughs. The sound is bright and startled and rare enough that I memorize it on the spot.
Another memory. I am twelve.
They're arguing. He wants me to train with the defense squads. She thinks I'm too young. They stand in the corridor outside my room, and they don't know I can hear them through the living wood. They never remember that the walls carry sound.
"She's not a soldier, Kaelren."
"She's not a child either. She needs to learn."
"She needs to be twelve."
"She needs to be alive. If the Cathedral breaks through, if we can't hold the line, she needs to know how to survive."
Silence.
"I know," the woman says, quieter now. "I know you're right. I just want her to have more time."
"I want that too." His voice drops to something raw and honest that he only ever uses with her. "More than anything. But I can't give her time I might not have."
Another.
I am sixteen. Sitting on the floor of the Heartwood chamber, crying, which I hate. My mother sits beside me, her arm around my shoulders, not saying anything. Just present. Just there.
"Why does it have to be me?" I ask. "Why can't someone else lead the defense? Why does it have to be the one person in this city who can't afford to die?"
"Because you're the one person in this city that the Verdance chose," she says. "And because you are stubborn, brilliant, and braver than you think. Those aren't things I'm saying to make you feel better. Those are facts."
"You sound like Dad."
"I know. It's deeply annoying."
I laugh through the tears, and she holds me tighter.
The memories stop.
I open my eyes.
Elle is crying, tears are running freely down her cheeks, and her hand is gripping mine so tightly that her knuckles are white. She's looking at me with an expression I've seen before, on the face in my memories.
Recognition. Not understanding yet. Recognition.
