“Aelira?” He scanned the room for a sign of threat, scanned me. His hands trembled as he reached for me, his fingers ran through my hair. “Are you hurt?”
The squall sharpened inside of me. His brilliant silver eyes fixated on me. “I…” My voice caught between sobs. How could I explain that I was talking to a magical book?
“Are you okay?”
I nodded as I lifted the covers over my chest, pointing to my robe near my dressing station.
He placed the robe around my shoulders. “I can go. I just wanted to make sure you were safe.”
“I know who my father is—my real father.” With my words he sat beside me, clutching my hand in his.
“How?”
“King Ardyn hid this book and my necklace in a tower in the palace. I stole them.” I held out the leather book, the cord that tied it shut dangling down.
“Youstolethem?” He quickly dropped the amused smirk from his face.
“He kept her things from me.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the dream that led me there. “My true father gave them to my mother to give to me. He’s been communicating with me through it. It’s how I knew to cross the wall.”
Maybe King Ardyn knew what they were, or maybe he was hoping I would never find a single trace of the truth that may remain.
“He enchanted it somehow to speak to you…but he hasn’t come to see you…” His eyes darted from the book to me.
“I didn’t know I was speaking tohimthrough it until now. I thought it was just magic.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No. Only his name, Lord Zayric. He says he’s from the High Court. Had you ever met him?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t think I have,” he said. “At least not that I remember.”
King Ardyn rejected me.
Lord Zayric wouldn’t tell me where he was.
My fingernails traced the inside of my palms, pain settling as they scraped flesh. I desperately wanted to know who I was, where I came from. “Why wouldn’t hetell me where he is? What if he doesn’t want to see me at all?”
“He enchanted a book to guide you. Your father has been with you this entire time. If he won’t say where he is there must be a reason.”
“He said I can’t go to where he is.” I tucked the book beneath the covers.
“It’s clear he wants to protect you. I spent most of my life at the High Court—I don’t want you to be there either.”
“It’s that brutal?” I asked.
“The place itself is not…no, but my parents can be.”
Lioran’s eyes glimmered with a pain I knew too well.
He hummed something familiar as I wept—the same song I hummed to him when we tried to get him home to the Heart.
“That song…” The sound stilled my body. “You remembered it?”
“I’ve known it my whole life. It’s a fae tune called theLight of Night—the song of the stars.”
“My mother used to hum it to me.”
Every detail had been carefully threaded. Their beliefs—their stories—were a part of my life for as long as I remembered. She planned it all, so I would know where I came from.
