“He is.”
The room held its breath.
Aurelia’s voice sharpened. “And what is his name?”
Colette faltered. She turned to a small box behind the counter, lifted the lid, and drew out a tiny, worn toy horse, wood polished smooth from age.
“I kept this,” she murmured. “He used to chew the ear when he was teething.” She looked up, eyes wet. “His name is Hayat.”
The name cut through the room.
Aurelia staggered back, whispering it once, then again, as if saying it could make it untrue.
I felt the shape of it settle in my chest. Hayat—her shadow since childhood, her fiercest defender. Loyal to her in every way that mattered. And yet… if the truth of his blood was ever known, that loyalty wouldn’t matter. Not to Kaelith. He’d see him as a problem to get rid of and nothing else.
“Impossible,” Aurelia said, sharper now, shaking her head. “He would have told me. He—he would have said something.”
Colette’s expression softened, grief etched into every line. “He couldn’t. He doesn’t know.”
Aurelia’s breath hitched. “He doesn’t—what?”
Colette’s hands gripped the toy horse tighter. “He was an infant when I fled,” Colette said. “I left him at the orphanage before dawn, paid the matron a year’s wages to take him in under a new name—the one you know him by now. I thought the lie would keep him safe.”
Aurelia’s shoulders trembled; she pressed her palm to the counter as though it could hold her upright.
“He needs to know,” she said, voice like glass about to crack.
I caught her arm. “No. Not yet.”
She turned on me, eyes flashing, the shadows in her veins stirring.
“If Kaelith learns there is another son of Talon,” I said, “you don’t know what he’d do to him.”
Aurelia’s fury faltered, though the grief stayed sharp in her eyes. Colette stood silent, hands clasped in front of her, waiting. The tension in the room tightened like pulled thread. I looked at the girl beside me—torn between rage and resolve, her chest still rising too fast—and thought of the fire in her palm, the shadows that bent when she willed them. Power like that, and still sheshook. Gods help anyone once she realized just how powerful she was.
“Fine,” she said at last, the word bitten off. She turned to Colette, voice breaking at the edges. “How could you never tell me? That you’d lived in Nyxarra—that you knew all of this? Why?”
Colette exhaled slowly, shoulders lowering as though unburdening something that had weighed too long. “Because I thought I was protecting you,” she said. “Protecting everyone.” She moved to the window, looking out at the narrow street where mist curled against the shutters.
“The fewer who knew, the safer we all were. To the nobles of Synnex, I was a widow—my husband lost on the trade routes. A woman seeking refuge, offering her skill with herbs. They needed an apothecary. I gave them one.”
She turned back to us, the faintest shake in her hands. “I told myself the lie was mercy. That if no one knew, no one would hunt him.”
The toy horse slipped from her fingers and hit the counter with a soft wooden tap. Silence swallowed the room.
Aurelia reached forward, caught Colette’s hand, and held it there.
56
Aurelia
My world was unravelingone truth at a time, and for the briefest moment, I wished I was ignorant. That I could just float through life blind to the weight of other people’s choices.
“Come,” Colette said gently. “Let’s go to the back. We can sit and chat more.”
She flipped the sign on the door toClosed, turned the key, and led us past shelves of jars into the kitchen. Copper pots hung from hooks, herbs drying from the rafters, steam curling up from a kettle. A hearth glowed with low firelight.
We sat. She brewed tea.