The Archivist retrievesa small orb from the folds of his robes, its surface shimmering like frozen Starlight.
“This,” he says, reverent, “took years to find—in the vaults beneath Queen Maireth’s kingdom. A Memory Orb. A preserved memory of the Dawnmere line.”
The name cuts through me like a blade.
Dawnmere.
My blood. My family. The lost monarchy.The truth.
Within the orb, light coils and shifts—a trapped aurora, restless and waiting.
“Think of them as bottled rivers. A current that once flowed free, now caught, contained. Still alive, still moving. Just waiting for release,” Elandor says wistfully.
He holds the orb in his palm, offering it to me. But I don’t move. I freeze. Because I know I’m on the precipice of…something.
“You see, some things cannot be destroyed, no matter how kings may try. They can only be… hidden. This one, Elyssara, I’ve guarded. Kept it safe, no matter how many have tried to come for it,” Elandor says, encouraging me to take it.
I’m with you.Kael’s voice, solid and unwavering, pushes down the tether, emboldening me.You will not face this alone, my love.
And before I can think, I reach for it.
The smooth crystal feels warm in my hand, the Starlight and silver trapped inside dance—bending into each other, around each other like lovers between sheets.
Elandor gestures to place the orb inside the prism, and my hand moves before I can stop myself, to place the orb in the very center of it.
The prism activates.
A flare of light bursts outward in response, before settling into a soft glow that hovers just above the orb.
Light unfolds in the air like water poured upward, forming suspended shapes and sounds like a projected illusion.
The memory from the orb flashes to life in a display that I instantly recognize—the streets of Virellin.
Beautiful, sacred, and merciless—the past never dies; it only waits to be witnessed.
Kael’s palm wraps around my thigh, squeezing me. Letting me know he’s here.With me.And the pressure grounds me the way an anchor moors a ship.
Rain falls in silver sheets. Lanterns gutter in the wind. The smell of smoke and rot fills my lungs, even though I know I’m not really there. I know because the child in the alley—mud-streaked, trembling—is me.
She’s so small. So impossibly small.
And for the first time, I grieve her—this little girl forced to become something feral just to endure the years that followed.
Guards drag a woman through the street ahead, her threadbare trousers torn and smeared with blood, her chestnut hair clinging to her face.My mother.Lesara Dawnmere. Her wrists are bound in iron, her bare feet slip on the cobbles, butshe doesn’t stop fighting. Not even as one of them strikes her across the mouth, sending her reeling.
“Run, Little Star!” she screams, her voice ragged and raw. “Run!”
The sound of it guts me.
I remember the panic—the way my chest burned, the way I wanted to run toherinstead.
“No!” I cry, voice broken and raw.
The guards jeer, dragging her forward, before a heavy crack to her head with the hilt of a sword sends her sprawling to the cobbled streets. Unmoving. Lifeless. Blood spilling from her head.
My father lies broken in the mud behind them. His sword has fallen from his hand. The blade half-buried in filth.
I can’t breathe.
