Elandor’s babbling about records and Memory Orbs, Seren’s got tears streaking her face, but all I can hear is the pounding in my skull.
Because if Lesara lived… that means she left my fucking Starbound to face this world alone.
“Explain,” I grit out between bared teeth, and I feel the muscles in my jaw flicking with tension.
Lesara blinks at me, taken aback by my forceful tone.
But I won’t blunt my edges.
Because all I can see is Elyssara, five years old, mud-streaked and starving, left to find home in the shadows instead of her mother’s arms.
And this woman—thismother—looking at her like a miracle instead of an apology.
My hand tightens around the hilt of my dagger.
My gaze wraps around Elyssara like a protective shield.
“She left you,” I say, low and sharp.
Lesara’s eyes flick to me, startled. “You don’t under?—”
“The fuck I don’t.” My voice cuts through the chamber. “You ran. You hid. While she starved.” I drop my voice into a low, lethal weapon. “She’s yourdaughter.”
Elyssara turns toward me, lips parting—a warning, maybe a plea, maybe even a realization—but I can’t stop.
“Do you know what your ‘Little Star’ became, Your Highness?” I snarl. “A thief. A killer. A girl who learned to survive in the dark you left her in.”
The room goes death-still.
But my words ache to find their mark, just as my blade does.
Even the candles seem to pull back in fear of me.
Lesara’s shoulders cave, and for the first time, she looks small—not royal, not radiant. Just human.
Elandor whispers something about necessity, about prophecy, but I don’t care. Because all I can think is that my Starbound lived her whole life believing she was alone. Believing she wasnothing.
And the woman who could have stopped it is standing right in front of her.
I know that kind of loneliness—the one Maldrak fed me like poison. I lived it. And I’ll be damned before she ever tastes it again.
“Perhaps if you could just listen for a moment, Kael?” Elandor interjects softly.
So I spin to him, eyes slicing through his softness like a blade through flesh. “You willnevermake me understand. So at least give me information we can use in the war that neither of you will ever face,” I bite.
Lesara steadies herself, but her voice trembles.
“I’ve been working on fixing it. Like… somewhat of a puppet master,” she admits. “I connected the rebellion with Zerynthia’s mission through Gellesk. Built channels beneath Thalmyr’s reign. We’ve been trying to break the threvenar.”
Her gaze flicks to Elandor, then to me. “It’s more sophisticated than any of us realized. It moves through the bloodstream like a hunter tracking prey—only the prey is memory itself. Any recollection that undermines the crown’s truth, the threvenar hunts it down, devours it, and sends it to the Orbs. Every lost truth becomes a ghost wandering the realm.”
She exhales, exhausted, older than she looks. “That’s why the people don’t remember the monarchy. Why evenIhad to hide. They’ve stripped history from our blood.”
I laugh once, sharp and humorless. “And while you hid, she bled.”
Lesara’s face twists with pain, but I don’t stop. “You talk of puppet strings and lost ghosts, but all I see is a mother who let her daughter be swallowed by the dark.”
She opens her mouth to respond, but I step forward, voice cutting and deliberate, every word a blade: “The difference between you and her,Your Majesty, is that puppet masters stay behind the curtain. The puppets face the world.”
