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“You should sleep,” he says quietly.

“I don’t want to wake up only to have to remember it all again.”

He steps into the room, crossing it slowly, and sits on the floor beside my chair rather than beside me, his back against the wall, one knee drawn up, his hand resting near my ankle.

“Then I’ll remember with you,” he says.

I peer down at him. For a long time, I say nothing. Then I slide off my seat to sit between his legs and lean back against him.

And we stay like that until the horn signals our arrival. By the time Purgatory rises from the morning fog, the island looks smaller than it did when I left it.

The sea walls stand black against the pale sky, while the fields beyond them stretch dull and winter-worn, the same hard earth that raised us, fed us, punished us often, still feels more familiar than any kingdom I have crossed. The dock bell rings when our ship is sighted, and people gather on the docks.

Not many at first, then more, faces appearing along the pier near the path, behind stacked crates and broken fence rails, until the whole dock seems to hold its breath to see who has arrived.

The ship settles against the pier with a heavy groan, ropes thrown and tied, boards lowered, orders murmured rather than shouted, because even the crew seems to understand that this arrival is not one that should be met with excitement.

No one asks questions when Kylian’s men carry Arlo down first.

The sheet over him is clean, but there is no hiding the shape beneath it, no hiding the awful stillness of a body being carried, and the silence on the dock thickens as people wonder who lies beneath the sheet.

I follow behind them with Kylian at my side, my hands tucked into my sleeves, my fingers still feeling the ghost of Arlo’s blood no matter how many times I’ve washed them, and when my boots touch Purgatory soil again, I expect something in me to recoil.

For most of my life, this island was the whole world.

It was hunger, punishment, unpaid debts, and the sea walls that kept the water out while holding the rest of us in. The island was a prison so ordinary that I once mistook it for life.

I thought I would die here slowly, one season at a time, under the weight of work and never-ending debt, until I became another name lost somewhere between ledger and grave.

Yet as Kylian leads me toward the waiting truck near the end of the pier, I feel none of the old panic.

The island is still the same, the stone walls still black with sea rot, the road still cracked and uneven, the fields still stretched thin, but something about it has changed because I have changed.

The place that once filled my chest with dread now feels distant, smaller, almost unreal. It’s like a vivid memory of something I read in a story as a child—a story that never belonged to me.

The truck waiting for us is one only used by guards and kings, not like the patched-up farm trucks with mismatched panels and engines that smoke.

Kylian’s hand finds the small of my back, and I let him guide me into a seat because I do not trust my legs to keep holding me if I have to watch them adjust the sheet around Arlo one more time.

Eagan climbs into the back with Arlo’s body, his posture straight, his face closed, one hand resting near the edge of Arlo’s covered form as if guarding him from this place.

Kylian sits beside me, close enough that the bond hums faintly beneath my grief, and when the truck pulls forward, the docks fall behind us slowly. The people stand there as we go, still staring, still not knowing whose body was brought home by a royal procession.

The drive to the farm is quiet.

The road winds away from the piers and through the lower settlement, past the market square, past the narrow lanes where children used to dart out of sight when guards passed.

Everything looks both exactly as I remember and nothing like I remember.

I look out the window and see the places that once owned pieces of me, and each memory comes with pain, but the pain does not drag me back into the girl I was. That girl feels far away now.

Kylian watches me from the corner of his eye, his hands resting on his knees, though every part of him feels ready to catch me if I fall apart. “What are you thinking?” he asks quietly.

I keep my gaze on the road ahead. “I thought coming back would feel like being trapped again.”

“And does it?”

I shake my head slowly, surprised by the truth of it.