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This did not feel like nothing.

He crossed to her. Looked at her face. Looked at her hands.

Then he turned.

He did not know what he was looking for. That was the strangest part. Some instinct had him moving his eyes across every surface, every corner, every piece of furniture, searching for something he could not name. As though something was supposed to be here and was not. As though the room was missing something beyond the obvious.

He stopped.

He looked at Flagsar. "What am I looking for?"

Flagsar reached into the folds of whatever he wore and produced them without comment. Small, dark, warm.

He set them in Sevrin's palm.

"The answers are there," Flagsar said.

Sevrin looked down at the memory stones.

“The magic here is unstable, Majesty. I suggest leaving as soon as you can.” Flagsar paused. “The Vaultline was sacked. I suspect that something important is now missing. No one knows by whose hand."

Sevrin did not answer. Instead, he looked at her one more time.

"You may burn the body," he said quietly.

Flagsar nodded solemnly.

Then Sevrin sat down and closed his fingers around the first one and closed his eyes.

The Return

SEVRIN

He looked at Nox. He thought about what he remembered from before the Bloodhaven. It was not quite a memory, more like something spoken directly into the part of him that listened even when he was not trying to.

Our daughter will sit the Veynar throne. Find my sister. You will want her.

He had accepted the words without understanding them.

He knew now that his obsession with Asharin had never been rational and he had always known that and had not cared.

He looked at Flagsar.

"Aviaryn."

Flagsar inclined one of his heads.

"The Princess of Umbrelai is safe. She has been taken beyond reach."

Something in his chest loosened. She was safer where she was than with him.

He was not certain he knew how to be a father. He had never needed to learn.

His thoughts wandered instead to the mountain then. The spring. The white veils. The little X carved into an ankle that matched the one on his own.

The girl had been Asharin. And somehow, before the Bloodhaven had taken its price, Nox had pointed him toward her anyway.

Find my sister. You will want her.