The night was quiet as I stepped into the garden surrounding Isadora's palace, taking extra care to not be spotted as I made my way to the alcove. My lesson with Isadora had gone by quickly and I feigned being exhausted to spend the rest of the day in my room. I asked Tritetia to meet and she had luckily agreed, and I spent the time writing down everything I remembered from my previous life. It had never seemed important to do before, but with the shift in events, I didn’t want to trust my memory alone anymore. I needed to lay it out, piece by piece, in case I missed something, in case there was something I overlooked that was shifting the future.

  The path crunched under my boots, but I moved lightly, not wanting to draw attention from the few servants lingering about. It was clear Caspian hadn’t returned yet and I followed the path with more confidence once I was sure no one was watching. It didn’t take long for me to reach the hidden space and I was slightly surprised to see Tritetia waiting inside. We were starting to get too tall for the space so she was sitting on the dirt, wrapped in what seemed to be a heavy blanket.

  “Is it cold?” My voice made her look up quickly, but she shook her head, pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

  “Not very, but I was in my pool before I came outside.”

  “Pool?”

  “When… sea-folk go through puberty, our body temperature can vary wildly. Having a pool where we can control the temperature is… needed until our bodies level out,” Tritetia explained quietly, and I noticed an empty portion of the blanket she had left for me to sit on. I didn’t mind sitting on the ground, but I said nothing, taking a seat beside her as she gripped the rest tightly. “I just… don’t want to get sick.”

  “I see,” I murmured, stretching my legs in front of me as I leaned back on my hands. I could hear the rustling of leaves overhead, the soft creak of branches as the breeze moved through the trees. Tritetia’s explanation made sense. I hadn’t considered how puberty would affect someone like her—how different it must be from mine. I knew next to nothing about sea-folk biology, though I imagined even if I asked, Tritetia didn’t want to talk about it.

  She hadn’t looked at me properly since I sat down, and I knew it wasn’t just the cold. This was the first time I had been near her since the carriage ride back to the palace, and I took a deep breath, trying to untangle my thoughts. A part of me understood it was wrong to ask about my mother when I hadn’t ever asked if she was alright, but I also couldn’t bring myself to care. She was alive; wasn’t that enough? Why was she so bothered by being hurt, and why did it make me feel so guilty?

  “I haven’t looked.”

  “What?” I didn’t bother to hide the surprise in my voice as I looked at Tritetia, but she was keeping her gaze to the dirt in front of us. Her hair hid most of her expression and I watched as she twisted a strand of it absently around her finger.

  “I haven’t looked,” she said again, a little clearer this time. “At your mother’s future. I… haven’t had the chance.”

  I frowned. If anything, I would have imagined that my mother would have immediately sought Trietia out after I told both her and Isadora what happened. “Why?”

  “She came to see me, but…I want to be left alone,” Tritetia’s voice remained soft, but I could hear the tension in the way she spoke. “I… haven’t really left my room. Valaine stands outside my door every chance she gets, and I… I just… I can’t.”

  I watched her hand drift to her shoulder, and I felt my chest tighten. I had expected she was avoiding Valaine, but I had underestimated just how tenacious the eleven-year-old could be. Tritetia had effectively cut herself off from the world just to get peace from the princess, and I looked back out the opening of the alcove. I couldn’t see much of the dark garden, but I could hear it—soft clicks of insects stirring in the grass, the rustle of wind brushing across the hedges. Still, the silence between us lingered longer than it should have.

  “I…” The word stuck in my throat for a moment, but I pushed it out anyway. “I’m sorry.”

  I heard as Tritetia shifted next to me but I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. I barely understood why I was apologizing, but I didn’t want to risk she would infer the truth from my expression. That I had used her as bait to get to Seymour.

  “I should’ve kept him in sight,” I continued, leaning forward on my hand as I rested my elbow on my knee. Lying was easy when there was an easy alternative to apologize for, but it did little to ease the tension in my chest. “I didn’t think… I thought he might say something disgusting or be annoying, but I didn’t think he’d do that. I should’ve known better.”

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  “I… don’t blame you, Cyran.” I finally glanced over to notice Tritetia had moved her hands to her lap and she was playing with the fabric of her dress. “You… came to help me.”

  “I heard Amalia returning to the estate without you and it worried me, so I went to look for you. Amalia was mean to me so I was worried she had pushed you in the lake or something,” I continued, then tension winding tighter as I continued to lie. “Seymour… tormented my mother because of me, but I didn’t think he would attack you.”

  “Still, there’s only so much you could have done. We’re only thirteen,” Tritetia continued, her voice barely louder than the breeze slipping through the leaves. “Even if you had tried to argue with him… he’s older, and we were his guests. You couldn’t have stopped him with words.”

  Her honesty made it harder to keep looking at her. I stared ahead, my jaw tight as I let the sound of the garden fill the silence again. I had expected her to be angry—wanted her to be, almost. It would’ve made it easier to carry the weight of what I’d done, what I’d allowed. But instead, she gave me this soft grace, the kind that settled into your ribs and stayed there, heavy and uncomfortable in a way guilt always was.

  “But it isn’t the pain that bothers me. It healed long before we left,” she said suddenly, cutting through the stillness again. I looked at her then, really looked, trying to read her expression, but she still wouldn’t meet my gaze. Her fingers picked at a loose thread in the hem of the blanket, tugging it until it curled. I watched her for another long moment, finally sitting up. I wasn’t sure what it was, but there was something different in the way she spoke, as if the words she was reaching for weren’t ones she wanted to say out loud.

  “Then wha–” My question was swallowed as the garden suddenly filled with noise, and I instinctively moved, wrapping Tritetia tighter in the blanket. I had hoped Caspian’s arrival would distract from our absences, but given what had recently happened with Seymour, I should have considered Tritetia would be missed. She attempted to move but I held her tighter, allowing my horns to manifest as I listened for the cause of the alarm.

  “Caspian, slow down!” Isadora’s voice was unusually worried, and I relaxed my hold slightly. So Caspian was the cause of all the noise, but it seemed a bit overdone for an injured man. “Caspian!”

  “He’s here.” A gravely dark voice echoed in my ears and I felt my blood freeze. I had never heard the voice before but something told me that I knew the person it came from. The voice sounded like it belonged to something older than any of us, something that wasn’t supposed to be speaking with human words at all. It wasn’t loud, but it carried, like it was being spoken into the marrow of my bones. Tritetia must’ve felt it too as she went still in my arms, both of us frozen. “Move.”

  “Your Highness!”

  “Just get Caspian to the room, I’ll find the priest.” Isadora’s voice quickly snapped back to her usual calm, and I finally found the strength to move. I wasn’t sure why, but something told me I needed to see Caspian, to understand what had happened to him at the border. How a man who seemed so powerful had been injured by a mere beast from the desert. Tritetia followed behind me as I ran into the palace, startling Galene as she opened the door.

  “Prince Cyran! My goodness, what–”

  Galene’s words soon echoed behind me as I kept running, not concerned that she had seen my horns. I was too busy following the sound of Caspian’s breathing, a cadence I knew almost as well as my own. The calm steady rhythm of a man always in control, even if it was labored from his injuries and I didn’t even think to question how Tritetia was keeping up with me as I turned around the corner.

  “Cyran! What are you doing here!” Isadora quickly ran to grab me, but I was too focused on the corner she had just appeared from. There; that’s where Caspian was.

  “Keep him away from me!” I barely managed to avoid Isadora’s grasp as I turned the corner, instantly freezing from the sight I saw through the open door. Caspain was sitting on the edge of a bed, cradling his head in his hands as blood ran between his fingers and pooled on the floor beneath him.

  Except the blood wasn’t red like a human’s.

  “Cyran, you–”

  “Get him away from me!” Caspian yelled in that inhuman voice and I instinctively stepped back, my brain still trying to comprehend what I was seeing. Caspian’s eyes were no longer the stone-grey I had gotten used to, and instead were a blazing blue, burning with a fury I was convinced Caspian couldn’t muster. Dark grey scales covered most of his skin except for his face, but horns split his hair in a way that was too similar to what mine did. The shadow of wings were barely visible in the darkness, but I could still see them moving, along with the vague shape of a tail. “Now, Isa!”

  “Cyran!” Isadora’s arms finally wrapped around me, and I didn’t fight her as she dragged me back around the corner, another servant running past us to close the door. I glanced over to Tritetia and saw her hands over her mouth, her eyes covered with the film that told me she had seen Caspian’s future, as well as what he really was.

  Caspian… was a Draconid.

  Just like me.