The letter had been tucked between the pages of her. grandfather's journal, sealed in wax the color of dried rose petals. Sai hadn't noticed it until the journal slipped from her lap and landed open on the floor.
She had stared at the seal for minutes before she touched it, Rina Asoluka's signature mark.
It wasn't addressed to anyone. No date. Just a folded paper and a wax seal. Sai turned it over and over in her hand, as if the weight of it would tell her whether to open it, Kael sat across from her, eyes on the fire. He hadn't asked what she found. But he could feel the shift in the room, Something silent and sharp now lived between them.
"Read it," he said finally, voice low and unreadable.
Sai's hand trembled slightly as she broke the seal.
My dearest child,
If you are reading this, I have either failed you, or chosen to protect you in silence, I don't know which will be more unforgivable, You always asked questions, Sai. About the East Wing, about your grandfather's scribbled notes, about the way your father and I looked at each other whenever the name 'Eron' came up in the news.
We never answered, I told myself we were keeping you safe. But I think now, we were keeping ourselves safe from the shame of it all, Kael's birth… his very existence was something your father swore never to speak of again. I had no say, I only knew his mother once, in passing. She was kind. And kind people never survive in families like ours Sai paused, her lips pressed into a line, the crackling of the fire was the only sound in the room.
Kael turned to her now. "Keep going," she nodded, fingers curling tighter around the page.
There is a truth beneath your grandfather's research. Not prophecy. Not fantasy. Just blood, and choices that never belonged to us in the first place. Your father chose silence. I chose obedience. But you… you've always had your own voice.
Use it, Sai. Even if it breaks us. Especially if it breaks us.
Sai folded the paper slowly and placed it on the floor between them. Neither of them spoke for a long while.
Then Kael said, "She knew."
"Yes."
"And she said nothing. All this time."
Sai nodded.
Kael leaned back, one arm resting across his bent knee, the firelight softening the sharp lines of his face. "Do you feel guilty?" "I don't know," she whispered, "I feel… sick, like I'm living in a story where the villains are just… people I have eaten with every day."
Kael let out a bitter chuckle. "Sounds familiar."
Sai looked at him then. "Are we still safe here?"
He met her eyes. "No. Not really."
They packed their things in silence, folding what little they had into two worn backpacks. Sai wrapped her mother's letter and the journal in cloth before stuffing it at the bottom of hers. Kael slipped the pendant into a pocket sewn into the lining of his coat.
The night outside was foggy, the air heavy with coming rain. They left through the back alley behind the inn, walking toward a destination neither had spoken aloud but both somehow knew, the Westbridge train station.
Hours later, as they sat on a long bench waiting for the first early train out of the city, Kael leaned his head back and closed his eyes, "I used to think love meant staying," he said.
Sai turned to him, curious.
"My mother… she stayed in a burning house, for my father. She let herself be erased for his sake. And she thought that was love."
Sai's voice was quiet. "Do you still believe that?"
"No," he said. "Now I think love is… choosing not to let someone burn alone."
Sai didn't answer right away. She looked at his hand beside hers on the bench, then gently covered it with her own. Her fingers were cold, but sure.
He opened his eyes, looked down at her hand, then up at her.
"I'm not going anywhere, Kael."
"I know."
"And you're not allowed to disappear again. Not unless I'm with you."
A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Bossy."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
He squeezed her hand.
It wasn't a kiss. It wasn't some dramatic vow. But it was everything.
Meanwhile…
At the Asoluka estate, Madam Elsie stood before the high window of the east corridor, her arms crossed, her mind racing.
"They've left," came the voice behind her, Mikel.
"Of course they have," she replied. "It was only a matter of time. But that letter… that was not part of the plan."
"We can recover it."
"No," she said firmly. "Let them think they're free. Let the boy believe in hope."
She turned, eyes like flint. "The crown doesn't rise by mercy. It rises by fire."