Silence blanketed the vast bedchamber once more. As she sunk into the soft arms of the goose-down bed, Meya’s rapid breathing slowed to her normal pace. Coris had freed her from his embrace. He lay on his back by her side, his eyes closed and his bare chest heaving.

For a long moment he said nothing, and Meya reckoned the lad would just nod off, just like that, the way he did on their first night together, but then he rolled over to face her, his voice hoarse yet firm.

“Ari, I’m so sorry.”

At those words, Meya remembered the score they still have to settle. A dull pang of hurt seared through her heart. She forced it down.

“For what?” She rebuffed, her voice soft yet cool. “Lying to me about The Axel, or choosing Zier over my antidote?”

“Is there any difference?” Coris’s tired voice was labored by guilt.

“Of course there is!” Meya snapped, incredulous. She felt Coris recoiling.

“I have a brother myself.” —three, actually— “So, if your motive was purely to protect Zier, I don’t blame you one whit. But if it’s for The Axel that’s inside his belly, I couldn’t possibly decide until you tell me what that stupid Axel really is!”

Coris remained silent, his eyes downcast, but his hand on the pillow was clenched, twisting the fabric in his bony grasp.

“So, which is it? The Axel or your brother?” Meya prodded, impatient. Those beautiful silvery eyes finally rose to meet hers. His parched lips stretched into a wry, bitter grin.

“I—I don’t know.” His laughing voice was laced with pain, and Meya felt her heart softening despite herself,

“With The Axel being inside Zier. With them being inseparable like this. Sometimes, I couldn’t even tell anymore.”

Coris smiled even as he trembled, even as his hands tugged at the bedcovers, as if longing for something to hold onto.

“The things I’ve done. The choices I’ve made. The lives I’ve sacrificed.” He whispered in a low, feverish voice, as he shook his head slowly.

“There are times I’d give anything just to know what they were for. I’m afraid I’ll drop dead one day without ever learning why. But even more, I’m afraid of knowing the truth, then learning I’ve been making the wrong decisions all my life. That I’ve thrown away countless lives to protect something not even worth that much.”

Tears glinting in the firelight plummeted to the pillowcase. Coris rubbed his cheek against the fabric to dry them.

As Meya studied him, her fury calmed. She had heard her unspoken voice echoing back to her in his words, had seen her hidden wounds reflected in his pained expression. She wasn’t that different from him. There were times—several times—she wondered if she should have just done nothing, chosen nothing, instead of trying and failing and suffering. Yet, in the end, she couldn’t help choosing to do something, to try nevertheless. Even as nobody else did.

Meya moved her hand hesitantly to cover Coris’s, caressing the cold skin stretched taut over his knuckles with the pad of her thumb.

“The people of Crosset believed the Crosset Famine was brought about by a little peasant girl.”

She began, her voice soft and airy. Coris’s weary gaze moved up to focus on her face.

“She was ten years old. She worked in the fields back when farming was forbidden by law for women. Her family has four daughters. They were struggling. She wanted to help. She didn’t believe it would anger Freda. She wanted to prove a point. Well, apparently, it did—hundreds of people died in that famine.”

Coris’s eyes widened at the horrific tale, but Meya’s expression remained dead, her haunting eyes staring ahead as she recounted her shameful past. After a deep sigh, she flicked her gaze back to Coris, her trembling voice dropping to a whisper.

“What do you see? A noble little girl who wants to help her family? An arrogant heretic who wants to challenge Freda? Or the murderer of hundreds of villagers?”

Coris averted his eyes as he considered it. Meya continued, her voice grave.

“I believe that in every minute of our lives lies a choice. Even when it seems you can’t do anything, that you don’t have a choice to make, you actually still do: to do nothing, or to do something.”

The young lord’s eyes swiveled back up to hers. Meya stared back, unwavering.

“Some choices are well thought out, the others not so much. Some made with good intentions, and some with bad. We people only look at the end. We often forget about the person behind the beginning. You asked me if there’s any difference. For me, yes, there is.”

Meya’s gaze softened as she hitched up a melancholic smile.

“Sometimes, we don’t have the courage to make our own choices. And sometimes, we don’t have the strength to live with the choices we do make. But, we’re still alive; we can keep trying not to hate ourselves that much. You made the choice to risk your life to save ours, when you could have done nothing. And I already thank you for that. So, don’t be so hard on yourself.”

Meya gave Coris’s hand a gentle squeeze. For perhaps a second, those eyes brimmed with painful gratitude, before it was replaced with the usual empty calm. Coris eked out a wan smile as he withdrew his hand.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t be so generous with me, Ari.” He hitched up that same sad, empty smile once again, the smile that could always infuriate Meya the most. He shook his head, his gaze full of guilt,

“I would never be the man you could rely on. The one you could trust in and lay your life in his grasp. The one who would always make you his highest priority.”

A moment of solid silence descended between them as Meya digested the fact she had already known, ever since he chose saving Zier over her antidote, or perhaps for as long as she could remember. She stretched a mocking smile.

“I’ve always been a useless, worthless lass.“—Even more worthless once you’ve factored in who I really am—“So, I’ve learned not to expect anyone to protect me. Or remember me. Or choose me over everything else.”

Coris’s eyes widened. He looked ready to contradict, so Meya plowed on, her voice undercut with a bitter laugh,

“We’ve known each other mere days. But Zier and The Axel...they’ve been there all your life. Even if you didn’t come rescue me at all, I’d understand.”

Meya shrugged. Her gaze wandered towards the open window. She sighed, longing and hopeless.

“Though it does make me wonder what I’d have to do to make myself matter that much to someone, the way Zier and The Axel mattered to you.” She mused, a wistful smile glazed on her lips. “I’m not angry. Or disappointed. I’m just—I just wished I knew what to do.”

All the stars in the night sky were fallen warriors who had helped Freda drive Chione away from Neverend Heights. They all had names, because they were useful, and generation after generation, people repeated those names to their children, so they would never, ever, ever be forgotten.

How useful must she become? What must she do before she could etch her name across the night sky, like the silver ribbon that was Freda’s River, and make sure nobody ever forget her existence?

“You’re not worthless, Arinel. Nobody is. Don’t ever think otherwise.”

Coris’s quiet, gentle voice drifted through her reverie. A voice so familiar, echoing as if from lost days of old,

Don’t ever think otherwise.

Meya froze as that voice echoed in her head, ringing in tandem with an exact same voice from the past.

“You’re worth more than a pig, or simply your mother’s song, Meya. Don’t ever think otherwise.”

As the echoes fade, Meya heard even more voices—one voice, to be exact. Unbidden and unknown memories flashed before her mind’s eye. Laughter and tinny talking voices. Cold fingers interlocked with hers as they whirled round and round in a clumsy dance.

“Please! Let me hear your Song!”

“I know a jolly Hadrian song. And I’d be honored if you would give me a dance.”

“I’ll wait for the day you’re ready to sing for the world to hear. But until then—"

“—It’s our little secret.” Meya’s lips moved of their own accord, possessed by memories until now she hadn’t realize existed.

“Arinel?”

The voice of the present jerked her back to reality. Like a bandage from a weeping wound, Meya withdrew from the maelstrom of vague emotions. Blinking at Coris’s puzzled stare, she cast about for excuses,

“N-Nothing—I just—” Meya stammered, barely hearing her own voice as her heart thundered in her ears, “You—you sound like someone—”

Tamping down her bursting excitement, Meya averted her eyes and strived to remain rational. It might have been just a coincidence. Or a mistake. After all, her recollections of the Emerald-Stone-Boy were little more than bits and pieces.

Yet, the irrational half of Meya nagged her. It recognized Coris’s voice. It was the same voice. Hoarse, cracking, gentle. And, against her better judgment, Meya caved in.

“Coris, have you ever been to Crosset? Apart from your kidnapping, I meant.”

Coris was taken aback. For a moment he blinked, then his gaze refocused. He nodded.

“Only once, when I was fourteen.” Meya’s fingernails dug into her palms as she clenched her hands into fists. Three years ago. The evidence mounts.

“It was that time our fathers reaffirmed the marriage was still going ahead, but I wasn’t with them; that was Simon pretending to be me.”

“I see. Where were you, then?” Meya played along. Coris’s eyebrows crept together, silvery pupils swiveling upward as he sifted through his memories.

“At the Town Square. It was the May Fest. I remember because Simon was griping about coming all the way to Crosset, but not getting to see Marinia Hild.”

“So, you were there to see Marin...ia?” Meya remembered just in time to add the last syllable. Coris’s frown deepened as his gaze zeroed in on her instead.

“No. I was looking for a girl, but not Marinia.” He shook his head, resolute, “A peasant girl saved my life during the Famine. She helped me escape the kidnapping party and guided me to Truncale. All young women would be at the May Fest, so I reckoned she would be there, too.”

Of course—all young women, except me.

At that revelation, Meya blinked, crestfallen. He was at the Fest to look for someone else. It had gotten nothing to do with her in her pigsty. She was imagining things, as usual.

“And, did you find her?” Swallowing the lump of disappointment that had swelled up in her throat, Meya forced out what she hoped was a normal, inquisitive voice.

Coris’s silvery eyes remain fixed upon hers, his expression unfathomable in the firelight. He shook his head.

“I didn’t. But I believe I will. Very soon.”

His firm, brusque reply trailed away into a whisper. His gaze traveled down her face to fall upon Meya’s left arm, where sat an ugly, sunken scar, as if her flesh had been scooped out by a dull carving knife.

Meya unwittingly moved her right hand to cover the grotesque scar from view. That first night, she had already told him she was bitten by a nasty viper. Though she hadn’t told him it was a water-snake, and that she was elbow-deep in paddy water, planting wheat shrubs. Why was he still so curious about it?

Coris’s lingering stare sent ominous chills worming down Meya’s spine. She forced out a small laugh, shrugging in amusement.

“Well, I’m Lady Crosset. You could’ve said something. Father and I could’ve helped you with the search.”

She gave his arm a light slap in feigned playfulness. Coris reciprocated in kind; his slight grin did not reach his calm, calculating eyes. Tilting his head, he shot back after barely a beat’s pause.

“Why did you ask, by the way?”

“Nothing. Like I said, you—you just reminded me of someone I thought I’d met.”

The taste of the lie was bitter in Meya’s throat, but she was at a loss for what to do. She couldn’t remember the boy’s face. She had no way of knowing for sure if Coris was the kind soul whose promised return she had awaited for three years.

Oh, well. It didn’t seem likely, anyway. What are the odds, after all?

Worse, Coris didn’t seem to remember anything, either.

“Who?”

His following question rammed the painful truth even deeper home. Meya glanced up at those beautiful, captivating silvery eyes, trying to coax out a minim of familiarity, but none came.

It was tantalizing and flabbergasting. The Emerald-Stone Boy had been so important to her. So how come had she forgotten all but echoes of his voice and scraps of disjointed images? It hadn’t even been three years.

Meya hitched up an apologetic smile, shaking her head.

“Dunno. I must have been imagining things. It felt like I’ve heard that before, but it’s just that—a feeling.”

Meya shrugged it off. Ignoring Coris’s puzzled gaze, she lay back down and snuggled into his chest, feeling his cold, frail arms enveloping her, his feeble heartbeat drumming on her cheek, as those words echoed once more in her head.

You’re not worthless, Arinel.

Meya’s trembling fists clenched tight as her heart writhed.

Yes, Arinel would never be worthless. There were people willing to die and kill for her, just because of the name she was born with, but Meya was not Arinel, and never could be.

She mustn’t forget that everything Coris had done for her was not actually hers, but for Arinel. For his beloved Ari. She mustn’t allow herself to be carried away.

Because, someday—perhaps soon, too—this too-good-to-be-true dream would end. And, once Coris had learned she was nothing but a peasant girl, driven out of the family that no longer had a place for her, would she still be worth anything in his eyes? Who knew what Coris would do, after all the lies she had told him? The danger she had put him through? The priceless lives she had cost him?

The best alternative would be to ask Arinel to sort the matter out with Coris, and go home to Crosset. Sure, she’d have to face Dad’s wrath instead, but Dad probably would let her live, at the least. Maybe. Provided he never learned she was no longer a maiden.

A sudden exhaustion overwhelmed Meya at the worrisome thought. Her eyelids felt heavy as though weighed down by lead.

Tomorrow. She’d figure it all out tomorrow. For now, she wanted to rest in these lifeless arms and lull herself to sleep with those hopeful words.

You’re not worthless. You’re not worthless. You’re not worthless.