Lissa found him herself.
She sent no servant, wrote no note and did not approach Vestra, though Vestra would surely have set a price on such a meeting too. Lissa came at night to the old prayer room behind the hall of blood oaths. Its walls bore no portraits, only empty copper discs. The names of dead children had once been written on them, but later the Council decided that empty discs looked more respectable.
Elian came alone. Taking the risk was foolish, but he did not want to turn a conversation with his sister into an interrogation under guard.
Lissa stood beside the third disc in a plain grey dress with no family insignia. She had braided her own hair unevenly, apparently in haste. Sleeplessness had left dark marks beneath her eyes.
"You're alive," she said.
"For now, that remains a matter of dispute."
She did not smile.
Lissa used to be the first to laugh, even when she was afraid. As a child, she would hide behind the curtain in the king's chamber and mimic the ministers: one squeaked, another sounded like an old kettle, and a third always seemed to be choking on a plum. Elian laughed so loudly that they were soon found.
After several deaths and her renunciation in the Hall of Blood, that childhood seemed almost to belong to someone else.
"I dream about things," Lissa said.
Elian grew wary.
"What things?"
She wrapped her arms around her shoulders.
"There is blood on your lips. Orm raises the sword. Miran stands in a corridor while people walk through her without noticing. Shani waits by the door. Your name is carved differently on the Throne every time."
She spoke quickly, while she still had the strength.
Then her voice fell.
"There are two other dreams. They're different."
Elian did not interrupt.
Lissa raised a hand to her throat. Where the blood oath had flared before the Council, a thin red line remained, the mark of a spell rather than a wound.
"In one dream, I sign your death warrant of my own free will, with no oath forcing me. I'm grown up by then, and I wear the regent's seal on my finger. And I know that if you die, the palace will finally be mine."
Elian listened in silence and heard nothing but his sister's breathing in the empty prayer room.
"In the second dream, you're standing in ashes. The people of my house lie all around you. Not ours, but mine. I don't recognise their faces, but I know I loved them. You're standing among them, covered in soot, and I'm certain you did it."
Elian might have grown angry, but he had already seen the map of the old collapse. In one of the other Drafts, he might truly have been responsible for the deaths of Lissa's people.
"It may be a lie," he said.
"I know."
"Or it may not be our Draft."
"I know."
"Lissa…"
"And I also know that part of me wants you to disappear."
That admission hurt Elian more than her account of the nightmares.
She did not look away.
"I loved you. I probably still do. But with you, everything always came back to you. Father kept silent about you. To Savern, I was merely a way to force you to submit. Even when you were declared an error, the Throne still did not choose me. I was a recognised daughter, Elian, but I lived like a spare heir."
Elian wanted to say that he had not asked for any of it, but held his tongue. His objection changed nothing about Lissa's life.
"I didn't know," he said.
"And if you had, what would have changed?"
There was no answer.
Lissa sat on the stone bench. She did not look like a princess in need of rescue, but like someone exhausted by decisions others had made for her.
"Savern said you're a door."
"He's fond of that idea."
"What if he's right?"
Elian sat opposite her.
"Then I have to decide whom to let in."
She looked at him with something close to horror.
"Can you hear yourself?"
"Yes. I don't like what I hear."
The door to the prayer room creaked softly.
Miran entered without knocking, a short blade in her hand. From her dishevelled hair and ragged breathing, she had only just woken from another nightmare.
"I saw the corridor," she said.
Lissa rose.
Miran stopped when she saw her.
"Forgive me, Your Highness."
The words came automatically, out of habit. But Miran's face showed confusion, not deference.
"What corridor?" Elian asked.
"The one that doesn't exist. At the northern outpost. I walk down it every night and hear my father calling me by my family name. Then I wake and feel the bandage on my arm. But there is no bandage now, no service, no house."
She looked at Lissa.
"You were there tonight too. You were crying and saying that if he died again, you would remember everything."
Lissa went pale.
Elian stood.
Memories from other Drafts were no longer coming only to Elian. First Tavel had seen his own death; now Lissa and Miran were dreaming of other lives. Savern might remember them soon. Perhaps he already did.
The system responded dully, as though its voice were coming through a wall:
"Memory of another Draft has spread to the witnesses. Current Draft stability reduced."
Lissa closed her eyes.
"If you die again," she said, "I think I'll remember everything."
She opened her eyes, and there was no childhood in them, no easy forgiveness.
"And then I may truly hate you."
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