The next morning, one of the maids was washing the black stone at the base of the Empty Throne. When she wiped her cloth across the back facing the wall, she noticed scratches and said:
"There are letters here."
They immediately tried to remove her from the hall.
Savern sent guards, and the Council sent a scribe. Vestra's people arrived before either, while the princess herself sat in the front row and watched the proceedings closely.
Elian entered last.
Lissa was there.
She stood beside a side column in a grey dress without family insignia. Since the orchard, Lissa had neither sought her brother's hand nor hidden behind Savern. Elian, for his part, no longer tried to protect her without asking.
"Did you know?" he asked.
"No."
"Did you dream about it?"
"Not yet."
Vestra overheard them and said quietly:
"A perfect phrase for our family."
On ordinary days no one saw the back of the Throne. The Empty Throne stood so close to its stone recess that only a child or a servant with a cloth could have passed between its back and the wall. The nobility looked only at the front, where the heirs' names appeared and vanished. The inscriptions behind it were noticed only by those who dusted there.
Miran and two servants moved the Throne.
The stone groaned.
There were names on the back.
Not one. Not ten. Hundreds.
Small, uneven, carved by different hands. Some had almost worn away. Some were fresh, with the marks of a chisel left during the night. The names were arranged neither by family, nor year, nor rank. Maids beside princes. Infants beside executioners. Illegitimate children beside kings whom the official histories called great.
Tavel stepped closer and drew a sharp breath. "This isn't a list of heirs."
"No," Elian said. "It's a list of those who were erased for the sake of heirs."
Vestra stopped smiling.
Savern entered the hall at that very moment.
He saw the exposed back of the Throne and stopped. His face did not change, but Elian had learnt to read the regent by his pauses. This one was too long.
"Close the hall," Savern said.
No one moved.
They all wanted to know whom they had been made to forget for the sake of their impeccable bloodlines.
Lissa approached the stone.
Elian wanted to stop her, but let her decide for herself whether to touch it.
She ran her fingers over the names. Once. Again. Then she froze.
"No."
The word came out quietly.
Elian went to her.
Carved beneath her fingers was:
Lissa Vern.
The hand was old, and the stone around it had darkened with time. The present Lissa was seventeen, but the inscription had appeared long before her birth.
Without looking up, Tavel said:
"This is the name of the Lissa from a Draft that existed before you were born."
Lissa snatched her hand away.
"I've died before?"
Savern answered before Elian could:
"Not you."
Lissa turned to him.
"Don't you dare comfort me with grammar."
The hall grew so quiet that even Vestra did not risk a smile.
Lissa looked at the name again.
"So I'm not the first attempt either."
The Empty Throne beneath them shuddered.
A new scratch appeared on the black stone beside Lissa's old name, like the mark of a pen.
Lissa went pale.
"That dream," she said.
Elian already knew.
"The one where you sign my death warrant?"
She nodded.
"I didn't want to say it in front of everyone."
Savern said quietly:
"Sometimes silence is more merciful."
Lissa spun round.
"For some reason, your mercy always demands someone else's memory."
The regent did not answer.
Lissa raised her voice. Now she spoke not as the victim of a blood oath, but as someone who had decided to confess to her own possible guilt.
"I dreamt of a world where I was regent. I sat beside the Empty Throne. I had a seal and an army. When Elian came to demand the names of the erased, I signed his death warrant because I decided stability mattered more than my brother. I did it not out of fear. I made a choice."
She looked at Elian.
"I saw a world where I became your killer."
Elian wanted to say that woman had been a different Lissa, but after the name on the back of the Throne it would have sounded like false comfort.
He said something else:
"Then we both know what we can become."
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