At the new dawn, the Council had not yet assembled.
That was worse.
When the Council assembled, Elian had enemies, formulas, witnesses and doors that could be deceived. Now there was only a quiet palace corridor and the morning after a fire no one remembered except those whose memories had passed through the Drafts.
Lissa sat by the window in the room where she had once hidden letters to her brother. A fruit knife lay on the table beside her hand. Not a weapon, merely the only thing a frightened girl could use to defend herself.
Shani stood between her and the door.
"My lady, he will not hurt you."
"You sound very sure when you speak of him."
"I saw the way he looks at you. Murderers do not look at people that way."
Lissa did not believe her.
In this version she remembered the ash. She remembered waking as a child beneath a charred beam and seeing Elian standing in the smoke, doing nothing to help her family. The memories were painfully detailed: the smell of scorched wool, the hot stone beneath her palm, the scream of a mother who had never existed. Explanations alone could not refute such memories.
Elian remained at the threshold.
"You can order me to leave."
Lissa raised her eyes.
"What if I order you to die?"
Shani flinched. Outside the door, Miran tightened her grip on the hilt of her sword.
Elian replied:
"Not today. Today my death will no longer correct anything."
Those words struck her harder than any plea could have done. Lissa had expected excuses, oaths, the condescending tone of an elder brother.
The system remained silent, and while it did, nobody demanded another sacrifice.
Tavel brought a book with blank pages. He did not enter the room: he laid the book at the threshold and stepped back, afraid of frightening Lissa even more.
"Your memories have been overlaid on someone else's," he said. "I am not asking you to believe me. Just look at the ash."
Lissa did not move.
Shani picked up the book, opened it to the first page and set it on the table. The paper remained white until Lissa touched it with her fingers. Then real grey ash appeared on the page, not a drawing but cold, dry ash. Lissa drew a sharp breath: it smelled exactly as it did in her memories.
"That proves I remember the truth," she said.
"No," Tavel replied from the corridor. "It proves only that the world knows how to replace real memories with invented ones."
Lissa looked at Elian.
"Give me back my memory."
Everyone went still.
The system heard the request and showed Elian the price without words. If Lissa's former memories were restored, Shani would vanish from her life. She would not die. Lissa would simply forget the person who had held her hand through every terrible corridor after the Ash.
Lissa saw what Elian was looking at.
"Who will have to pay?"
He could have lied. He could have said: years, blood, his right to the throne. She would have believed him because she wanted her former self back. And then he would have had the Lissa of his childhood, the one who remembered the secret door behind the kitchen, the letters beneath the mattress, Mayra's voice on the night of her illness.
But Shani Venn was part of Lissa's life now. Among the nobility, her name had once gone unspoken, yet she was the one who had kept Lissa from losing herself completely.
Elian said:
"You will remember the past, but you will forget Shani. It will be as though she was never part of your life."
Shani went pale, but did not step back.
Lissa turned slowly towards the maid.
"Did you know?"
"No, my lady."
"Would you agree to it?"
Shani did not answer at once, and Lissa noticed the pause. The person standing before her was not the fearless maid from some beautiful legend, but a living woman who was afraid of disappearing.
"I am frightened," Shani said. "But I would probably agree in the end. So decide now, before I have time to pretend I am braver than I am."
Elian smiled despite himself. So did Lissa. Shani's honest fear brought them closer than the borrowed memories the system could restore for a price.
"Say her full name," Lissa said.
Elian did not understand at once, but Shani raised her head.
"Shani Venn," he said. "Witness to Lissa Vern. A person who cannot be erased in exchange for former memories."
Lissa's false memories did not disappear, and her former affection did not return. But she moved her hand away from the knife.
Lissa still did not trust Elian. The world had left her too much evidence against him, and every piece of it was reinforced by the smell of real smoke.
"Tell me something only my brother would know."
Elian closed his eyes.
There were many such things. Too many. The secret recess in the wall where Lissa hid candied berries. Her first riding lesson, when she had lied that she was not afraid of the horse, then spent the whole night clutching his sleeve. Mayra's voice beyond the door when their mother thought the children were asleep.
"No," Elian said. "If I start buying your trust with childhood memories, I will be placing the past above the person you are now all over again."
Lissa studied him for a long time.
The knife remained on the table, but her hand no longer rested beside it.
Lissa stood.
"I can still see the ash."
"I know."
"I still do not remember you as my brother."
"I know."
She stopped an arm's length from him. Outside the door, Miran did not intervene. Tavel gripped the blank book so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
Lissa said:
"Then do not expect my memory to decide for me. Become my brother again."
Elian had no time to answer.
She turned to Shani.
"If he tries to save me at the cost of your name again, hit him first."
"My lady…"
"That is an order."
Then Lissa looked at Elian and spoke loudly enough for those in the corridor to hear:
"I do not remember you. But I choose you as my brother anyway."
And somewhere below, beyond the throne wall, a door opened that only the blood of the line had been able to unlock before.
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