I have waited three hundred and fourteen years.
Most of that time I spent asleep beneath the black stones of the Cairn of First Night, wrapped in the slow heartbeat of the earth, dreaming the same dream over and over: my brother's throat opening under my dagger, the crown of iron thorns sliding from his dying fingers, the taste of his blood on my tongue as I whispered the binding words that would keep me breathing long after his heart stopped.
Maevor was always the fool.
He thought the Shadow Crown gave him power.
I knew it only borrowed power, and the debt would come due.
I paid it gladly.
I let the kingdom forget me.
I let them call me the "loyal twin" who ended the tyrant and vanished in grief.
I let them bury the crown in an unmarked grave and seal the old tongue behind seven locks of silence.
While they built their pretty new dynasty on lies, I slept and grew roots into the bones of the land itself.
