Rhais took his last breath in the quiet of the night.
There were no final words, no dramatic farewell-only silence deepening, air no longer moving in his lungs, light fading from his eyes.
Eirran stood at the threshold of his father's chamber, fists clenched, watching as the healers cleared away the last salves and oils.
Now.
Now you may open the scroll.
He took the parchment, but his fingers would not obey. There was no anger, no thirst for vengeance-only a dull, spreading ache that swelled inside him like black water.
He set the scroll down unopened.
---
The Temple of Death crowned the highest terrace of Win'Tarra, open to the winds and the heavens. Thousands of Ilari gathered on the surrounding balconies; wings folded in silent mourning.
Eirran stood beside Gioden, both clad in white lliaths. Before the sandalwood pyre, heavy with incense, the Supreme Priest raised his voice:
"Ellevath, receive the soul of our brother. Carry him on Your winds into Eternal Light."
Fariah stood motionless; the widow's white blazed fiercely in the sun. She did not weep, since Ilari had no tears, but Eirran saw her hand tremble as she cast the first torch.
Flames roared, then steadied into a solemn blaze. Smoke rose in black columns; the scent of burning wood and spice filled the air.
Eirran watched fire kiss his father's face for the last time. His throat closed; something heavy coiled in his chest - not grief, not rage, but something complex and unnamed.
And through the smoke, through the blur that welled in his eyes yet never fell, he saw her.
Noemi.
She stood in the fire, dark hair streaming, lips parted as if calling to him, hands outstretched. A heartbeat only, a trick of light and shadow... And his heart stopped.
Come.
Find out.
The wind shifted, smoke unraveled, and she was gone.
The rest of the ceremony blurred. In the palace, Eirran withdrew to his chambers. The scroll still lay untouched.
He sat by the window. Over the city, the smoke of the pyre still drifted. Slowly, he drew out the parchment.
Now he was alone.
Now he could find out.
The seal of the Fifth House gleamed under his trembling hand.
Not while I live.
Rhais... Father... no longer lived. That feeling he had no name for uncoiled again. Or perhaps it had too many names.
Grief. Anger. Love, perhaps.
Some sentiments had roots deeper than sorrows.
He set the scroll down. Closed his eyes.
Not yet.
Let the truth wait until the smoke cleared.
---
The sun had risen high when, at last, he found the strength.
Seated at his table, he held the scroll in shaking hands. Sunlight fell across the sealed wax; the crossed arrows of the House gleamed like blood. He split the seal with a single stroke of the knife.
The parchment cracked louder than he expected. Inside he found official records from Selavetia: lists, transactions, accounts. His fingers darted to the date Rhais had named: two weeks after Noemi's death.
And there it was:
Paid to Mirian Foyd, widow of Ulm in the Province of Selavetia: 500 gold pieces for the care of a female newborn. Annual payment of 200 silver for nurture and upbringing.
The words wavered before his eyes.
A female newborn.
Five hundred gold.
Annual stipend.
The world tilted.
Father had told him the child had died with Noemi.
His hands fisted the parchment.
Eight years.
Eight years he had believed his father. Eight years he had carried emptiness and guilt. And all that time...
She had lived.
"Stillborn, if you must know. A girl. Given to the sea with her mother."
Rhais's voice echoed. He remembered the howl, the near-physical assault on his father. He remembered the grief that drove him back into Antarrila-purpose, pain, vengeance against those for whom Noemi had spied, those who had thrown her into the prison he had failed to break into.
And while he rained down "divine wrath," his daughter breathed.
Somewhere in that wretched Selavetia, he had a daughter.
He sank to his knees; the records scattered, his hands empty. Breath would not come.
He lied to you.
All this time.
Your child lives. All the blood you spilled, all your regrets - it was for nothing.
And then came the rage. Hot, black, merciless.
Wings nearly striking the walls, he stormed through the corridors of the Fifth House. In the atrium he found Gioden, dressed in splendor: indigo lliath, golden sash of Sechvenn, prepared for inauguration.
"Eirran?" His gaze flicked across his brother's face.
"You knew."
Silence, as brief as a breath. Enough. Truth trembled in his bearing.
"You knew!" Eirran seized his robe, slammed him against the wall. "You knew he had lied to me!"
"For the last two years," Gioden replied calmly. "Father told me when his health worsened."
"And you kept silent."
"Yes."
Eirran shoved him back. "I'm going to find her."
A cold smile. "Her? You mean that bastard?"
"My child. My daughter."
"Don't be a fool." Gioden's voice carried the tone of a lesson. "Half-breeds are not our children - by nature, faith, or law. They are mudborn, like the humans who birthed them. The fact that they are indistinguishable from their human parents testifies to that."
"I know what the doctrine says," Eirran hissed. "But do you know what's ironic?" His voice dropped. "You, preaching purity to my face; the same Gioden who dismissed servants when they 'mysteriously conceived.' We know about Cara for certain."
Gioden's smile vanished. "There is no proof. The words of human women are worthless."
"So long as you don't acknowledge your bastards, they don't exist, right?"
Gioden shrugged. "The law doesn't acknowledge them either. And I am not the kind of man who wears shame as an ornament."
Eirran's fist landed true. Gioden staggered, touched the blood on his lip.
"I will forgive you this insult," he said dryly, "given your distraction."
"I'm going to find her. And you cannot forbid me from taking her to Astochia."
"I am now Sechvenn of the Fifth House. All military might in the realm answers to me." The smile returned, sharper. "But I'll allow you to take her. Play with your pet, if it pleases you."
Nausea surged.
Gioden stooped, picked up one of the papers, and handed it back. "Two conditions. Keep her out of my sight-and out of Win'Tarra. And, only because I know how hot-headed you can be, do not even think about giving her our name."
Eirran turned.
"Eirran," Gioden called once more. In his eyes: no love, no care, perhaps regret. "You will not love her when you see her. She is not Ilari. Not yours. One cannot love something so different from oneself as their own."
Eirran gave no reply. He walked away.
Behind him: "None of them are worth remembering."
Eirran did not hear. He had a child waiting. And eight years to make up for.
---
The soft click of a lock hushed the silence of Gioden's chambers.
Alina V'Ahderra sat by the window, reading a doubly sealed mining report. Her lliath slate-grey, gold threads discreet, posture flawless.
"He struck you, didn't he?"
"I see the servants gossip faster than the wind." He shrugged, wiping blood from his lip.
"You didn't answer."
"Yes. He spent his pain in a blow, as the weaker do."
"Has he learned?"
"Yes. He opened the scroll. He knows of the child."
A long silence.
"So the Selavetian child survived."
"You didn't ask if it survived-you hoped it hadn't."
"For your sake. For the House's." Her gaze slid to the map. "If it lives... if Eirran knows..."
"He has told no one but me."
She rose, tall and poised, her stare hard as in council. "Does Fariah know?"
"No. He hid it from her as well."
"Of course. She'd have strangled him with her own hands."
Silence.
Her finger traced Selavetia on the map. "A half-breed."
"A girl. Eight, maybe nine."
"What will he do?"
"He said he's going to her."
"Of course. He still believes redemption comes by personal deed," she whispered. "The question is-will we let him?"
"He cannot acknowledge her. Law, faith, honor-all forbid it. Perhaps he will keep her as a ward. A shadow."
"Enough to alter how he is seen. Enough for Antarrila to whisper of 'justice.' Symbols do not ask what they are."
"That child is a mistake," Gioden said coldly. "Not Ilari. Earthbound. Born of sin and deceit."
"I know." No contempt - only weariness. "But if he makes her a symbol, it will not matter."
"My plan?" He poured wine. "Nothing. Let him take her. As long as he keeps her away from the capital."
"And you think it will remain so?"
"Eirran might be emotional, but he's hardly stupid."
She looked out toward the towers, where bells still tolled for Rhais. "Nothing is more dangerous than a man who thinks he can atone."
"You speak as if you regret he won't fight."
She smiled briefly, sharply. "I don't regret it. I only want to know how many heads your family tragedy will cost us."
She left quietly.
---
Eirran half-walked, half-flew through the corridors; his wings flared and folded in nervous rhythm. Gioden's words tolled in his mind like iron bells:
You will not love her. She is not Ilari. Not yours.
He stopped before a high window facing north, toward Selavetia. In the glass-his reflection: pale face like mother-of-pearl, white curls, eyes abyssal.
What will I find there?
A memory cut through: Noemi in the forest by the Astochian palace, holding the silver rattle he had given her. "Why?" she had asked. Then he had not known she already carried his child. Not known she would die in a prison cell while he bargained his life away.
"Because one day..." he had faltered. "Maybe..."
The rattle now lay in his top desk drawer.
In the reflection he saw his wings. Symbols of holy connection to Ellevath. And in his mind, words from the Book of the Condemned: An Ilari shall not lie with a human... if such sin bears fruit, let it be cast away, wingless and without mercy...
He knew what he would find in Ulm: a wingless girl. With Noemi's dark hair. A child rejected by God and Law.
It should have mattered. It did not.
The purest part of himself and Noemi lived inside her, untouched by deceit and sorrow.
His wings spread and struck the glass; the window shuddered. From the distance, trumpets blared announcing Gioden's inauguration. He did not listen. He turned toward the terrace.
---
The wind carried salt and the scent of a distant storm. Eirran stood on the balcony, fingers locked on the marble rail. Behind him waited Keth, human eyes steady and gentle.
"I assume you've heard."
"Servants whisper," Keth admitted.
"My child... the child I had with..." his breath caught "...She lives."
Keth said nothing.
"Have you ever seen a half-breed?"
"I have. At least three dozen of them labor in Astochia's docks. In markets, taverns, even in palaces, although rarely at the forefront. You see them every day, but you do not notice. They pass as human."
"How does one recognize them, then?"
"One must know what to look for." He met Eirran's gaze. "Eyes like yours - large, dark, fathomless. And the skin... sometimes it catches a faint pearlescent sheen under certain light. Like a candle behind thin cloth. Only at the right angle."
My daughter has my eyes, he thought. He remembered Noemi smiling the night she confessed she no longer feared his wings. It had taken months for her to stop flinching when he spread them, afraid to profane them with touch.
"What if she fears me when she sees me?" His wings folded close.
Keth hesitated. "If I may speak plainly... the barrier will be difficult. She grew in Selavetia, where Antarrila..." He stopped; smoke of burned villages flickered in his eyes. "...kept order following the Uprising." Keth weighed his words. "It is very likely she will fear you. Or, at best, admire you. Not as a father, but as a deity. Which, I fear, is worse."
"I cannot be a father to her if she fears me."
"I don't know how to be father to a half-breed," Keth said softly. "Nor how to repay eight lost years. I only know you lit the lanterns each year."
The silence stretched.
"I saw you on the anniversary of Noemi's death," he went on. "You lit them for the child as well. For the 'dead' girl you never held."
Every lantern. Every prayer to the wind. Every name sent skyward. A lie.
But she was not dead.
"Prepare the ship," he said, voice trembling yet resolute. "We are going to find her."
Keth bowed. A tragic smile touched his lips. "As you wish, my lord."
Eirran remained on the balcony as the sun sank behind the towers, bathing the city in blood-red light. In his hand, he held a lantern.
He had mourned her as a ghost.
Now he would find her as a girl.
What he was about to do was madness.
He knew that.
But they had already taken everything he loved once.
Dragged it into silence.
Tossed it into the sea.
This time, he would not let go.
Not for doctrine.
Not for blood.
Not even for God.