All of it, at once, the way it had come rushing back the night her memory truly returned months ago now, though she had told no one, not even the man sleeping two rooms away who believed, still, that she only remembered him.
She remembered Seron first, because he was the wound that had reopened most recently.
She remembered the boy she had loved before any of this, before the fashion house, before the empire, before she'd learned to wear her own face like a mask.
She remembered believing, foolishly, sweetly, that his softness was real. She remembered the night she discovered otherwise, seeing him with Acacia, then the meetings he thought she'd never learn about, the quiet, careful way he had fed information about her to people who wanted her ruined.
She remembered the particular, specific pain of loving someone who had never loved her.
