Silence returned to the bedchambers. Coris freed Meya from his embrace after a kiss of gratitude, and she succumbed instead to the soft arms of the goose-down bed as her breathing slowed.

Coris lay on his back by her side, his eyes closed, his bare chest heaving. Meya reckoned the lad would just nod off the way he did yesterday, but he rolled over to face her,

"Ari, I'm so sorry."

He said softly, reminding Meya of the score they must settle. A dull pang of hurt pummeled her heart. She ignored it.

"For what?" Meya retorted coolly, "Lying to me about The Axel, or choosing Zier over my antidote?"

"Does it make any difference?" Coris's tired voice was labored by guilt.

"Of course it does!" Meya snapped, incredulous. Coris recoiled.

"I have a brother myself," Three, actually, "If you did it purely to protect Zier, I don't blame you one whit, but if it's for The Axel, I can't possibly decide until you tell me what that stupid Axel really is!"

Coris fell silent, his eyes downcast. He clenched his hand on the pillow, twisting the fabric in his bony grasp.

"So, which is it? The Axel or your brother?" Meya prodded, impatient. His eyes rose to meet hers. His parched lips stretched into a wry, bitter grin.

"I—I don't know." He smiled, laughed even as his eyes cried. Meya's heart broke for him despite herself.

"With The Axel inside Zier, with them inseparable like this, I couldn't even tell anymore."

Coris trembled. He tugged at the bedcovers as if he longed for something to hold onto.

"The things I've done. The choices I've made. The lives I've traded." He whispered, shaking his head, his eyes dead and unseeing,

"There are times I'd give anything to know what they're for. I'm afraid I'll drop dead one day never knowing why, but I'm afraid to know the truth, too. I might know I've been making the wrong decisions my entire life, sacrificed so much for something not worth protecting."

Tears fell onto the pillowcase, glinting in the firelight. Coris rubbed his cheek against the fabric to dry them. Meya's fury calmed as she witnessed his dilemma. She had heard her unspoken voice echoing to her in his words, had seen her hidden wounds reflected in the pain in his eyes. She wasn't that different from him. There were times, several times, she wondered if she should've just done nothing, chosen nothing, instead of trying and failing and suffering. But, in the end, she couldn't help choosing to do something, to try nevertheless. Even as nobody else did.

Meya moved her hand hesitantly to cover his, caressing the cold skin stretched taut over his knuckles with the pad of her thumb.

"The people of Crosset believed the Crosset Famine was brought about by a little peasant girl," she said softly. Coris's weary eyes slid to her.

"She was ten years old. She worked in the fields back when farming was forbidden by law for women. Her family has four daughters. They were struggling. She wanted to help. She didn't believe it would anger Freda. She wanted to prove a point. Well, apparently, it did. Hundreds of people died in that famine, after all."

Coris's eyes widened at the horrific tale. Still, Meya's face remained dead, her haunting eyes staring ahead as she recounted her shameful past. After a deep sigh, she turned back to Coris,

"What do you see? A noble little girl who wants to help her family? An arrogant heretic who wants to challenge Freda? Or the murderer of hundreds of villagers?"

Coris avoided her eyes as he considered it.

"I believe that in every minute of our lives lies a choice. Even when it seems you can't do anything, that you don't have a choice to make, you actually still do. To do nothing, or to do something."

Coris met her gaze. Meya stared back, unwavering.

"Some choices are well thought out, others not so much. Some are made with good intentions, some with bad. We only look at the end. We forget about the person behind the beginning. You asked if it makes any difference. For me, yes, it does."

Meya's gaze softened as she smiled sadly at Coris,

"Sometimes, we don't have the courage to make our own choices. And sometimes, we don't have the strength to live with the choices we made. But, we're still alive. We can keep trying not to hate ourselves that much. You chose to risk your life to save me, when you could have chosen nothing. I already thank you for that. So, don't be so hard on yourself. I'm sorry."

Meya breathed as she squeezed his hand gently. His gray eyes brimmed with painful gratitude for a moment before it was replaced with his usual empty calm. He pulled his hand away.

"Perhaps you shouldn't have been so generous with me, Ari." He unfurled that sad, empty smile again, the one that infuriated Meya the most. He shook his head, his eyes brimming with guilt,

"I would never be the man you could rely on. The one you could trust in, and trust your life in his grasp. The one who would always make you his highest priority."

Silence descended between them as Meya digested the truth she'd already known since he chose Zier over her antidote, perhaps for as long as she could remember. Her lips stretched to form a mocking smile.

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"I've always been useless and worthless." Especially once you've factored in who I really am, "So I've learned not to expect anyone to protect me. Or remember me. Or choose me over everything else."

Coris's eyes widened. He looked ready to argue, so Meya plowed on, laughing bitterly,

"We've known each other mere days, but Zier and The Axel, they've been there all your life. Even if you didn't come rescue me at all, I'd understand."

Meya shrugged. Her eyes wandered towards the open window. She sighed longingly,

"But it does make me wonder, what I'd have to do to make myself matter, the way Zier and The Axel mattered to you," she mused, a wistful smile glazed on her lips, "I'm not angry. Or disappointed. I'm just—I just wished I knew what to do."

All the stars in the night sky were fallen warriors who had helped Freda banish Chione from Neverend Heights. They all had names because they were useful, and generation after generation, people repeated those names to their children, so they would never be forgotten.

How useful must she become? What must she do before she could etch her name across the night sky, like the silver ribbon of Freda's River, and make sure no one forgot her existence?

"You're not worthless, Arinel. Nobody is. Don't ever think otherwise."

Coris's quiet, gentle voice drifted through her reverie. A voice so familiar, echoing as if from lost days of old,

Don't ever think otherwise.

Meya froze as the voice echoed in her head, ringing with the same voice from the past.

"You're worth more than a pig, or simply your mother's Song, Meya. Don't ever think otherwise."

As the echoes faded, Meya heard more voices. No, one voice, to be exact. Unbidden, unknown memories flashed before her eyes. Laughter and tinny talking voices. His cold fingers intertwined with hers as they whirled round and round in a clumsy dance.

"Please! Let me hear your Song!"

"I know a jolly Hadrian song. And I'd be honored if you would give me a dance."

"I'll wait for the day you're ready to sing for the world to hear. But until then—"

"It's our little secret." Her lips moved of their own accord, possessed by memories until now she hadn't realized existed.

"Arinel?"

The voice of the present jerked her back to reality. Like a bandage from a weeping wound, Meya withdrew from the maelstrom. At Coris's puzzled look, she cast about for excuses,

"N-Nothing—I just—" Meya stammered, barely hearing her voice as her heart thundered in her ears, "You—you sound like someone—"

Tamping down her bursting excitement, Meya avoided his eyes. It might have been just a coincidence. Or a mistake. After all, her memories of the Emerald-Stone-Boy were little more than bits and pieces.

Yet, her irrational half nagged her. It recognized Coris's voice. It was the same voice. Hoarse, cracking, gentle. Against her better judgment, she caved in,

"Coris, have you ever been to Crosset? Apart from your kidnapping, I meant."

Coris blinked, taken by surprise, then he gathered himself, nodding.

"Once, when I was fifteen." Meya's fingernails dug into her palms as she clenched her fists. Three years ago. The evidence mounts.

"It was that time our fathers reaffirmed the marriage was still going ahead, but I wasn't with them. That was Simon pretending to be me."

"I see. Where were you, then?" Meya played along. Coris frowned, his eyes swiveling up as he sifted through his memories.

"At the Town Square. It was the May Fest. I remember because Simon was griping about coming all the way to Crosset but not getting to see Marinia Hild."

"So, you were there to see Marin...ia?" Meya remembered just in time to add the last syllable. Coris's frown deepened as his eyes zeroed in on her instead.

"No, I was looking for a girl, but not Marinia. A peasant girl saved my life in the Famine. She helped me escape the kidnappers and guided me to Truncale. All young women would be at the May Fest; I reckoned she'd be there, too."

Of course—all young women, except me.

Meya blinked, crestfallen. He was at the Fest to look for someone else. It had gotten nothing to do with her in her pigsty. She was imagining things, as usual.

"And did you find her?" Meya forced her voice through the lump of disappointment in her throat. She hoped she sounded innocently curious.

Coris's eyes didn't leave hers, his face unreadable in the firelight.

"I didn't. But I believe I will. Very soon."

He trailed away into a whisper. His eyes traveled to Meya's left arm, to that ugly, sunken scar that looked like a dull carving knife had scooped out her flesh.

Meya covered the grotesque mark from view with her hand. Last night, she'd already told him she was bitten by a nasty viper. She just hadn't told him it was a water snake, and she was elbow-deep in paddy water, planting wheat shrubs. What was he still hung up about?

His lingering stare sent icy worms wriggling down Meya's spine. She forced out a laugh, shrugging,

"Well, I'm Lady Crosset. You could've said something. Father and I could've helped you with the search."

She slapped his arm playfully. Coris responded in kind with a grin that didn't reach his calm, calculating eyes. He tilted his head,

"Why did you ask, by the way?"

"Nothing. Like I said, you—you just reminded me of someone I thought I'd met."

The lie tasted bitter in her throat, but she was at a loss for what to do. She couldn't remember the boy's face. She had no way to know for sure if Coris was the kind soul whose promised return she had awaited for three years.

Oh, well. It didn't seem likely, anyway. What are the odds, after all?

Worse, Coris didn't seem to remember anything, either.

"Who?"

His question rammed the painful truth even deeper home. Meya pored into his beautiful, mesmerizing silvery eyes, trying to find an angle from which they might seem familiar, but discovered none.

It was exasperating. The Emerald-Stone Boy had been so important to her. Why had she forgotten all but echoes of his voice and scraps of disjointed images? It had barely been three years.

Meya smiled apologetically, shaking her head,

"Dunno. I must have been imagining things. It felt like I've heard that before, but it's just that, a feeling."

Meya shrugged it off. Ignoring Coris's puzzled look, she snuggled into his chest. His cold, frail arms enveloped her, his feeble heartbeat drummed on her cheek as his words echoed in her head.

You're not worthless, Arinel.

Meya clenched her trembling hands as her heart writhed.

Yes, Arinel would never be worthless. People were willing to die and kill for her just because of the name she was born with, but Meya wasn't Arinel and never could be.

She mustn't forget that everything Coris had done for her wasn't actually hers. They were for Arinel, his beloved Ari, who didn't exist. She mustn't be carried away.

Because, someday—perhaps soon, too—this too-good-to-be-true dream would end. When Coris learned she was nothing but a peasant girl, driven out of the family that no longer had a place for her, would she still be worth a Latt in his eyes? Who knew what Coris would do after all the lies she'd told him? The danger she'd put him through? The priceless lives she'd cost him?

The best alternative would be to ask Arinel to sort the matter out with Coris and go home to Crosset. Sure, she'd have to face Dad's wrath instead, but Dad probably would let her live, at the least. Maybe. Provided he never learned she was no longer a maiden.

A sudden wave of tiredness overcame her at the thought. Her eyelids felt heavy as lead.

Tomorrow. She'd figure it all out tomorrow. For now, she simply wanted to rest in his lifeless arms, lull herself to sleep with his empty words of hope.

You're not worthless. You're not worthless. You're not worthless.