Why would she do that? Why would she change like that? Had she turned into a different person so suddenly? I couldn’t make sense of anything. When I took the ancestor broth, which made the image appear of her helping the pirates capture your mother, something cold entered my heart. I’d held on to the thought that my mother was good once and had turned bad. But this image shattered that. Perhaps she’d been evil all along and had only had that one tender moment with my father before revealing her true self. It made me sick.

I tell you these memories because I found out more information today about that image. Maiven said that my mother didn’t willingly help the pirates capture your mother and chain her to the ship’s deck. Maiven knew her! My mother was friends with your mother. Reza and Asha have similar images of their parents doing the same thing, but they didn’t know what the images meant. Maiven told us that nearly all of the black-eyed children had been taken away by then—they were our parents, obviously—and were forced by the king and the other usurpers to kidnap their friend Nadia, your mother, and deliver her to the pirates. The usurpers threatened the lives of their parents if they didn’t obey.

I’m not sure why it’s so important for me to tell you this right now. I know you never blamed me or held ill feelings for me because of what we thought had happened. But I still felt strange about it. And I miss you. Writing this makes me feel nearer to you. It makes me want to share more with you—everything with you.

He stopped writing, his pen poised over the last phrase. Was it too much? Should he be telling her just how strongly he felt about her? He wasn’t sure he liked how vulnerable that made him feel. He also wasn’t sure she felt the same. He knew they had a special connection. He knew she liked him. But they were both very young, though based on their experiences, they’d been through more than most adults. Somehow that aged them in his mind. And the torture and death-defying feats they’d performed together were enough to cement them for life. Rohan felt like he could tell Thisbe anything.

Now that she was gone and he didn’t know where she was or if she was safe, he threw his fear of vulnerability out the window and decided to be reckless. He wasn’t going to hold back. What if he never saw her again? He continued writing, pouring his feelings into it.