Finally, sometime between the dead of night and the early morning when the lantern had burned low enough that they could only see each other, their kisses slowed and they lay content in each other’s arms.

And finally, Aurora knew the time had come.

Her head was laid against his chest, his heartbeat steady and sure in her ear.

“And now the world goes on,” she murmured.

He stiffened slightly, but kept his arm tucked around her. “So it does.”

She didn’t want to, but Aurora sat up and scooted off the bed to stand. Her nerves were back in full force, and she could not lie there on the bed with him and get out the words she needed to.

She walked to the room’s one tiny window and stared out for a moment. She could just see the top of the palace dome over the neighboring buildings, gleaming in the moonlight. She thought about her mother in there somewhere, ill and believing her dead.

She was alive. That was something. But for how long? How sick was she?

Aurora had the best of intentions when she left, but something along the way had gone terribly wrong. And if her mother had never received her letter from Nova explaining the truth of her supposed kidnapping, it likely had been wrong from the very start.

“I do not know where to begin,” she finally confessed.

She heard the bed creak as he moved, but she did not let herself look at him, too afraid she would lose her nerve.

“Start with the simplest truth.”

The simplest truth. She could do that. She took one last look at the palace in the distance, and then forced herself to face him.

Then she confessed to her first lie.

“My name is not Roar. It’s Aurora.”

We are not free when ruled by fear.

—leaflet dispersed by the rebellion

7

Aurora.

It was a pretty name. But something about it set Kiran’s heart racing.

Aurora.

“Why lie about your name?” he asked.

Roar—no, Aurora winced. “It’s not completely a lie,” she answered. “Most of my life I’ve gone by Rora. Roar was just … a clean slate.”

He could understand that. After all, he had spent half his life going by a name he hated simply because it was where he had grown up.

“And why did you need a clean slate? What were you running from?” And more importantly … was she in danger by being back in this place that she’d once seen fit to run from?

She took a deep, almost ominous breath and said, “I was supposed to be married.”

He was standing and halfway across the room before he’d even realized it. He made himself stop. His heart was hammering, the sound in his ears rivaling any storm he had ever faced.