Easy words to hear, harder to believe. Cyrus remembered his trips to the market with his father. All eyes would be upon them both, even if the crowds pretended not to notice the royal family while they bartered and bargained. He was taller now, older, his skin tanned from countless hours outside with Stasia and his hair grown long to help hide his face. Could those years truly make so much of a difference? He slipped his mask underneath his shirt and vowed to be ready in case they didn’t.

When the carriage rolled to a halt, Thorda offered a scrap of paper he pulled out from a pocket of his robe. The guard who approached took it, read for a few seconds, and then handed it back with a bow of his head.

“Enjoy your time in Vallessau,” the soldier said in the imperial tongue. That was it. No other inspections. The armored man didn’t even peer through the window to check the other passengers. The carriage rolled through the gate, passing underneath an archway built of faded white stone along the base, the upper half cut from painted pine. Where once hung a plaque containing the Lion and the Butterfly in dance now hung a gray flag bearing the two red hands clenched in prayer that symbolized the Everlorn Empire.

Cyrus watched the city roll past him outside his window. He tried to believe he was coming home, a liberator to his people. If he were honest with himself, he felt neither. No, what he felt was strangely alien to a city in which he had spent the first sixteen years of his life. Even the language they spoke suddenly seemed awkward. Thanese, of course. They were speaking Thanese, whereas he had spent the last two and a half years reading and conversing with Thorda in the imperial tongue. Was that all it took to feel estranged from his former life? A mere few years?

“Don’t be nervous,” Mari said. “We’re all here with you. We’ll make sure things go off without a hitch, I promise!”

Carry him if you must.

“Thanks,” he said, wishing he shared her optimism.

The carriage arrived at the home he had woken up within all those years ago, when Rayan had smuggled him out of chaos following Lycaena’s execution. It was two stories, and even from the outside one could tell it would be cozy and well furnished. The donkeys pulling the carriage slowed to a halt, and both Stasia and the driver hopped off the outside seat to begin unloading luggage. Cyrus exited, gathered his own meager belongings packed into a single sack cloth, and carried them inside. Stasia cheerfully told him which room would be his, and so he climbed the stairs, passed the first door, and entered at the second.