Author's note: You can skip this chapter if you are not interested in Iria's backstory.
***
"Who am I?"
A girl asked no one as the words fell softly from her lips.
She leaned against the chipped balustrade of the balcony with her bare arms trembling against the cold stone as it was the first day of Nocten, a season of winter.
She could not remember the last time she felt this kind of cold; or at least, not since she was dragged south, sold, and resold, beneath suns that never pitied her.
Below her, the kingdom sprawled like a rotting bazaars that bloomed with colors, yet none of them were hers.
She no longer remembered which dyes once painted her robes.
Gold.
Emerald-green.
Or maybe pearls woven into lilac silk.
She only remembered the sound her slippers made on marbled palace floors, the echo that used to follow her as if the palace itself whispered her name wherever she walked.
Her name…
"What is my name?"
She asked herself.
The girls in the kitchen called her 'Rat.' The guards, when they spoke at all, just called her 'You.' The merchant who owned her never bothered to ask what she was called before the brands and chains.
But once…
…Once there was a kingdom that stood beneath her feet.
She remembered fire.
Before that, she remembered music.
Flutes during morning prayers. The sound of warm rain over temple bells. Her father's voice, stern and deep, always softened when he spoke to her.
"My little Iriana," he used to say.
Or maybe it was Irnia.
She no longer knew. In fact, maybe those were not even her names and that they belonged to another girl who died long ago.
But the memories came anyway.
Step.
A memory where she walked beneath crystal chandeliers and had spun in rooms large enough to fit armies. Where she watched her reflection shimmer in golden goblets. Where she was the third princess, or… was it the fifth?
…The seventh?
But no matter which one was she, it did not matter much now.
She had brothers.
Sisters.
And a mother who used to press a kiss to her forehead every night, saying,
"May your dreams be kinder than your days."
And now she dreamed of fire.
It happened one night. Men in armor who were not bearing the royal crest and screams split the air right after they arrived.
She remembered clutching her doll too tightly.
She remembered the smoke.
The heat.
And her mother's blood dripped down the marble steps as she pushed her out the secret corridor.
"Run…"
Her mother said.
"Run and live."
Thus she lived.
She survived the nights after that.
She would run barefoot through the woods, sleep in a bramble, and drink from muddy creeks. And when the men found her— starved, fevered, half-conscious— she thought they came to save her.
But she was wrong.
She was always wrong after that.
They sold her. Shaved her head. Stripped her of the jewels sewn into her skin. Cut off her princess's braid and threw it to dogs.
Her first owner thought it funny to rename her "Little Queen."
The second just called her "Property."
The third made her clean blood from stone floors.
Her hands were no longer soft, and her feet were now calloused and cracked.
And her voice? She had not heard it in so long.
The merchant who owned her now kept her in the upper quarters. It was not an act of kindness, but just because he said her eyes reminded him of old paintings.
She did not ask what he meant.
She did not speak unless spoken to.
She did not cry anymore either, as crying was for those who believed someone might hear.
"Who am I?"
She asked again.
There was a time when the answer would have been shouted by heralds in every corner of the kingdom, where trumpets would have announced her steps, and where banners would have carried her face.
Now, she could not even remember the tune of her own lullaby.
She stayed at the balcony long after the sun rose higher.
Behind her, a girl swept the floor and a boy passed by as he carried a piece of bread through the hall. They did not speak to her.
After all, slaves did not speak to one another unless ordered.
She touched the scar at her collarbone— a crooked star that was burned into her when she tried to escape two years ago.
"Iria..."
She whispered now, as she brushed the cheeks of a lifeless body above her lap.
"...My name is Iria."
Slowly, she shut her eyes and a tear slid down.
Another.
More.
They kept on falling until they fell freely without shame.
"...A name he gave me."
She cradled his lifeless body tighter as if her arms could somehow reverse time.
As if the warmth she poured into him through her trembling chest could breathe life back into the boy she had quietly, painfully, loved.
Droplets of tears fell from her eyes.
And so on.
Until the blood on her hands finally dried.
She used to watch his skin pale. She would smile when he coughed because that meant she was needed.
She was indispensable.
Just so she could stay beside him.
Just so he would not walk too far.
Just so she would never be alone again.
It was the only way she knew how to keep anything permanent.
It was a love letter written in sickness.
"If you die… where do I go?"
She tried to stop the tears, but they kept falling, sliding down the bridge of her nose and onto his unmoving face. They looked like raindrops on porcelain.
She pressed her forehead to his and let herself sob. Ugly, broken sobs. The ones that clawed up all the way from her throat.
Until.
She no longer had a single drop of tear left to cry.
"...?"
For a moment, there was even silence as if even the wind refused to brush past through them. Thus, she looked up to the sky.
"Maybe…"
She mumbled.
"...If I go with you, they'll bury us forever."