It was a week after the attack—a week into the endless searches for Diaz and Valkyrie Ascension, and two days after she'd left hospital—when the dream came.

It began the way it always did. She stood in a body familiar and yet foreign. Her clumsy child's form felt immeadietly strange. Unhoned and unlearned in the ways of battle. Her calluses were gone, her memory of them an echo across her skin. Familiar scars had smoothed away.

She felt a sudden sense of confinement, as though she were suffocating. She had been too young at the time to have settled into her elkor, and now she was trapped in this body.

And if that pain was not bad enough, the sight of her mother was pure

agony.

Myra forced herself to look into those forest green eyes. The memory of them had been what had drawn her to Jasper. She was like a particularly stupid moth to candle flame. Every time she loved, it left invisible scars just as painful as the ones she earned on the battlefield. Everyone she dared to care for died, one after another.

Her mother reached out her hand to her and pulled her to her feet. And then she was singing. And then they were dancing. Her curly red hair spun in the air, the colour a bright twin to Myra's wine-red braid. Ferius' wicked, impish smile was like a knife twisting into her heart. The sight of their home—an apartment near City Guard Headquarters, humble yet filled with joy—called tears to her eyes.

The same dream. It was always the same dream.

The room faded away. Their beautiful dance turned into a swift and brutal war. Sixteen-year-old Myra darted back and forth, her blade flashing as she met her mother's sword. Both were blunted of course, and her mother was too good to ever let her past her guard. Still, she swung as viciously as though she was on a battlefield. Ferius Lluvia only leaped away and laughed.

It was the hundreth time they'd done this. Myra didn't expect to win, not really. Her mother was faster and stronger than she was. But she still enjoyed testing herself against one of the best warriors of the age. She might be the highest-ranked initiate in her group, but there was something about besting her mother—even once—that had seemed the ultimate achievement. The final proof of her ability, her skill, her worthiness.

There. One flicker of hesitation from Ferius. This game of theirs was routine to her. For Myra, it was a desperate struggle. She'd swung the moment her mother had faltered and held her blade against her throat.

In the real memory, Ferius had smiled and patted her daughter on the back. Myra had boasted about it ceaselessly until her mother had dared her back to the training field and left her with several dozen bruises that lingered for weeks afterwards.

It had been a good day. A happy day. One of her most treasured memories of her mother.

But in the dream...

In the dream, Myra smiled coldly and sent her blade through her mother's throat. Ferius' face froze in a terrified scream, blood gushing from her throat. But she only withdrew the steel from her neck and wrapped her hand around her daughter's throat. Myra's body was frozen, her limbs refusing to obey her.

"You have murdered me," Ferius said. Her sweet voice—a voice that could have made her famous if she'd been chosen for a Keeper's path instead of a warrior's—turned harsh, raspy.

Unforgiving.

"Murderer!" Ferius screamed. "Murderer!"

And suddenly she was on the Isthmus, on that haunted and horrible plain as she killed her and her mother only laughed. That was real—the MindWeaver inside of her had made her force out a harsh, cruel laugh. A mockering of the wild and beautiful sound that Ferius had given so freely and Myra had treasured—

"Myra!" The voice split through the nightmare like a thunderclap, but the frayed edges remained, reality blurring. In the dream, it was Ferius who called out her name. She struggled against the nightmare's grip, trying futilely to drag herself back

into the waking world—

"Myra!" Louder this time. Loud enough to shake her out of the dream's icy hold.

Her eyes flared open. The room was dark, but she could tell she was in bed. Her blankets were twisted, as though she'd been kicking wildly in her sleep. Jasper was beside her. He had been the one shouting her name.

It was today. She'd been so focused on tracking down Diaz and Valkyrie Ascension that she'd forgotten.

She wasn't meant to be here today. In the past three years, she'd found some excuse to avoid coming home the night before. Then she'd woken up from that dream and spent the next few hours in a quiet corner, sobbing or vomiting or just sitting there in silence, staring out at some distant horizon. Once she'd composed herself, she'd rejoin the rest of the world and try not to fall apart again.

Today was meant to be no different. Especially because it was the fiftieth anniversary.

Fifty years had done little to dull the pain or the guilt she still felt for the choice she'd made that day.

"Myra," Jasper said softly. "Myra, are you okay?" He didn't ask what the dream was about. They knew by now when to push for answers and when not to. She respected that small kindness by answering honestly.

"No."

"You're always away today," Jasper said. She blinked in surprise. "I do notice some things, Myra-Kat."

"Yes." She answered weakly.

"Can you talk about it?" So carefully phrased. A calculated move in the game they played with each other, always darting around true questions. A strange twin to the war dances of duelling.

"Sometimes," she replied. A non-answer if there ever was one. Another careful part of their game.

"I asked around once," Jasper said with false casualness. "Someone said today was—"

"Don't say her name." Myra interrupted. "Please Jasper, don't say that name." She hated the brokenness, the desperation in her voice. Ferius Lluvia. She might have told him not to say it, but she shouted her mother's name within her own head, bouncing and echoing off the walls, a mad chant that penetrated every part of her.

For a while longer, they were silent. Jasper didn't dare speak; another

part of their careful, calculated dance. At last she said:

"I never went to her funeral." The words split the silence; it was strange to speak after such a long period of quiet. Not just for the past few minutes with Jasper, but for her whole life. In all this long, long fifty years, she'd all ever told two people the full, unabridged story of what had happened: Viktoria and Layla.

"I've never visited her grave." She continued. She let the shock play out on his face, let him make his own judgements before she finally said: "For the funeral, it was just too hard. And going to the grave felt...wrong. I'd think about, I even rode there a few times only to stop at the gates of the cemetery. I felt like an intruder

when I went. Despite everything, I still felt like her murderer, stepping on hallowed

ground."

He was silent, but clearly confused. So no one had given him the full story, then.

She continued anyway. "And what was the grave, anyway? It wasn't her. Her grave didn't hold anything but dirt. She'd been sent out to sea, so the grave was nothing but a tombstone. We—the valkyries—believe that instead people linger in the places and people they loved. I told myself that was why I don't go, because the grave would give me no closure and she wouldn't know I had come anyway. But in the end, I was afraid, and weak, and I wanted to avoid the pain. For the same reasons, I don't tell anyone what happened."

A pause. "I think that's why I first felt some sort of...draw to you. Both of us were our parents' murderers, But not in the way Lysandra was, not at all. Because we still grieved for them. Because we wished that we could go back and stop it all from ever happening."

"They say you killed her," Jasper said. "Not just failed to defend her on the battlefield, but actually took a blade and..."

"Who's 'they'?" She asked.

"Medea twisted the story and made it sound like it was for power, that you murdered her in cold blood. The valkyries—they say you did it as a mercy." He drew in a breath, then met her eyes. Glinting green, just like hers. "What happened, Myra?"

When she opened her mouth to speak, to tell him the whole story, she found her words turning to ashes in her mouth and her tongue too heavy to move. A muffled sob emerged from her throat instead and she left the room without turning back.

———

Myra found herself in the Council Building's garden, still shaking all over. Silent sobs still wracking her. She shouldn't have woken up in that room. Shouldn't have ever said a word.

When she was in Dorgon, she'd lost track of the days, but that dream had remained. The only way she'd been able to tell it had been five years before she was 'released'.

She'd seen that distorted moment on the training field enough times to spoil the true memory. And had reimagined her mother's death far too many times to count. Every second, every decision, she'd scrutinised a thousand times.

Like Jasper. Constantly blaming himself for what had happened. How easy it was to forgive another's crime; how much harder it was to forgive your own.

Now she thought of it, there were few days that he disappeared, too. She wondered if dreams visited him like clockwork every year as well, or if they were different each time. Maybe he slept peacefully on the anniversaries, only to dream later.

But Jasper was brave enough to share his pain, Myra reminded herself, Fifty years and you're still ignoring your mother's very existence, like a wound left to fester. It hasn't gotten any better these years, has it? Telling Viktoria helped—and the same with Layla. But you're too shut up in your own head to talk to anybody

else. He's shared everything with you. But you're still keeping secrets from him. Everything? She asked the voice in her mind.

A lot more than you've shared with him. The voice replied. She shoved it away, just like she'd shoved away anyone that cared, or asked about what had happened.

Myra had always felt young, as young as any twenty-something year-old. But today she felt old. Today she felt every one of her one hudred twelve years. As though the weight of her long and weary existence suddenly crashed down on her. She found herself asking the same questions she always did: she'd been a good warrior, but had she been a good daughter? And could she be a good queen, as well as a good friend, a good wife, a good mother?

Or would she, in trying to be all four, fail in all of them?

There's only one person who can answer that question, the wise voice within her said. It's time to stop running, Myra.

I know, she replied. But sometimes, when you run for a very, very long time, it's hard to know when to stop.

———

"I'm sorry," she told Jasper when she came back to their room, an hour after she'd left. Goddesses above, it was still early. Perhaps five or six in the morning. But he hadn't gone back to sleep. He had waited for her, even though he knew she might never come.

"You have nothing to be sorry for," he said immeadietly.

"I walked out. You deserved an explanation. Or some warning, at least." She took a deep breath. "You shared everything with me, Jasper."

"Not everything," he said, a perfect mirror to her own thoughts.

"Most things," she replied. "More things...more things than I've shown you."

"I can wait a thousand years if I have to Myra. I have you. That's enough."

"I need to tell you." She insisted. "I've been running from it too long and...I think it's time to stop."

And then she explained what had happened. Everything. She watched his face turn to pity, to sorrow and to shock.

And when it was over, she felt suddenly lighter. As though every person she told eased the weight on her shoulders.

She and Jasper watched each other for a long time after she was finished.

"It was the right thing to do," he said at last.

"It was weakness to give up." She said.

"No, it was strength. Strength to give her that mercy, Myra. Strength to choose to end her pain even though you knew the guilt it would leave you with."

"I could have saved her if I'd waited," Myra argued.

"And how many others would have died oif you had waited? Do you think your mother would want that guilt?"

"I wasn't strong afterwards," Myra said. "Whatever you say about what happened, I was not strong after she died."

This was the part she'd been avoiding. The part she hated to talk about. The part, that, in the end, caused her the most shame. Jasper was silent, but not a judgemental silence. An invitation. To keep talking. To let the last weight on her shoulders lessen.

"As soon as Viktoria had recovered enough from the plague to lead, I abandoned the army. I just stopped showing up at the war councils. Stopped caring about any of it.

"I spent every day searching for the one who did it to her. I went dark, Jasper. Like I was after Miras fell. Every elf I fought as I carved my bloody path towards him...I enjoyed it. Their dying breaths. Their screams. I relished it, because of everything they'd done to my mother."

A pause. "And then I found him. I found the MindWeaver that did it, and I captured him. But you see, he was important enough that his Lord bargained for his life. His Lord, who'd give him the orders to torture and enslave my mother." Myra unleashed a shaky breath.

She was afraid. Afraid of telling him this because of how he might look at her afterwards. She had never told Layla what had happened after everything had gone down. She hadn't even told Viktoria, though the queen had probably heard about it anyway.

"I sent that Lord's wife's body back as my answer, even though it was a good trade and I should have made it. Then I sent his son. And afterwards, I just killed him."

Old, bitter rage filled her heart and eyes as she remembered him—him, and his son Icarus. Julian's father.

Maybe his death had been what had made Julian so hateful and twisted.

Maybe when she'd driven a dagger into his father's heart, she'd doomed Talia as well.

Because it had been a dagger. Not a sword. Oh no, she'd wanted to be up close to him when he died. Wanted to feel him dying, to listen his gasping final breaths.

Jasper was still silent. Unmoving. No condemnation yet, though she knew it was coming. She might as well rip off the bandage.

"And then I tortured the MindWeaver who did what he did to her for three days straight. I didn't leave my tent for the whole time. And when I shipped him back to his city-state, the last of the four bodies I sent them, he was in five pieces and barely recogniseable."

There was a long silence. Those hazy days after her mother had died had been her at her worst. Her darkest. The very bottom of herself.

She'd stopped caring. About her own survival, about her country, about every rule she'd sworn she'd never cross. She had let the monster caged within her rise to the surface. It had taken a long while to rein it in again. And even then, every time she'd submerged into the darkest, most vengeful parts of herself, she didn't emerge as the person she'd once been. No, with each time, she didn't fully returned to what she'd been before. She never would.

She looked up into Jasper's eyes. She'd shown him the worst part of herself to him. She felt more bare than if she were naked.

"You're not a monster," he said. "I've met them before, Myra, and you are not

one. You are nothing like Medea. Nothing like Diaz. Nothing like anyone who follows them."

"I know that," she said. "But what I did...it was wrong and cruel and monstrous, Jasper. And the worst bit is that sometimes I don't regret it."

"Myra—"

"I tortured a man for three burning days and nights, Jasper. And I enjoyed every second of it."

"Are you actually trying to convince me to hate you?" Jasper said, an echo of her words to him years ago, when he'd still been tormenting himself because of the way he betrayed his rebellion. "You did a bad thing, Myra. A bad thing to bad people. You did it when you were at your worst and they'd just forced you to kill your own mother. But I can forgive you, whether or not you've forgiven yourself or whether you want to be forgiven at all. I still love you, and you are still worthy of love, Myra. Never doubt it. I know Ferius didn't."

She wrapped her arms around him tightly and did not let go. She let him anchor her, let him wipe her tears away. And for the first time in a very long while, one of the many burdens she held on her shoulders started to weigh just a little less.