Euphelia returned to the Sylfera estate with her heart pounding against her ribs.
The moment she stepped into her bedroom, the air felt wrong—too still, too heavy. Sitting on her bed was her mother.
Eleanor Roselynn Sylflera.
She rose slowly, her gaze sharp enough to cut. Each step she took toward Euphelia felt deliberate, controlled fury barely restrained. When she stopped at the doorway, there was nowhere left to retreat.
"Where were you?" Eleanor demanded.
The guards had searched the entire estate. Her name had echoed through the halls, unanswered. Euphelia's maid, Rose, had lied—and lies were dangerous things in noble houses.
The weight of it crushed Euphelia. In her hunger for freedom, she had dragged an innocent soul into danger.
Eleanor turned away without another word and seated herself in the small parlor adjoining the bedroom. She motioned for Euphelia to sit.
Euphelia obeyed instantly, her body rigid, hands trembling despite her effort to remain composed. Her thoughts spiraled around one fear alone—What will happen to Rose?
Eleanor's voice was calm now, which frightened Euphelia more than anger ever could. She warned her never to flee the Sylfera estate again. One day, the fragile mask Euphelia wore would crack, and when it did, the commoners she trusted would sell her out without hesitation.
Something snapped.
Euphelia rose, her voice shaking with fury. She said not everyone was rotten. That most nobles she knew only smiled at her because of her blood and her name. Their kindness was poison wrapped in silk. They were far more vile than the people her mother despised.
Silence fell.
Eleanor studied her daughter, eyes unreadable. For a long moment, Euphelia thought she had gone too far.
Then Eleanor sighed.
She stood, crossed the room, and pulled Euphelia into her arms. The embrace was firm, almost desperate.
"I am glad," Eleanor said quietly, "that you did not grow into something hollow."
She warned Euphelia again—never leave without permission. Not because she wished to cage her, but because the world beyond their walls devoured the careless. Eleanor admitted she wanted Euphelia to taste a freedom she herself had been denied, but freedom always demanded a price.
At last, she revealed the truth.
Rose had been sent to the market. Apples.
Relief struck Euphelia so hard her knees nearly gave out. She clung to her mother, whispering thanks. Eleanor kissed her cheek once—brief, restrained—and left the room without looking back.
The silence she left behind felt colder than before.
---
Back at the refuge camp, Kael asked Russell a question that had been eating at him.
Why did he believe Euphelia came from the palace?
Russell explained quietly that commoners' prana was always imperfect—tainted by sickness, hunger, and the cruelty of their environment. Euphelia's prana was untouched. Clear. Almost unnatural in its purity.
Kael admitted he had felt it too the first time he saw her. A strange pull. A pressure in the air. He had dismissed it as imagination.
"She could be a servant," Kael said. "Or the child of someone important."
Neither of them truly believed it.
Russell stared up at the sky, pale and indifferent, thinking of Renold—his friend, Kael's father, long since swallowed by war. After a while, he said only, "Perhaps."
---
Inside the tent, the smell of blood and herbs lingered.
Carlos was replacing Damon's bandages, his movements careful and practiced. Lina sat on a thin mattress near the ground, humming a broken melody with no words—just sound, as if language itself had failed her.
Kael asked Carlos to teach him how to change the wound dressing.
Damon apologized.
Kael clenched his jaw. He told his brother it was not his fault. That cruelty existed because some people were born empty, and Damon had done nothing wrong.
But the anger inside Kael had nowhere to go.
His hands trembled as he fed Damon mushroom soup, watching his brother drink like someone far older than his years. Kael told stories afterward—tales their mother once whispered in the dark. When Damon and Lina finally slept, Kael slipped out the back of the tent, his decision already made.
He would find a dryad healer himself.
Responsibility was a weight he carried alone. Euphelia was kind—too kind—but kindness did not absolve him of his duty as a brother.
---
Outside, Carlos found Russell seated beneath the open sky, unmoving.
"The children are strong," Carlos said. "Closer than most families after all they've lost."
Russell nodded. Kael bore everything—fear, rage, responsibility—without complaint. He refused to lean on others, as if needing help was a sin.
Russell did not believe in gods. No divine hands had reached down when villages burned or children bled. Yet he made a vow in the silence—to remain, to protect, to endure.
Not for promises made to the dead.
But for love.
Carlos announced he was leaving the borders to gather herbs. Russell warned him to be careful. Carlos smiled and lifted his thumb, though they both knew smiles did little beyond the walls.
As a registered herbalist of Petonia, Carlos carried both badge and prana mark beneath his shoulder—symbols that granted passage through inner borders. Beyond them lay lands where permission could be revoked with a single word.
Where danger waited.
Nyphelyms haunted the outer edges of Petonia, patient and merciless, watching for weakness.
And weakness, in times like these, was everywhere.