Page 77 of Captive of the Stolen Empire

“You seem…distracted.” Zurina drew us to a halt.

I waved a hand in dismissal. “It’s a lot to take in. I assume you’ll give me the details later?”

“There’s a written report waiting for your attention, but that’s not it. You don’t seem like yourself.” She cocked her head as if she could see through my armor into my soul below. She couldn’t, but she knew me well. Too well, sometimes.

The corridors were empty, not a guard in sight. Most of them were in the dining hall at this hour or stationed at the doors that kept this wing off-limits to our guests.

Since we had a brief moment of privacy, I shared the thoughts that kept weighing on me. “Something about Trale felt familiar, and not from when we took the city-state. Something older, more…familial.”

Whispers of childhood had seeped to the surface—old memories that shone in a new light. It was as if Ilya’s suggestion rolled back a fog I hadn’t known lived in my mind.

It was ridiculous. Impossible. Treasonous. I waited for a laugh, a slap on the shoulder. It didn’t come. She didn’t rebuke me either. Instead, Zurina pinned me with a level look before saying, “Go on.”

Something cinched tight in my chest, a warning perhaps, but I ignored it. “I knew the room I stayed in, but I’ve never been there before. I even knew right where the whisper hole was in the wall.”

Her head tilted to the side. “Intuition?”

“Yes and no. Something more, just out of my reach. And then on the ride back…” I shook my head. She was being kind and hearing me out as I would have her. That was all. “You don’t want to hear this.”

Zurina grasped my shoulder. “I do. Continue, please.”

Please.I swallowed the knot in my throat. “I told you about the day Emperor Ryszard found me, starving in that cabin in the woods?”

She nodded.

“It’s my earliest memory, and I still remember it, but it’s different. Warped. I always felt sadness over the people who died in the cabin. My parents, I assumed. But now the memory feels fearful, and not just from the lack of food or the cold.” For so long I’d tried to shut the memory down anytime it would creep up. I shoved it deep within a box in my mind where it couldn’t bother me. After all, why should a captain of the emperor be brought low by the ghost of a memory? But after my time in Trale, I couldn’t keep it contained anymore. The memory taunted me, over and over, begging me to look at it, to remember. And when I did, when I finally sat against a tree one night and let those haunting moments play over and over, they didn’t look quite the same as I’d always thought.

“You wonder what’s true.” It wasn’t a question.

“It’s foolish. I never questioned it until recently, but something has changed.”Or Ilya has really gotten under my skin.The thought that Basilla and Stefan could be my parents tried to drown me again and I shoved it away. Far away with the other jumbled mess of things I couldn’t deal with right now.

“Anyhow, we better not keep him waiting.” I slid back into my stride down the hall.

Zurina caught up in a hurry. “Indeed. But Lucien…” Her eyes bore into mine from within her mask as she kept pace at my side. “Just because something seems odd or impossible, don’t ignore it. We can explore this together, but don’t run from your thoughts.”

As if I could.

“You’d be wise to listen to Zurina.”

I sucked in a breath at the unexpected interruption, my stride coming to an abrupt halt. I’d been so lost in thought I hadn’t heard Warren’s approach. Thank The Four it was him and not one of the others.

“How much did you hear?”

Warren looked away, trailing the metal of his gloves along the stone wall until a light screech sounded. “Not much,” he admitted, finally meeting my gaze. “I was an orphan, but you…I wonder. Memory is a tricky thing, especially ones from so long ago.” His whispered voice floated down the corridor, too wise for his cycles, as if a sagely old man spoke instead of my young friend.

“Do you remember anything from before then?” he asked. The look in Warren’s blue eyes tingled across my skin and tumbled a stone in my gut.

“Nothing.” Yet. But something—a memory almost within reach—taunted me, its frayed edges whipping like a tattered flag in a gale.

Warren nodded as if he expected that answer. Zurina cocked her head, fingers tapping on her arm as if she might ask another question, but she remained silent.

Heavy footsteps approached, invading the silence of the hall.

“We’ll talk later,” Warren promised.

I ignored the shiver that slid under my skin as Brishon rounded the corner. “Emperor Ryszard is waiting,” he said.

Zurina flicked her wrist, urging me on. The strange feeling of the moment before evaporated as if it had never been.

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