Emberlin reached the crossroads before the court's rider did. Lilly was already mounted, Morin on her back, her horse turned toward the capital. She would not look at him. "You know what I have to say," she said. "The leak was contained. Not by you. Lycoris holds it now." She gathered her reins. "The court will hear you failed. I can't dress it up." "Then don't ride." He grabbed her stirrup. "Give me a day." "You've had your day." She was his friend. That was why she said it to his face. "I serve the crown first. You taught me that." She kicked the horse and left him in the mud. Emberlin stood in the cold and did the sum. Once Lilly reached the court, his name was finished. They would not accept him as the queen's kin. They would hunt him as the servant who lost her secret. His face was known in the royal city. He needed a new one. He had heard of a witch in these mountains. A stone hut, mossy, vines across the door. He found it by a shingle roof and a crooked board above the frame. He pushed through hanging herbs into warmth. Seven cats scattered. A woman bent over a wooden table crowded with mortars and small vials. Teal and gold robes, blonde plaits tight against dark skin, white paint around her eyes. She set down a pestle and fed a cat a scrap before she turned. "Flita Fiona Dazzle," Emberlin said. "They said you were court before you came here." Her dark eyes moved over him once. "They say too much." "I need a new face. Hair, skin, anything. Enough that the royal city won't know me." She crossed to a row of simple cots and stood between him and a canopy bed draped in teal. "You're running from the crown." "Yes." "I ran from a northern one." She studied his face the way she might read a wound. "The queen is your kin." He felt the lie forming in his own throat and let it die. "She is. She's never said it to anyone but me." Something shifted behind her eyes. She knew dying queens and their secrets. She said nothing about it. "Sit." He sat on the nearest cot. She ground roots and bark, mixed in a vial, and tipped his chin up. The paste burned cold on his skin. "It holds a month," she said. "Hair grows pale. Skin goes gray. Hazel eyes turn dull. Your own mother wouldn't stop you in the street." She held up a small mirror. A stranger looked back. Ashen, washed out, a man no soldier would salute. "The crown wants a halfling with olive skin and hazel eyes," Flita said. "That man is gone now. Pay me, and keep walking." Emberlin set the coins on her healing table. The queen's cousin had a new face, and no place at her side to return to.

Emberlin stopped at the witch’s door with his coins still warm in his pocket. He had come for a face. Now, with Flita’s words settling into the hollow places inside him, he understood that a face was not a life. It was not proof. It was not safety. He pushed through the hanging herbs. The cats watched him from the cots while Flita stood at her healing table, grinding root into powder. “The paste holds a month,” he said. “Then I’m the queen’s cousin again.” “You’re Emberlin Kit now,” Flita replied. His hands tightened around the edge of the table. “No. I’m supposed to be.” Flita finally looked at him. “There is no birth record,” she said. “No seal. No court ledger that names you. No surviving witness who would risk their neck for you. Whatever proof you had was your skin and your eyes. I changed both.” “Then undo it.” “I can’t.” The words were simple. Almost cruel in their simplicity. Emberlin stared down at his hands. Gray skin. Narrow fingers. A stranger’s body carrying memories that belonged to someone else. He imagined walking into the palace. He imagined the guards stopping him. I am Emberlin Kit. The queen’s cousin. And the laughter that would follow. Or worse. The sword. He had spent his whole life believing that if he could only reach the right door, speak to the right person, open the right ledger, the truth would restore itself. But the truth was not a thing that restored itself. Sometimes it died with the people who carried it. The queen was dying. And suddenly Emberlin realized something that frightened him more than losing his name. He didn’t have to follow her into the grave. He looked toward the little window above Flita’s table. Beyond it, dawn was beginning to pale the sky. “What happens,” he asked quietly, “if I don’t go back?” Flita’s expression changed. “You disappear.” “Yes.” “You abandon your claim.” “I don’t have a claim.” “You abandon your name.” Emberlin swallowed. His name. The word felt strange now. Heavy. Like a coat that no longer fit. “Maybe I abandon it,” he said, “before it gets me killed.” Flita studied him for a long moment. “And become what?” He looked around the little shop. At the herbs drying from the rafters. At the cats curled beneath the blankets. At the chipped bowls and worn wooden shelves. Nothing here belonged to a court. Nothing here demanded that he prove who he was. “I don’t know.” For the first time since entering the shop, Emberlin smiled. “That’s the point.” Flita slowly lowered the pestle. “You understand that once you leave, there may be no coming back.” “I understand.” “You may never know whether the queen spoke your name before she died.” He closed his eyes. That hurt. More than he expected. But he had spent too much of his life waiting for other people to confirm that he existed. “I think,” he said, “I’d rather be alive and unknown than recognized only long enough to be buried.” Flita watched him pull his cloak around his shoulders. “Where will you go?” “Somewhere no one knows Emberlin Kit.” “That’s a lot of places.” “Good.” He reached into his pocket and counted his coins. Not enough for a palace. Not enough for a title. Enough for bread. A room. Perhaps a beginning. At the door, he stopped. “What should I call myself?” Flita smiled faintly. “Whatever you like.” Emberlin looked back at the witch, at the cats, at the life he had nearly abandoned himself trying to reclaim. Then he stepped into the morning. Behind him, Emberlin Kit disappeared. Ahead of him was someone no one had ever met. For the first time, that frightened him. For the first time, it also felt like freedom.