He must sense my uncertainty because he lets out a soft, almost defeated sigh. “Arien, from the moment you arrived at Firelands, you captivated me. The way you carried yourself with such quiet strength—even back then—it resonated with something deep inside me. I can’t say it was affection, not at that time. We were just children. It was more about curiosity and concern. But I saw you, Arien, and I couldn’t look away.”
My eyes return to him. “I watched you from a distance. I admired your resilience, your quiet strength, the way you navigated that harsh world. And when I left Firelands after the Academy, I realized that the only thing I would truly miss was the sight of you surviving—no, thriving—against all odds.”
Numbness spreads through me. All those years, I felt invisible, weak, lost in their world. And he sawstrength?
“For four years, I wandered the continent as a Fire Eye, trying to escape my father, Aramis, Firelands,everything. In Aramis, people adore the idea of who I am but despise my sorcery. In Firelands, they worship my status and abilities, but I am constantly burdened by guilt and my deserted responsibilities to Aramis. Conflicting expectations… divided loyalties… that’s what I’ve been struggling with all my life. On the road, I didn’t have to deal with any of that. Alone, under desert stars or in ancient forests, I kept searching for my purpose beyond what was expected of me. But it wasyouwho kept creeping into my thoughts.
“Gradually, your memory became a source of solace for me. The otherAhiras all seemed so settled, so certain of their place in the world, except for you. I kept wondering what secret dream kept you apart from the others. I was searching for something like that, a purpose beyond expectations, and I clung to the idea of our shared displacement, a mutual sense of not belonging that I thought connected me to you. It made my loneliness feel a little less profound. I knew it was a fantasy, but it was comforting. Harmless.”
He pauses, and a flicker of bitterness crosses his face. “Eventually, my father’s will became inescapable. Aramis summoned me back.”
The raw defenselessness in his voice is both unnerving and strangely captivating. “My father… he’s never accepted my sorcery. He has three daughters, grandsons aplenty, but in his mind,I’mthe heir. He’s obsessed with me continuing the line and claiming the seat of the High Lord. He tried to force a marriage on me, a Zareen woman, naturally, to produce a suitable heir. Except there aren’t many Zareen women of marrying age in this generation or the last. The best suitable match was High Lord Helmsworth’s daughter.”
My heart sinks faster than a stone in a well. Hannah. My… sister. Or half-sister, to be precise. The familiar ache in my chest flares up.
He’s right. She is of Zareen Blood. The Helmsworths and the Zareens both trace their lineage back to King Zaccarya Zareen. When the Great War ended, instead of offering the Gajari deserts to the Gajaris, he decided to separate a chunk of Aramis, attach it to the vast Gajari deserts, and create a new province called Myra. He appointed Lord Hassyan Helmsworth, who just happened to be married to his only and most beloved daughter, as the first High Lord of Myra, my great, great, great… grandsire.
Now that I think about it, Zanyar and I, if we trace our family trees back several generations, both descend from Zaccarya Zareen. The thought of being related to Zanyar, even distantly, is so bizarre that I almost want to laugh.
“My father paraded noblewomen before me for years,” Zanyar continues, unaware of my internal turmoil. “Each one was more vapid than the last. But Lady Hannah—there was something about her. We courted for a year,but I kept delaying and stalling, using my connection to Ahira Emmengar to fend off my father’s pressure on the council to declare an order for my marriage. Then, one afternoon, in the gardens of Aravansir, she leaned in for our first kiss. That’s when it hit me: she looked like you. That’s what I had been drawn to.”
A shiver, cruel and sharp, races down my body, stealing my breath. This confession is so brutally honest that it leaves me staggering. I blink rapidly, fighting against the sudden, stinging rush of emotions rising to the surface.
He’s talking aboutmykin, completely unaware of our connection. The last time I saw Hannah was twelve years ago. She didn’t look like me then; she was everything I wasn’t. Adorable, cherished, beautifully dressed, she radiated a happiness that seemed to mock my own miserable existence. I remember it with painful clarity, watching her from my hiding place behind the trees, a small, forgotten child consumed by envy and an aching longing.
And Zanyar sawmein her? He’s sitting here, confessing this to me, completely unaware of the cruel twist of fate that binds us together. The only thing that grounds me is the sadness in his voice and the weight of this long-held secret, which is incredibly touching.
“The realization was jarring,” Zanyar admits. “I pulled back, completely baffled. Was it affection all this time? How could I have feelings for someone I’d never even spoken to?”
He stares up at the moon, that silent, distant witness, as if he’s looking for answers in its pale light. It feels like he’s not even talking to me anymore, but to himself, to the night, to the wind, finally unburdening himself of a truth he’s kept locked away for too long.
“Loving someone I didn’t truly know was foolish, and I recognized that. I knew loneliness had a way of distorting your perspective. But I also knew that if I didn’t face this illusion, if I didn’t confront it, it would consume me. It would become a shadow hanging over everything, especially with the prospect of a loveless, arranged marriage looming. So, I returned. To the alchemy hall. To you. To break the illusion.”
He left a prestigious position as a Fire Eye… forme? Everyone assumed he was studying for his fifth ring and needed a year away from the road. But the truth… If his voice wasn’t so achingly sincere, I’d dismiss it all as a fabrication.
“But being near you… It did the opposite. Suddenly, you weren’t this idea I’d built up. You were just… wonderfully real. Being with you, hearing your voice, and even sharing the quiet stillness of the same space, it settled something deep inside me. It brought a profound peace, a quiet calm to my spirit I hadn’t known for so long… perhaps never truly knew before. It was like finding a lost piece of my own heart, a warmth I never realized I was cold without. That instant sense of recognition, of trulybelongingwith you… as if we were cut from the same cloth, two sides of the same coin. I justknew, deep down, that you’d understand, without a single word from me, the silent burdens, the sheer weight of…”
He falters, visibly struggling to articulate the immensity of his thoughts, and finally lets the sentence hang unfinished as if his feelings are too deep for easy words. But a slight, helpless shake of his head conveys more than words ever could.
“I wanted to know you better. Away from the limited interactions we were allowed in Firelands, and then, just as I was finally gathering the courage to ask you to come to Aramis, to offer you an escape… " He closes his eyes for a moment, the lines of tension returning, etched deep around his mouth and eyes. “My father fell ill, and duty called me back to Aramis.”
He sighs, lost in his own memories. I listen, stunned, feeling as if I’m hearing a story about a stranger, a woman whose life only intersected with mine. How can we remember our time in the Fire Temple so differently? I never sensed any connection between us.
But maybe he is right. I had wrapped myself in solitude and didn’t notice much of what was happening around me. It was only in Jahanwatch, surrounded by strangers and sharing a common interest, that I began to drop my guard and open up to the possibility of connecting with others.
I look at Zanyar. His face is glowing softly in the moonlight, and a quiet sadness is written all over him. I can’t help but feel a surge of empathy as I catch a glimpse of the loneliness on his face that I’m all too familiar with.It’s hard to believe that someone so admired, someone people chase after, could feel so alone inside.
In his eyes, I glimpse the reflections of my own long-fought battles. The gnawing isolation, the desperate yearning for a place to belong, emotions I had hidden from others for years. My solace, my escape, had been the dream of Martysh; for him, it had beenme.
His escape had been a beautiful phantom, a shimmering mirage—an idea of who he wished I was, not the real woman that I am. Is my own solace, Martysh, the dream I held so close, just as fragile, just as unreal?
“Those moons were intense,” Zanyar continues. “When my father came back from the brink of death, he didn’t hold back in telling me how much I’d caused his illness by denying him the heir he wanted. However, in his recovery, I saw an opportunity. I brought up the melding experiment, and surprisingly, he agreed. Still, I knew I had to be patient, so I waited for you to earn your fourth ring. I was sure it would happen sooner than anyone thought. I wanted to use that moment to persuade the council to send you as an envoy without the risk of their refusal. When I heard about your achievement, I rushed back to Firelands immediately, only to discover that you had requested to participate in the trials—a choice that would separate us forever.”
The silence stretches, filled with the echo of his confession. I am completely speechless. My heart is a chaotic mess of emotions I can’t untangle: disbelief, gratitude, a strange, growing warmth, and a deep, familiar ache.
I feel a soft, tender impulse to close the distance between us, to hug him, to extend the very comfort I had yearned for in countless lonely moments when no one else had seemed to care.
I want to speak, to acknowledge the years of his silent watchfulness. And to thank him. To tell him that his words have somehow begun to soothe some of the old wounds in my heart.
