Liora was already at the bench when I arrived.

This was a problem. I’d planned to be there first. To sit. To prepare what I was going to say. To rehearse the conversation slowly, methodically — the way Ren had taught me to think.

But Liora was sitting on the bench. Crimson Oath across her lap. The forge-fire in her meridians turned down to a quiet glow. She was looking at the jasmine.

"You’re early," she said, without turning.

"So are you."

"I came when I felt you decide. The bond does that now. Don’t ask me how."

I sat beside her. Not close. The bench was small and we were both armed and the gap between us was deliberate. The wood was warm where she’d been sitting on the other side. The jasmine had grown thicker than I’d seen it in weeks. Late blooms catching the moonlight.

"How long have you been here?" I asked.

"An hour. Maybe more. I lost track."

"How did you know I’d come tonight?"

"I didn’t. I came every night this week. I figured you’d show up eventually."

That hit harder than I expected. The image of her sitting alone for six nights, waiting for me to find the courage to do what I should have done already. Six nights of jasmine and silence and a swordswoman who didn’t ask for explanations because she’d decided patience was a form of love and was practicing it.

"Liora—"

"Don’t apologize. I’m not angry. I’m just glad you’re here now."

She finally looked at me. Amber eyes. Tired. Not the tired of someone who hadn’t slept — the tired of someone who’d been carrying something for a long time and was about to put it down.

"You’re going to tell me the truth about something," she said. "I don’t know what yet. But you’ve been walking around like a man with a heavy thing in his pocket for three weeks, and tonight you decided it was time. So tell me."

"How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Read me."

"I’ve been kissing you for two months. I’d be a bad fighter if I didn’t notice when something was off."

I almost laughed. Liora had a gift for saying things that were both true and slightly absurd, and I’d come to love that about her. Even the way she said *kissing you* — direct, factual, no hedging — was characteristic. Most people in this academy would have softened it. Made it conditional. Said "spending time with" or "growing close to."

Liora said what was true. The way it was. Her word choice was a small honesty I’d come to depend on.

"I don’t know where to start," I said.

"Start with what’s hardest. The rest will come."

I looked at the jasmine. The cascades had grown denser since the leyline restoration — the garden was healthier than it had been in decades, and the white flowers caught the moonlight like they’d been waiting for it. Somewhere in the higher terraces, a fountain that had been dormant for years was running again. I could hear it from here. The leylines remembered things. Even the architecture remembered.

"You kissed Cedric Valdrake," I said.

"I kissed you."

"That’s the thing I need to talk about. Whether those are the same."

She was quiet. Long enough that I had time to regret saying it that way. Then —

"Tell me what you’re afraid of."

"I’m afraid that you fell for the body. The face. The Valdrake heir. And that the person inside the body — the actual person, the one from another world who’s been pretending to be him — is someone you didn’t sign up for. And when you figure that out, you’ll feel like you’ve been tricked."

"And you’ve been carrying that for three weeks."

"Longer."

"Why didn’t you say something?"

"Because the cure protocol started. Because we were busy. Because saying it out loud felt like ruining something that was working. Because I’m a coward about specific things, and this was one of them."

She nodded. Slow. The way Liora nodded when she was thinking, not when she was agreeing. Crimson Oath shifted on her lap as she breathed. The blade caught moonlight differently than the jasmine did — sharp reflection rather than diffused glow.

"Can I tell you something?" she said.

"Yeah."

"The day we fought in the dueling chamber. Twenty-two minutes. You remember the moment I knew I was going to kiss you?"

"No."

"Minute eleven. You’d just blocked one of my Crimson strikes and I saw your face. Not the Valdrake face. Not the heir’s mask. The face you make when you’re concentrating and you’ve forgotten there are people watching."

"What kind of face?"

"Tired. Honest. The face of someone who’s been holding something heavy for a long time and is too focused on the fight to keep holding the mask up too. That’s the face I kissed."

I didn’t say anything.

"I didn’t kiss Cedric Valdrake," she said. "Cedric Valdrake doesn’t make that face. Cedric Valdrake doesn’t get tired honestly. He gets tired in calculated, controlled ways that look like strategy. The person I kissed was someone the Valdrake heir doesn’t know how to be."

"Liora—"

"I knew you weren’t him. I didn’t know the details. I didn’t know there was another world or a game or a dead boy in Chicago. But I knew the body and the person didn’t match. I’ve been in this academy for two months. I’ve watched dozens of nobles. I know what a Ducal heir looks like. You don’t look like one. You look like someone wearing one badly."

"That’s not exactly a compliment."

"It’s the highest compliment I’ve ever paid anyone. The world is full of people pretending to be exactly what they’re supposed to be. You’re pretending to be something you’re not because the world won’t let you be the thing you actually are. That’s not deception. That’s survival."

She set Crimson Oath down beside the bench. The blade rested against the stone. Her hands were free now. She turned to face me. Moonlight caught the side of her face, and I could see the small scar on her jaw — something she’d gotten in some sparring match years before I’d met her, a detail I’d noticed the first week and never asked about.

"I want to ask you something. And I want you to answer honestly."

"Okay."

"What’s your name?"

"Kael."

"Kael what?"

"Kael Ashborne."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-two when I died. Probably twenty-two now, depending on how you count."

"Where were you born?"

"Chicago. United States. Earth."

"What was your sister’s name?"

"Hana."

She nodded again. Slow.

"Kael Ashborne, twenty-two, Chicago, brother of Hana. I’m Liora Ashveil. Eighteen, Western Province, daughter of a blacksmith named Marik who taught me to forge before he taught me to read. I want to be clear about who I’m sitting next to. So I’m telling you who I am, and I’m asking who you are, and we’re going to start over with that information on the table. Is that okay?"

I had to think about how to answer. She wasn’t accepting Kael as a substitute for Cedric. She wasn’t deciding whether the person she’d kissed was the same as the person she was sitting with. She was introducing herself to a stranger and asking him to do the same.

She was clearing the board.

"It’s okay," I said.

"Hi, Kael."

"Hi, Liora."

"Tell me about Hana."

"She was my sister. She was twelve when she died. Cancer. She liked old movies and bad puns and she wanted to be a marine biologist." I stopped. The words were harder to say than I’d expected. "I haven’t said her name out loud to anyone in this world before. I don’t think I’ve said it out loud at all in three years."

"Tell me a memory."

"Liora—"

"One memory. Anything. The thing that comes first when I say her name."

I closed my eyes.

"She used to wake me up on Saturdays by sitting on my chest and reading the comics page out loud in different voices. She did this terrible British accent for one of the strips. The strip wasn’t even British. She just thought British accents made everything funnier. I’d pretend to be annoyed. She’d keep doing it. By the time she was done we were both laughing and our mom would come in and tell us to keep it down because dad was sleeping."

The garden was quiet. The jasmine breathed.

"That’s a good memory," Liora said.

"It is."

"Tell me about Chicago."

"It was loud. Cold in the winter. The lake froze sometimes. I lived in a small apartment after my parents died. I worked at a restaurant. I played a game called Throne of Ruin for 4,127 hours. The last thing I saw before I died was the game-over screen and an empty energy drink on my desk."

"You died at a desk."

"Yeah."

"Alone." 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"Yeah."

"And then you woke up here."

"Yeah."

She was quiet. Then she reached over and took my hand. Not romantic. The way someone takes the hand of a friend who’s just told them something hard. Her hand was warm — warmer than mine, the forge-fire always running below the surface of her skin even at rest. The contact grounded me in a way I hadn’t expected. Three years of carrying this story alone. One night of saying it out loud. The asymmetry was startling.

"Kael."

"Yeah."

"I’m sorry you died alone."

The word hit harder than I’d prepared for. *Sorry.* Such a small word. People said it about minor things constantly. But Liora said it the way you said it to someone who’d actually lost something — quiet, deliberate, not asking for a response.

I didn’t have a response anyway. I’d been preparing for a different conversation. For her to feel deceived, or angry, or to reassess her feelings now that the math had been laid out. Instead she was holding my hand and apologizing for the thing I’d never told anyone hurt me most about my own death.

That I died alone.