I wiped my tears with my sleeve, and carefully folded up Diana's dress. As I set it down, I felt a new wave of guilt as I noticed that I had wet the front of it.

  But I pushed down that guilt, and instead turned my thoughts outward, to the guest room.

  "Something isn't right, here."

  I walked around the room, inspecting it closely.

  It was a rather well appointed guest room. The spaciousness of it, despite the large bed, told me that this was not the same as the tiny corner rooms I had been relegated to at the Printemps and Desrosiers manors.

  And it looked well lived in. The closet was full of many dresses, in various states of wear and repair. A small bookshelf held a variety of different books, many of them romances, and they were covered in an uneven amount of dust. As I inspected the titles, I noticed that several of the books were actually ribbon-bound bundles. Some stories were told this way; written in pieces and shared between young noble ladies, who would copy it by their own hand before passing it along. It took a lot of effort to pull myself away from the temptation of peeking at Diana's handwriting.

  "She might have been in this room for a long time..."

  I stepped to the window, and looked out from the snow-covered balcony.

  It was a gorgeous eastern view, and I could only imagine how beautiful the sunrise would look the following morning.

  "I'll have to have Erika wake me up to see it..."

  I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. I was seeing the same things that Diana had seen, and touching the same things Diana had touched. Every little sight was proof that she had been real. That she had existed, and that she had lived here.

  My foot slid along the ground, and I caught my balance on one of the columns of the bed. I looked down to see a cracked moonstone. "Oh..."

  I picked it up to see that it was similar to the pale white stones that she had worn on her dress when we first met.

  I clutched it tight, and squirreled it away inside my clothes before leaning down to carefully pick up the rest and return them to their wooden box. I turned it over in my hand to see a small silver jackrabbit inlaid on the front.

  A pang of fear struck me. "Why would she leave this?"

  I jolted as the door opened, hiding the box behind my back as Erika walked in.

  "Sophie? Are you okay?"

  "No."

  I opened my mouth to lie to her, to tell her I was okay, but instead took deep breaths through pressed lips.

  "No, Erika. I'm not okay."

  Her footsteps made no sound as she stepped over to embrace me.

  "Are you able to talk about it?"

  I thought about our argument, in that room at the Faraldi office.

  "...I'm scared to tell you, but I... let's..."

  I tipped my head against hers, and she raised her hand to brush my hair with her fingers.

  "I'm hungry, Erika. Let's eat while we talk. And please, don't let anyone else into this room."

  I felt a pain in my chest, and clutched the little rabbit jewelry box tight in my hand.

  "I don't want anyone but us touching her things."

  I could feel Erika's curiosity and skepticism in her eyes as she slowly made to leave the room again, but she once again said nothing.

  ---

  I carefully pushed around the bread on my plate, smearing honey in a circle as I vaguely pretended to be hungry.

  Now that Sybil and the rest had pointed it out, it was hard to deny that I wasn't hungry when I was using my magic. As I ate, I didn't receive much satisfaction from it, although the flavor was the same.

  Erika watched me sleepily, waiting to eat until I had finished my plate to ensure that I did so.

  "There's a girl..."

  Erika snapped alert, listening closely.

  "A woman. Diana. She... she's the one who lived here. I'm looking for her."

  Erika's eyebrow raised slowly, but her face was still one of concern.

  "People other than me can't remember her. She has magic, like I do, but it makes people forget she exists. She..."

  My eyes started to well up, again, but I pushed through.

  "She thinks the world would be better without her. And based on her magic, she means it. I need to find her, to tell her that's not true."

  Erika reached out and placed her hand on mine.

  "We've come a long way, Sophie, and a lot has been sacrificed. Can you tell me why it has to be you?"

  "She saved my life, Erika. All of ours, in that ballroom."

  "How?"

  "She's the one who taught me how to control my magic... how to really control it, anyways. Father had... Father's training had been to make me hold my magic inside me. Always full, always hurting."

  My voice hitched.

  "Always... always getting better at withstanding more pain, so I could hold more and more."

  Erika squeezed my hand.

  "If she hadn't taught me how to let it go, that bangle would have had enough force to kill everyone in that room. All of Father's enemies... and me."

  I tipped my head forward, and tears fell.

  Erika set aside my plate.

  "So I need to find her, Erika. It has to be me. I have to tell her before she..."

  But I couldn't say what I feared.

  "So, this Diana, she's important to you."

  "...Yes."

  "Well, let's get started, then."

  "Get... started? Started on what?"

  Erika wrote something down on a piece of paper, and slipped it into the pocket of her apron.

  "Sophie, you recognized this room as hers at first glance, yes?"

  "Yes?"

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  "How?"

  I pointed at my ribbon, lying neatly folded and dearly cared for next to the mirror.

  "That's my ribbon. I think she must have taken it at some point after she gave me this one."

  I took out my favorite orange ribbon, worn and threadbare after more than a season of wearing it at every opportunity.

  "This was hers."

  Erika glanced down at it, then back up at me.

  "So, things she's touched, places she's been, there's physical evidence, yes?"

  "Uhm, yes?"

  "Well, then there might be records, somewhere. This is a guest bedroom, Sophie. She had to have eaten, and the room had to be cleaned at some point. Stewards and maids tend to keep a log of that sort of thing."

  She patted her apron, where she had stored the paper.

  "I don't know exactly how her magic works, but I was able to write her name down just fine, and obviously I remember this conversation we're having right now, no?"

  She stood up. "So if she's here, I'll find this note and wonder why I wrote it. If she's not here, depending on when and how she arrived there might be records with her name on them, or suspicious amounts of provisions going missing, or..."

  And she gestured to the books on the shelf.

  "Books that showed up with nobody having ordered them, or ordered under the wrong name."

  As she walked to the door, she turned around.

  "I'll see what I can find, where I can find it. If you can, ask about the library, or try questioning the steward himself when you get a chance. It'll take me at least a few days before I can ingratiate myself with the people here and try to get access to the maid's ledgers. Maybe longer, depending on how suspicious they are of me."

  She smiled. A real one, confident and assured.

  "So anything you can do before Adrian has a chance to arrive would be very useful."

  And then she left me alone in the room.

  "..."

  I put my hand to the moonstone I kept with me and breathed in, deep, Diana's cold, camphor scent in the room before it was lost fully to the scent of warm honey.

  "...Diana."

  ---

  The easiest place to start seemed to me to be the keep's staff, and so the very first thing I did was walk down a hallway until I found someone who could take me to the steward. I could have rung the bell for someone to come to me, but Erika might have been put into an awkward position by that.

  The keep's floor was cold, but unlike the Printemps' manor, there were no hidden servants' passages or empty hallways devoid of life. Everywhere in the keep I went, there were people. Servants tending fires, cleaning windows, and lighting the lamps for the evening. Children, running in the halls after their parents, laughing as they practiced what was their generational craft.

  But despite that, the looks they gave me made me uncomfortable. I was a stranger to their world, and as I passed through I left no sound and no laughter.

  "Is it because I'm of noble birth, or is it because I'm not from here?"

  I swallowed.

  "Or perhaps, more specifically, is it because I'm a Printemps?"

  Eventually, I saw someone who didn't seem busy: a man, resting his feet on a small barrel and sitting on the sill of a window.

  "Hello. I would like to see the steward."

  The man jumped to his feet, surprised, and bowed deeply.

  "I beg your pardon, m'lady. I was just restin' for a spell. Please don't tell Lord Gavin about this."

  I raised my eyebrow.

  "Lord Gavin?"

  "Ah, the steward, m'lady."

  "Ah, well, I'm not here to get you in trouble. I just want to speak to Lord Gavin."

  I followed after the man as he led me upwards, and into a well-appointed hallway on the third floor.

  On the walls were portraits of Adrian and his parents.

  The Duke and Duchess on their wedding day. Baby Adrian. The Duchess holding a young Adrian. Adrian and the Duke holding swords.

  I slowly came to a stop, considering the portraits.

  "Diana's magic shouldn't have appeared until she turned seven, so why wouldn't she be in any of these portraits?"

  I reached out my hand to touch one of the portraits, but the man coughed.

  "Er, pardon, m'lady. Is something wrong?"

  "Are there no portraits of..."

  I looked at the man, inspecting him.

  "What was your name, again? And what do you do here?"

  He bowed again, so deeply as to be a bit concerning.

  "My name is Jason, my lady. I'm an ash collector; I bring the ashes from spent fires around the keep to the lyemaker. When I'm not doing that, I'm a porter."

  "He might be safe to ask," I thought to myself, "and his job takes him all around the keep."

  "Are there no portraits of anyone else?"

  Jason rubbed the back of his neck.

  "Well, there's portraits of the Duke's parents elsewhere, but all of the Duke's siblings' portraits are in storage, after, well, you know."

  "I'm sorry, but I don't."

  Jason looked at me oddly.

  "S'not my place to say, m'lady."

  I carefully weighed what it might cost me to exercise my privilege at this moment.

  "...Not even for a future lady of House Hiems? I promise, we can keep this conversation between us."

  Jason paused, his face twisting in concern, before he finally relented.

  "The good Duke was his fathers' secondborn. He killed his youngest sister, their Seventh, in a rather bloody business between his older brother and her. After that... things escalated until only our Lord was left."

  He took off his cap and put it over his heart respectfully.

  "It's something that weighs on him heavily, which is why Adrian is and always will be his only child."

  I felt a few clicking noises in my head, like a lock slowly tumbling into place.

  "I had just assumed that everyone had forgotten Diana, but this makes it sound like she wasn't a Hiems at all. Perhaps she was a collateral relative?"

  "... Thank you for telling me this, Jason. Please, let us continue on to the steward."

  ---

  The steward's office, like the guest bedroom, had wooden floors which were warm under my feet. There was a door connecting it and his bedroom, and everything was neatly arranged and piled into stacks and bins for processing.

  "A room befitting a noble steward, but I wonder if the sounds of people working, across that doorway, ever wake him up."

  Jason did not enter with me, slipping away into the stream of porters and couriers as Lord Gavin spoke to the staff.

  All went quiet as I entered, sending a chill down my spine once more, and everyone immediately stood.

  Lord Gavin walked up to me, but did not speak.

  "Greetings, Lord Gavin."

  He bowed.

  "My lady, what brings you all this way? Is something amiss?"

  "I simply wanted to express my sincere appreciation for your guest bedroom, Lord Gavin. It's quite the beautiful room; I can't wait to see the sunrise from the window."

  His eyebrow raised. "Well, I am glad you like it. I apologize, but your own bedroom won't be ready until tomorrow evening."

  "That's quite alright, Lord Gavin. But if you would indulge a small bit of curiousity..."

  I could see Lord Gavin pivoting his weight between his feet uncomfortably.

  "...Who stayed in that room before me? I found a few articles, and was curious."

  Immediately, Lord Gavin relaxed. "Ah, of course, my lady. Would you like me to send someone to collect them?"

  "No, no, it's no trouble. I just wanted to know who they belonged to."

  Lord Gavin put a hand to his chin, contemplating.

  "Well, it's been quite some time since he went missing, but the prior resident of that room would have been Prince Darius Lombardi."

  He shook his head, sighing.

  "Quite a troubled boy, that one. His family sent him here to try to... straighten out his ways. Duke Hiems took quite a liking to him, and there were talks of potentially adopting him as a branch family member before he disappeared."

  I furrowed my brow, trying to figure out how this fit in with the timeline that Erika wanted me to establish.

  Furthermore, I had never heard of a Prince named Darius in any of Baroness Verger's lessons.

  "...When did he disappear?"

  Lord Gavin paused to think.

  "It was... around his seventeenth birthday, so around three years ago, now. He'd be twenty this year."

  He clicked his tongue.

  "Such a shame. He and your fiance, the good Lord Hiems, didn't always get along as a result of his... interests, but he was damn good with the sword."

  I felt the timeline shatter and fell into confusion.

  "He was rather well liked, otherwise. You'll find that most of us here don't like to talk about it, though, so please handle his things with care."

  "... Thank you, Lord Gavin."

  "You're welcome, Lady Printemps. And please, ring the bell if you need anything."

  He took a quick glance around the room, which had slowly emptied of all the lowborn servants to make way for our conversation.

  "There's no need to trouble yourself to walk all this way."