CHAPTER 15 — “The Valdris Name”
She avoids me for three days.
And look, I get it. I do. You blurt out something vulnerable while someone’s half-dead in bed and then you have to, what, make eye contact over breakfast? Pretend it didn’t happen? There’s no good playbook for that.
So she runs. Not literally—she’s still here, still working, still doing all the things she was doing before—but there’s a new kind of choreography to our days.
She leaves rooms when I enter them. Takes meals at weird hours.
Finds incredibly urgent chores on the far side of the property whenever I get within speaking distance.
It’s actually impressive. The sheer logistical effort required to share a farm with someone while never occupying the same space. She must be planning this stuff out. Probably has a schedule.
Mira notices, because Mira notices everything.
“Why is Mariella being weird?”
“She’s not being weird.”
“She hid behind the chicken coop when you walked by.”
“Maybe she likes chickens.”
“Mr. Flower Man.” Mira gives me a look that’s way too knowing for a seven-year-old. “I’m not dumb.”
“Never said you were, kid.”
“Then why are you lying?”
I don’t have an answer for that. Mostly because I don’t know what the truth is. What did she mean? What do I want her to mean? These are questions I’ve been actively avoiding because the answers scare me more than the Magma Wyrm did.
Johnson’s no help. He just watches the whole situation with what I can only describe as amused contempt. Like we’re a show put on for his entertainment.
“Your input is not needed,” I tell him.
He yawns. Shows all those teeth. Goes back to judging.
Day four. I’m done.
Not done in the giving-up sense. Done in the I-can’t-take-another-day-of-this-awkward-dance sense. Whatever she’s feeling, whatever I’m feeling, we need to have an actual conversation about it like actual adults. Which is terrifying. But necessary.
I find her in the barn.
She’s doing something with hay. Moving it from one pile to another pile that looks exactly the same. The kind of busy work you do when you need your hands occupied so your brain doesn’t eat itself.
“We need to talk.”
Her back’s to me, but I see her shoulders tighten. “I’m busy.”
“You’ve been reorganizing that same pile for an hour. I watched.”
“Wow, creepy.”
“Mariella.”
The pitchfork stops moving. She still doesn’t turn around.
“What happened in your room—” She starts, and I can hear her rehearsing this. Practicing the words. “I was scared. You almost died. People say things when they’re scared. It didn’t mean anything.”
“What did it mean?”
“I just said. Nothing.”
“Yeah, I heard you. I’m asking what it actually meant.”
Silence.
I take a step into the barn. Then another. She still won’t look at me, just stands there gripping that pitchfork like she’s thinking about using it.
“Mariella. Turn around.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because.” She laughs, and it’s not a good laugh. “Because if I look at you right now I’m going to—I don’t know. Cry? Confess something? Make everything worse? All of the above?”
“Confess what?”
More silence. The hay smells sweet and dusty. Sunlight’s coming through the slats in the barn wall, making stripes across the floor. Peaceful setting for whatever the hell this conversation is about to become.
“You don’t know who I am,” she says finally. Still won’t turn around. “You think you do. You think I’m just—what, some farmhand who showed up and decided to stay? Some wanderer who got lucky?”
“I think you’re someone with secrets. Join the club. We have jackets.”
“This is different.”
“Different how?”
She turns around.
Her eyes are red. Not crying, but close. The walls she usually keeps up—that competence, that capability, that don’t-worry-about-me energy—they’re cracked. And underneath is someone who looks absolutely terrified.
Of me.
Of what she’s about to say.
“My name isn’t Mariella,” she says. “I mean—it is. It’s my middle name. My mother’s name. But my full name is Valdris. Mariella Valdris.”
The name hits me like a physical blow.
Valdris.
Dario Valdris. Emperor Dario. The Hero. My best friend. The man who put a sword through my chest.
His last name.
“I’m his sister,” Mariella says, watching my face. “Dario’s sister. The Emperor’s sister. That’s who I am. That’s what I’ve been hiding.”
I don’t say anything.
Can’t, really. My brain’s doing that thing where it receives information but refuses to process it, like a merchant who’s been handed foreign currency and just stares at it hoping it’ll make sense eventually.
Dario has a sister.
Dario has a sister and she’s been living on my farm.
Dario has a sister and she’s been making me soup and fixing my fence and sitting by my bed for three days because she was worried about me and she has his face.
Not exactly—her features are softer, her coloring different—but now that I’m looking, really looking, I can see it.
The jawline. The way her eyes crinkle when she’s thinking. The stubborn set of her mouth.
“Say something,” she whispers.
I turn around and walk out of the barn.
╔═══════════════════════════════════════╗║ EMOTIONAL STATE: ERROR ║║ ║║ Unable to process current feelings.
║║ Too many conflicting inputs. ║║ ║║ Anger: YES ║║ Betrayal: MAYBE ║║ Confusion: DEFINITELY ║║ Something else you're not ready to ║║ name: ALSO YES ║║ ║║ RECOMMENDATION: Don't punch anything.
║║ You'll break your hand and feel ║║ stupid about it later.
║╚═══════════════════════════════════════╝
I make it to the edge of the property before I stop walking. Not because I’ve decided to stop. Just because my legs give out and I end up sitting on a fence post, staring at fields I’ve been learning to care about, trying to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to feel.
She’s his sister.
She’s been here the whole time and she’s his SISTER.
The anger’s there. Of course it is. How could it not be? Every time I looked at her, every conversation we had, every moment I let myself think maybe, just maybe, I could have something good again—and the whole time she was connected to him. To the man who destroyed everything.
But.
But she ran away. She said that. Uses her dead mother’s name. Changed her hair. Moves every few years. That’s not the behavior of someone who’s proud of her family. That’s the behavior of someone who’s hiding from them.
And she sat by my bed for three days.
She hid behind a chicken coop because she was scared to face me.
She said don’t you dare leave me with tears in her eyes and then ran away because she meant it too much.
That’s not his sister. That’s not the Emperor’s blood. That’s just Mariella. The woman who showed up and decided to stay.
Shit.
Johnson finds me twenty minutes later.
He doesn’t say anything—obviously, he’s a rabbit, even an evolved magical apex predator rabbit is still a rabbit—but he sits next to me and puts his head on my knee. Warm weight. Steady presence. The kind of comfort that doesn’t require words.
“She’s his sister,” I tell him.
Ear flick. I heard.
“I don’t know what to do with that.”
Obviously.
“She lied to me.”
He lifts his head. Looks at me. Those silver eyes that see too much.
“Okay, fine. She didn’t technically lie. She just didn’t tell me the truth. There’s a difference.”
Is there?
“Shut up. You’re a rabbit.”
He puts his head back on my knee. Judgment radiates off him in waves.
“I told her I was murdered by my party and she didn’t flinch. She said ‘then she never deserved you’ like it was simple. Like it was obvious.” I’m talking to a rabbit. This is my life now. “She knew who I was the whole time. She knew I hated her brother. And she still—”
Stayed.
She still stayed.
I find her in the barn an hour later.
She hasn’t moved. Still standing there, pitchfork abandoned, hugging herself like she’s trying to hold the pieces together. When she hears me come in she flinches but doesn’t run.
“Figured you’d be packed by now,” I say.
“Thought about it.” Her voice is rough. “Thought about running. That’s what I do, right? That’s the pattern. Stay somewhere until it gets complicated, then disappear. Start over. New name, new place, new life.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I’m tired.” She finally looks at me. Eyes swollen now. She’s been crying while I was gone. “I’m so tired of running. And because—” She stops. Swallows. “Because I didn’t want to leave. Even if you hate me. I didn’t want to go.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You walked out.”
“Yeah. I needed to think.”
“And?”
Good question. What’s my verdict? What conclusion did I reach during my hour of fence-sitting and rabbit-therapy?
“I want to hear it,” I say. “All of it. Who you were. Why you left. Everything. And then I’ll decide what I feel.”
She nods. Slowly. Like she’s bracing for a blow.
“Okay. Okay, that’s—that’s fair.” She gestures vaguely at the hay bales. “Sit? This might take a while.”
I sit.
She stays standing. Probably needs to move. Some people think better when they’re pacing.
“Dario was always—” She stops. Starts again. “Do you know what it’s like to grow up with someone everyone thinks is perfect? The golden boy. The chosen one. Everything he did was right, even when it was wrong, because he smiled and people believed him.”
“I was his best friend for ten years. Yeah. I know.”
“Then you know what he’s like underneath. You know the—” She makes a frustrated gesture. “The rot. The thing inside him that takes and takes and never gives back. He learned early that he could do whatever he wanted as long as he was charming enough. As long as people loved him.”
“When did you figure it out?”
“I was twelve.” She stops pacing. Looks out the barn window at nothing. “There was a servant girl. She said no to something—I never found out what exactly, but I can guess—and the next day she was gone. Not reassigned. Not dismissed. Gone. And Dario was smiling at breakfast like nothing happened.”
“Did you tell anyone?”