I wake to wrongness.

  Not the sharp-edged panic of Ward Nine or the suffocating gold of the Regent's chamber. This wrongness crawls under my skin like insects made of doubt, makes my teeth ache with frequencies that taste like lies.

  The bed beside me holds the impression of a body. Still warm. The sheets smell of copper and something floral I almost recognize. But when I reach across the silk—nothing. Just emptiness that feels too complete, too scrubbed clean.

  "Sylene?"

  My voice echoes in a room that shouldn't echo. The acoustics are wrong, like someone removed half the furniture and forgot to mention it.

  I sit up, and that's when I see them. The walls.

  They're missing pieces. Not damaged—edited. Where tapestries should hang, blank stone. Where windows should frame the palace gardens, smooth wall. The architecture makes no sense now, doorways leading to corners that shouldn't exist.

  The memory hits like a physical blow: Sylene braiding my hair last night, humming that wordless tune. Her fingers gentle against my scalp, working through tangles with infinite patience. I can feel the phantom touch, remember the warmth of her breath against my neck.

  But I cannot recall the color of her eyes.

  The thought slides away like water through cupped hands. Every time I try to grasp it, focus slips. Green? Blue? The harder I concentrate, the more the memory blurs at the edges, details dissolving into nothing.

  "Morwyn?" I call, but my voice sounds hollow in the edited space.

  She materializes from shadow near the fireplace—but not the way she usually does. No dramatic entrance, no purr of greeting. She sits motionless, unnaturally still, amber eyes fixed on something I can't see.

  "Where is she?"

  "Where is who?" Morwyn asks, voice carefully neutral.

  The question hits wrong. Morwyn never forgets anything. Ever. Her memory spans centuries, realms, the names of every enemy we've killed. She remembers the taste of my first nightmare, the exact words of threats whispered in dead languages.

  "Sylene. The Knight of Whispers. Where—"

  "Oh." Morwyn begins grooming her chest with mechanical precision. "You're not supposed to ask that."

  "What do you mean I'm not supposed to—"

  "You're supposed to scream and move on."

  The words fall into the room like stones into still water, sending ripples I can't understand. Morwyn continues her grooming, movements too regular, too perfect. Like she's performing normalcy rather than living it.

  I stand, bare feet hitting carpet that feels wrong—too soft, texture erased. The room shifts around me as I move, dimensions adjusting to accommodate my presence. A window blinks out of existence as I approach it. A door seals itself when I look too directly.

  "This isn't real."

  "Real is a strong word," Morwyn says without looking up. "Functional is better. Manageable."

  I dress quickly in clothes that appeared sometime while I slept—leather and wool that fit too perfectly, like they were tailored for a body whose measurements someone took while I was unconscious. The fabric doesn't wrinkle. Doesn't retain heat. Might as well be painted on.

  The corridor beyond my chamber stretches further than it should, perspectives bending in ways that make my eyes water. Servants pass like sleepwalkers, movements too fluid, faces too empty. They nod when they see me, but their eyes don't track properly.

  I grab a serving girl's arm. Her skin gives beneath my fingers like clay.

  "Where is the Knight of Whispers?"

  Her mouth opens and closes soundlessly. When she finally speaks, the words come from somewhere else. "Which knight, Your Majesty? We have so many."

  "Pink hair. Green fire. Died a thousand times."

  Blank stare. "Perhaps you mean the Knight of Roses? She tends the garden sculptures."

  "No, I—"

  The girl's face flickers, features rearranging like water finding its level. For a moment, she almost looks familiar. Then the moment passes, leaving behind perfectly generic beauty.

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  "I hope you find what you're looking for," she says, and dissolves.

  The hallway stretches longer. Doors multiply along the walls, each one bearing symbols that shift when I'm not looking directly. I try the first—locked. The second opens onto nothing but wall. The third reveals a closet full of clothes I've never worn, all in my exact size.

  "Looking for something?" The Princess of Flesh and Hate steps through a wall like it's made of mist. Her form is more solid today, features stable for once. She wears an expression I've never seen before—pity.

  "Sylene. The Knight who was with me."

  "Was she?" The Princess tilts her head, studying me with those vertical red slits. "Or is that just what you need to believe?"

  "I remember—"

  "Do you? Tell me about her eyes."

  The request hits like a slap. I open my mouth, close it. The memory dances just out of reach, important details bleeding away like water through sand.

  "Her hands were bandaged," I say desperately. "Metal pins through the palms. She could kill gods."

  "Many knights can kill gods. It's in the job description." The Princess moves closer, and I smell ozone, burnt copper. "But bandages... metal pins... those are very specific details."

  "Because they're real!"

  "Real is a strong word."

  The same phrase Morwyn used. Like it's rehearsed.

  "You're lying. All of you. Something happened to her, and you're covering it up."

  The Princess doesn't deny it. Instead, she reaches into the air and produces something impossible—a doorway where none existed before. "The gardens," she says. "Look for yourself."

  I push through before she can change her mind.

  The palace gardens sprawl beneath six moons that hang wrong in the sky—too close, too bright, casting shadows that fall upward. The sculpture garden stretches in all directions, hundreds of living bodies frozen in artistic poses.

  But something's missing. Gaps in the arrangement where sculptures should stand. Empty pedestals surrounded by carefully tended grass, as if something had been removed with surgical precision.

  I move through the displays, searching. The flowering man with dark hair nods as I pass, petals opening and closing with his breath. A woman whose spine has been turned into a musical instrument hums softly as wind passes through her bones.

  Then I find it.

  A pedestal near the garden's heart, larger than the others. The grass around it grows in a perfect circle, but inside that circle—scorched earth. Not burnt. Erased. As if something had been removed not just from this space, but from having ever existed here.

  I kneel, press my palm to the dead soil. It's warm. Pulsing with a rhythm I recognize but can't name.

  That's when I see the blood.

  Droplets leading away from the empty pedestal in a neat line. Each drop perfect as a tear, round as periods at the end of sentences written in violence. I follow the trail through the garden, past sculptures that turn to watch with living eyes.

  The blood leads to the garden's edge, then stops.

  Not at a wall or gate. It simply ends mid-air, three feet off the ground. The final drop hovers in space like a frozen moment, defying gravity and logic.

  I reach toward it, and it dissolves at my touch.

  "She was here." The words taste like copper in my mouth. "Someone took her."

  "Or maybe," says Morwyn, appearing behind me, "she was never here at all."

  The doubt hits like vertigo. I remember warmth beside me in bed, remember gentle fingers in my hair. But the harder I grasp at specifics, the more they fade. Like trying to hold smoke.

  "I'm not crazy."

  "Sanity is relative in the Nine Realms." Morwyn sits, wrapping her tail around her paws with mechanical precision. "Especially when the Council decides reality needs... editing."

  The word falls into place with an almost audible click. Editing. Not just removing Sylene—removing the space she occupied, the evidence of her existence. Like a story with crucial pages torn out.

  "Why would they—"

  A sound cuts through my question. Soft, rhythmic. Coming from beneath my feet.

  I drop to my knees, digging through the scorched earth with my bare hands. The soil is loose, recently disturbed. My fingers find something smooth, warm. Metal.

  A Council relic. Palm-sized, made of silver that shifts between solid and liquid. Symbols flow across its surface like living things, rearranging into patterns that make my eyes bleed to follow.

  The moment my skin touches it, sound erupts from the device. Not words—pain. Terror. The sound of someone being unmade one piece at a time.

  Then, through the static of suffering:

  "Don't come after me."

  Sylene's voice. Distorted by agony but unmistakably hers. The recording continues, words tumbling over each other in desperate haste:

  "They're not... it's not what you think. The memories they took, they had to. The Queen you were... she was never meant to—"

  The device goes silent. Then, softer:

  "I love you. Remember that when they tell you I never existed."

  The relic crumbles to dust in my hands.

  I sit in the scorched earth, holding handful of nothing, while the six moons wheel overhead in patterns that spell out prophecies I can't read. Around me, the sculpture garden breathes with the rhythm of a massive heart, hundreds of living artworks watching my breakdown with eyes that remember what I've forgotten.

  Sylene was real. Is real. Somewhere.

  And they took her from me so completely that even my familiar pretends not to remember.

  The Hollow Wind stirs, cold and eager. For the first time since waking in Ward Nine, it doesn't feel like foreign invasion. It feels like coming home.

  "Find her," I whisper to the darkness growing in my chest.

  The wind whispers back: After we find ourselves.

  I rise from the ashes of memory, dirt under my fingernails and murder in my heart. The palace looms behind me, full of lies and careful silences. But lies can be broken. Silences can be shattered.

  And I have the strangest feeling that once I remember what I really am, even the Council will wish they'd left Sylene where I could see her.

  The moons continue their dance, and in their light, I swear I can see threads—invisible connections binding reality together. Some of them lead away from this place, toward realms I've never seen.

  Toward answers written in blood and hidden behind doors that don't exist until you have the right key.

  I have work to do.