"The first was Lady Aleah Olian."
The world inside Tharionson stopped.
The imposter watched the realization begin to form and seemed to savor it. "Ah. There it is. That look. I have always loved the moment when a man understands that the answer was standing beside him while he searched for it."
Aleah.
Tharionson's mind crashed backward to the infirmary, to the blind survivor, to the reports of stable vitals, to the death that had made no sense. He remembered standing over her body, remembered forcing healers to test for poisons, curses, delayed spells, hidden injuries, anything at all.
He remembered the rage of being told she had died in her sleep. He remembered refusing to believe trauma had simply taken her because Aleah Olian had been stronger than that. Now the truth opened beneath him, vast and sickening. Aleah had never returned.
The lone survivor had never been a survivor at all.
