Watched over you when you thought you were alone.

The captain tied the tube to a hawk’s leg. The bird was too large to be a kestrel. It didn’t have a kestrel’s markings. It cocked its head, turning its glass-bead eyes on Arin.

No, not a boy. A man made in my image . . . one who knows he can’t afford to be seen as weak.

The hawk launched into the sky.

You’re mine, Arin. You know what you must do.

Arin cut the Valorian’s throat.

It was when Arin was sailing home into his city’s bay, his hair hard with dried blood, his clothes stiff with it, that the story slipped inside him. It lay on his tongue and melted like a bitter candy.

This is the story Arin told.

Once there was a boy who knew how to cower. One night, the gods could see him locked alone inside his rooms, shaking, near vomiting with fear. He heard what was happening elsewhere in the house. Screams. Things breaking. Harsh orders, the actual words muffled yet still clearly understood by the boy, who retched in his corner.

His mother was somewhere beyond that locked door. His father. His sister. He should go to them. He said so to his pointed knees, tucked up beneath his nightshirt as he huddled on the floor. He whispered the words, voice warbling out of control. Go to them. They need you. But he couldn’t move. He stayed where he was.

The door thumped. It shuddered on its hinges.

With a splintering crack, the door gave way. A foreign soldier pushed inside. The soldier’s skin and hair were fair, his eyes dark. He grabbed the boy by his bony wrist.

The boy tugged madly back, but it was ridiculous, he knew how pathetic his effort was. He squawked and flailed. The soldier laughed. He shook the boy. Not very hard, more as if trying to wake the child up. Come along nicely, the soldier said in a language that the boy had studied yet never expected to use. And you won’t get hurt.

Not getting hurt was very important. The mere promise of it made the child go limp with ugly relief. He followed the soldier.

He was led to the atrium. Every one was there, the servants, too. His parents didn’t see him arrive. He was so quiet. Later, he couldn’t say how things would have been different if it hadn’t been his sister, standing at the far side of the room, who noticed him first. He wasn’t sure how he could have changed what happened after. All he knew was that at the most important moment, he had done nothing.

He’d heard there were women in the Valorian army, but the soldiers in his house that night were men. Soldiers stood on either side of his sister. She was tall, imperious. Her loose hair fell around her shoulders like a black cape. As Anireh’s gaze fell upon him and her gray eyes flashed, the boy realized that he’d never before believed that she loved him. Now he knew she did.

She said something low to the Valorians. The boy heard the tone of it, musical in its mockery.

What did you say? a soldier demanded.

She said it again. The soldier seized her, and the boy understood with a sick horror that this was his fault. It was, somehow, all his fault.

They were taking his sister away. Soldiers were taking her toward a cloakroom used in winter when his family had evening guests. He’d hidden in there before. It was close and dark and airless.

This was the point in the story when Arin wished he could reach through time and put his hands over the boy’s small ears. He wanted to deafen the sounds. Close your eyes, he wanted to tell that child. The echo of an old panic fluttered in Arin’s chest. It was crucial that he imagine how he would stop the boy from witnessing what happened next.

Why did Arin do this to himself? It made him ache, this effort to try to change his memory of that night. It was compulsive. Sometimes he thought it hurt more than the actual truth. Yet even now, more than ten years after the Valorian invasion, Arin couldn’t help thinking with desperate fervor about what he should have done differently.

What if he’d called out?

Or begged the soldiers to let his sister go?

What if he’d run to his parents, who were still unaware of his presence in the room, and stopped his father from snatching a Valorian dagger from its sheath?

Or his mother. Surely he could have saved his mother. It wasn’t her nature to fight. She wouldn’t have done it if she’d known he was there. He’d stared as she lunged at the soldier holding his sister. Soldiers cut his father down. The cloakroom door shut behind Anireh. A dagger sliced his mother’s throat. There was a bright plume of blood.

Arin’s ears were roaring. His eyes were dry rocks.

After the soldiers had yanked him shrieking off his mother’s body, he was led with the servants into the city. The royal palace burned on its hill. He saw the corpses of the royal family hanging in the market, including the prince that Anireh was supposed to marry. It was possible that his sister was still alive, wasn’t it? But two days later Arin would see her body in the street.