I woke early.
Earlier than usual, before the kingdom had properly started its morning, while the light outside was still grey and undecided. I lay in bed for a while and looked at the ceiling and went through the shape of the conversation in my head the way Dara had suggested. Not rehearsing it word for word. Understanding the emotional truth of it so that when the moment came the words would arrive naturally rather than feeling placed.
The emotional truth was not difficult to find because it was not entirely fictional.
There had been sessions that were hard. There had been moments of frustration with the interior work, moments where the bloodline felt distant and unreachable and the weight of what was coming pressed down in a way that made everything feel insufficient. I had not left a
