Fractureborn

"You'll be fine. You know, kiddo... when you get to my age, you start to realize something—"

He was wrong.

Thirteen years ago, the Kingdom of Agrekya loosed arrows on its own people to stop a plague. Alexia was five. She doesn't remember her father's face anymore, only the mud, and the lie.

They shielded us.

They also burned us.

Both true. Neither forgiven.

"—the world never gets any kinder. You just learn, eventually, which pain is actually worth carrying."

"Old man. You won't ever tell me who I really am?"

Berun didn't answer.

She still doesn't know what his words meant. She's starting to think she isn't supposed to, not yet.

Fractureborns are vanishing across the kingdom now, and no one is looking. Not the survivors who watched one of them turn a region to ash. Not the Duke who rules in the monarchy's place. Only Alexia, who has never stopped asking what happened to her that night, and who is starting to think someone already knows the answer.

But what if some truths are buried for a reason?

Either way, she's done leaving hers in the ground.