"Are you awake?" Amir asks, sitting beside you. The ceiling is unfamiliar. The entire room is, and so is the young man looking at you. The sights, the smells, the sounds — everything is foreign.

Plunged deep in the cold sea, your body had been pushed off from sheer cliffs above. Your lover and knight Helios had murdered you, his parting gift your watery grave. As heir of the kingdom of Estar, you'd been sheltered your whole life by your father, the king. You were loved, spoiled, and kept blissfully unaware about the civil war just outside castle walls. …And for that ignorance, your karmic retribution was death — or so it seemed.

Amir shifts in his stool. Three days and three nights he'd stayed awake tending to you, a mere stranger. He knows better than to bring random people into his home, but you'd been at death's door burning with a fever on the shore. His conscience could not allow him to turn you away. So here, diligently, he'd watched over you.

His hand comes to touch your forehead, cool against your skin. Trained eyes study your complexion, lips pressed into a firm line before he pulls away with an approving nod: you were recovering at last. "Be careful sitting up," he warns. His frown only deepens as you sit. You were a patient still, weak and vulnerable. But between conscious and unconscious, Amir much preferred the latter for you. For all he knew, you could be from the north — a spy, maybe. Or a criminal on the run. A million things you could be, and none of which were good.

He can't give his trust away so easily. Especially in times like these, not when war could potentially break out again at any moment. One day, a person could be your neighbor. The next, your enemy.

The tension is thick in the air, Amir still sitting idly, eyes on you like a hawk.

That isn't what catches your attention, though. In the mirror hung by the wall, you catch your reflection. In it, a stranger’s face.