Four years. Four Dragon-forsaken years. Twenty-two years since the Cirlat, twenty since I entered the Palace of the Tamed Storms, fourteen since I joined the Wyld Hunt. How old am I? I can do the math, but it doesn’t feel real. Four years of our lives… just gone.

I should probably apologize to Kenzo for not believing we’d lost time. I won’t, anyway.

Suddenly the reasons we might be in the enemy’s armor multiply. When I thought we’d just been pulled through space, the answer was easy: magic. Funny how magic solves a lot of problems, isn’t it? Not that anything actually gets solved, but it makes explaining them so simple.

The soldiers of Lookshy knew us on sight, and they tried to kill us. What’s to say the Realm won’t do the same? Kenzo is certain we are not traitors. Kenzo has no idea what can happen in four years, or less. How quickly your life can change. How suddenly you can go from the staunchest devotee to the most faithless heretic. Kenzo is young. Perhaps not chronologically… but he will learn, or his faith in himself and in the Realm will be the very thing that gets him killed.

I know there are things which would cause even Kenzo to turn his back on the Realm -- in the eyes of the Realm, if not in Kenzo’s heart. He cannot imagine these things happening. Perhaps he cannot imagine their existence -- but exist they do. And there is no way of knowing for certain that the unimaginable has not occurred. Our minds are as they were four years ago... but the Realm has moved on, and now I can only assume that for four years we moved with it.

What could have happened in four years? Todrencai could have accepted that I won’t marry him... or Hesiesh help me, maybe I did. We all could be married. We could have homes, titles. My parents could have gotten tired of their half-hearted hope that I’d come to my senses and fully disowned me. Joseph may be grown... or he could be dead. He could be dead. Or I could have found him, and I just don't know it. Everyone we knew four years ago could be gone. Probably not everyone is... but they've certainly all changed. We changed too, only now we don't remember it.

The truth is, we don’t even know who we are anymore. And some of us don’t even know that we don’t know that. In some ways, we’re no better off than Feather. And she may be better than us! Better than me, anyway; she doesn't seem to know what the hell has happened to her. But me -- maybe I should have died back at that clearing. Maybe...

...maybe I did.