Was it truly the right choice to leave our home and build a new one in the Kingdom of Celesta?
In the end, had it really been the better path?
I had wanted to ask Thomen that question more times than I could count. Perhaps every year since we left. Perhaps every time another loss came and hollowed out the life he had fought so hard to build. The desire to ask only grew stronger after Edwin died. But grief has its own silences, and I knew such a question would have been cruel then, not only to Thomen but to Oryanna as well. What answer could he have possibly given me in the middle of that pain? What comfort could there have been in wondering whether everything might have been different if they had simply chosen another road?
And yet I wondered all the same.
