It's a scary place, my head. When dreams and waking were, in equal measure, nightmares, I had no escape.

Tonight, I dreamt of that summer day in the West Garden; amidst the scent of roses and the gurgle of the fountains, Kaz and I sat underneath a trimmed lemon tree, still. The dream, it felt like an amalgamation of fantasies, but I was sure it happened somewhere back when things were so much different.

It was a memory.

"Do you think they'll get divorced?" I asked Kaz, hiding my face under a red tablecloth I stole from breakfast at the House.

He shook his head, his wispy hair floating around his head like a halo. He was a tender thirteen and yet he already looked like an angel slated to look like a god. "Divorce is the one luxury we can't afford." Kaz muttered under his breath.

"But if they do, what will happen to us?"

"Stop thinking about it."

I couldn't. Mother had lost it, screaming about broken glass and bones like a madwoman. I didn't know how long she would be tolerated. "I won't be a princess anymore?"

Kaz's eyes softened at me. "You sure would like that, wouldn't you?"

I would.

"Mother and Abbu might divorce each other, but we, you and me... we don't divorce the country." He meant it as a loyal chant, I heard it as a threat. Kaz readjusted his baseball cap around his head, tucking in the strays of his silvery gold hair. "Eurasia exists because of us. We exist because of Eurasia."

"But Mother-"

He grit his teeth. "-never belonged here."

I would have liked to argue that neither did we.

"I know that look." He whispered.

"You mean you know how we look?" He didn't get much of the backlash, unlike me and our mother. Kaz did everything perfectly. He was the smartest, kindest, most athletic person in every room. All hate for how he reminded the people of our long-gone enemies was replaced with pride that he was their own. It was hard to explain being unwanted to someone who has only known being the opposite.

He hated our mother, not of the same reason as everyone else did, though. He hated her for hating herself. He hated her for hating him.

Kaz stood up, grabbed my hand, and started walking to the glass gates. "Rush, please."

"Why?" I glanced around, then realizing the looming presence of the King's Guard sent from the House. We went to the garden for peace, and they so dutifully came for chaos. "No use in running, they'll catch us."

"At least give them a hard time, Liz."

Then something shifted, as things often did in dreams; so quickly, so unnoticeably, that I knew I'd only recognize the absurdity with waking, and that I'd immediately forget with the first thought of consciousness.

That was supposed to be the moment when I remembered being caught up in a guard's arms, Kaz screaming for him to let me go, invoking his will as the ascendant of our father. I remembered, in the real memory, how I struggled and elbowed the blond guard's eye socket and how it started bleeding on my sleeve.

However, I didn't remember the dark wavy hair, that cologne, and those amber eyes staring at me, whispering triumphantly, with a look of recognition so misplaced in my life's timeline. Ilyaas?

The dream of him smiled at me. It couldn't be.

He leaned in, "Finally."