The hours that followed saw them alternating between consciousness and slumber, between passion and serenity. Between budding love and ripe lust.

Now sprawled at the foot of the bed, Meya's half-open eyes spotted several pale, rose-water colored patches of blood scattered on the off-white linen.

My virgin blood? Coris said he'd take care of it.

Meya dragged her fingers slowly over them, then frowned up at the young lord. Not that she minded, now that the secret was out.

Coris's somber eyes were also fixed upon the stains.

"They say blood and ink are two things that never wash off. Despite man's best efforts." He remarked, quiet and pensive. Meya tilted her head as she contemplated it, then hitched up a wry little smile,

"The laundry maid must have known everything that happened behind our doors, huh." She whispered as she idly traced imaginary lines from each minuscule speck to the other, then looked up to meet his gaze, "You probably needed a heavy coin to weigh her tongue down."

Coris smiled in return, but shook his head.

"Not all these are yours." He revealed as he laid a pale, tapered fingertip softly on a spot of stain. Meya's eyes grew wide as the inkling took shape, but Coris was still smiling,

"I used to have to scramble in the dark for my chamberpot whenever my stomach acts up at night." Meya's horrified gaze followed him as he propped himself up and edged away to sink heavily down on his pillow,

"I slept well these past few days, but thanks to Zier, that's probably all the sleep I'd get." He quipped with his eyes closed, looking tired and gaunt in the late afternoon sun, as he sighed wearily,

"What in the three lands should I do with him?"

Meya slithered back to her side of the bed, slumping down face-to-face with him.

"Maybe you spewing blood is your body's way of telling you that there's something inside that needs to come out." She suggested, making soothing circles with her rough palm on his sunken middle, as if to hypnotize it into behaving. Coris raised his eyebrows. She stared straight back at him, undaunted.

"You're always smiling, Lord Coris. Maybe the reason you slept well these few nights is because you cried—and talked. With me."

Meya patiently waited out the long pause; Coris seemed taken aback by the simple notion. Finally, he colored slightly then averted his eyes, muttering in shame.

"I don't have the right to complain. Born rich and noble and all."

Meya blinked. She churned her lips about as she pondered it, then resurfaced with a wry little smirk.

"Well, from what I've seen, we're both liars by nature. We both have fathers who are near impossible to please. And our mothers don't really help. I'm jealous of my big sister. And your little brother is jealous of you."

Coris blushed deeper. Her point proven, Meya gestured at the plate of still-toppling pile of waffles on the bedside cabinet.

"We still have a mountain of syrup waffles to munch through. We can swap tales of our fathers, and I can help you be a better big brother for Zier. How's that, my liege?"

Meya turned back and served Coris a toothy grin along with her proposal. The young lord looked unsure, like a shy tyke as his mama introduced him to a new relative. But at long last, he creaked up a small, tired smile.

"Please, just Coris."

Meya blinked at the unexpected gesture, as a wave of warmth enveloped her heart. Coris propped himself up on an elbow and his eyes wandered off before him, staring through her to memories both recent and long past,

"You were right, actually. About leaving the door open." He admitted then dipped his head, absently watching his fingernail flicking away bits of candle-wax stuck to the sheets. Probably from late-night readings.

"Father said I'm always assuming the worst of everyone and everything. It's not that I want to. But I'm a Hadrian. My duty is to hide the Axel the best I could. I learned to lie and conceal and manipulate. I've trained myself to predict the worst-case scenario in every situation. The one time I didn't, I lost my dear friend and my own future."

Once the spot of wax had disintegrated into dust, Coris plopped down on the bed once more,

"I know privilege comes with responsibility. And I've never known another life outside this one. But sometimes, they're so heavy. All these secrets." He shook his head, his eyes drooping close in fatigue as he breathed,

"Why must I be born a Hadrian?"

Meya slid a soothing hand down his arm.

"I'm sure Zier must be thinking the same thing." She suggested, her usually snarky voice tender,

"He doesn't know any more than you do why you two must do the thing you're supposed to be doing. But he's not as patient as you. So he did what he thought was right. And he might actually be right, once the truth unfolds. We never know, do we?" Meya cocked her head at Coris, whose expression was glum and pensive. She gave his arm a tiny squeeze, then leaned down and whispered.

"Just tell him what you just told me. So he'll know it's just as hard for you, too. Might make him feel better if he knows you think the dung-well you're both standing in stinks as much as he does."

With a finger, Meya led a stray sheaf of his dark hair across his forehead and tucked it behind his ear. Coris stared into those glowing dragon eyes and saw the sincerity, the genuine care. And it made him feel safe enough to let down his guard.

"My parents have always taught me to set a good example." He said with a sad smile, then a rueful chuckle echoed in his throat as he recalled the spectacle he had made in Father's study, "I reckon this must be the first time he ever saw me yell at Father."

"And you should let him see more of that you." Meya shook his arm earnestly. Coris raised a skeptical eyebrow. Realizing what she had suggested, Meya waved her hands, hastily explaining herself,

"Not saying you should yell more at your father, though. He might send us even further than Safyre next time. Though I think he kind of deserves it. And I do want to see more of Latakia."

Meya broke off when Coris snickered. She glanced down and saw those silvery eyes flickering in amusement, and her heart skipped several beats.

Looking pointedly away, Meya willed her heart back to its usual rhythm, then returned to business,

"D'you know why I resent Marin so much?" Coris met her gaze, intrigued. Meya shrugged.

"She makes everything seem so easy. She never, ever complains. Not even once." Having said, she ran a hand down the ridges that were Coris's ribs pushing out from under his skin, a shadow of sorrow over the glow of her eyes,

"Seeing you now, I reckon it mustn't have been so easy for her, either. Being Dad's daughter." She mumbled, her impassive face betraying a fleeting glimpse of shame, then glanced up at him,

"Maybe Zier would understand you more, if you let him know it's not easy for you too. Let him see some Crazy Coris. Not-so-perfect Coris. Silly Coris—Perverted Coris. Hey, stop it!"

She stifled a snicker as she rose up on her elbow and batted away Coris's finger, which was gloomily flicking her nipple. Snuggling back down on her pillow, Meya studied the young man for a moment, then shrugged with a grin.

"You're too...perfect, sometimes. I'd definitely hate you too, if you were my big brother."

"You would?" Coris asked, his smile widening to show a sliver of uneven, yellowed teeth. Meya winked.

"Yeah. You and your oh-so-righteous guts."

They both shared a round of snickers. Then Meya laid her hand on the bloodstains once more.

"Your bloodstains. Your tears. Your scars. Your thoughts and feelings. You're meant to show them. Not hide or erase them." She whispered softly, luminous eyes lost in contemplation, "Maybe that's why blood and ink don't wash off. Freda made them that way, so they're meant to be seen."

Silence fell for a moment as Meya resumed drawing constellations with the bloodstains, while Coris narrowed his eyes, studying her. Finally, he responded,

"And your voice. It's also meant to be heard."

Meya froze, nonplussed.

"My voice?"

Coris's eyes narrowed almost into slits.

"You've been faking your voice, haven't you?"

"What are you talking about?" Meya blurted out, clearly flustered. And Coris pressed his advantage,

"You sounded different. Back there—on my desk." The young lord raised an insinuating eyebrow as he slid his eyes towards said desk. And a familiar scenario played out, with Meya socking Coris's arm and Coris yowling bloody murder. Then, Coris continued matter-of-factly,

"Your voice was higher. Sweeter. Now that think I about it, it fits you more."

"No, it doesn't!" Meya's blurted out in her real voice in frustration. Coris watched as she whirled away and sat up, annoyed with herself, "It's too dainty. And all this weird ringing, too. I can't say fart, crap, dung, or dong without folks giving me the weird eye. Now you're doing it."

Meya whipped back and glowered. Coris caught himself staring, and swiftly glanced elsewhere,

"Sorry. That was unbecoming." Grinning sheepishly, he rubbed an awkward finger on his cheek, then resurfaced looking matter-of-fact, "It's not good for your voice, you know. You could lose your Song."

Scowling, Meya propped up her pillow, gave it a vicious slug then flattened it behind her back, as if it were the physical embodiment of her Song.

"Good riddance. I won't have to hide it no longer."

"Why so?" Coris asked innocently, a shrewd glint in his sharp eyes, "It's a beautiful voice. Must be excruciating suppressing it."

It's your song, now, Meya. And if you don't let it define you, it won't. So why are you so afraid?

Arinel's voice rang inside her head, as her blue eyes pierced into the depths of Meya's heart; an unyielding metal cage behind which a wee song thrush, her true self, crouched huddled and shivering. All alone.

Meya hadn't hidden her voice just because it didn't fit her character. That was part of it. Mainly, it was because it resembled Mum's old voice. And thus, a dead giveaway.

Meya had never heard Mum's undamaged voice, of course. But she felt familiar with her voice. Meya reckoned Mum might have sung to her while she was pregnant with Meya, a hand caressing her bump, probably assuming that within was a beautiful baby boy with her ice-blue eyes.

The thought pained her. But was it really anyone's fault though? Was it something she should fear so much? Was sixteen years long enough, far too long, or already too late to set it free?

As Meya dithered, Coris sat up by her side.

"Zier plays the harp, you know." He mused as he wrapped the blanket around them both, then gazed dreamily into space, "Just imagine him strumming Corien's Harp to your Song of May Day. Must be like music from the Heights."

Meya glanced sideways at Coris's serene, wistful profile. And it might be that the silence was becoming too overwhelming and confining, but just like that, she found her song flowing unhindered out of her into thin air.

"I'm here to sing a song I own.

I wish to hear the world sing along."

Coris froze at that whispering, reverberating voice. Something was stirring, deep in his repressed memories. Slowly, he turned around and stared, wide-eyed, as Meya's song built up in courage and vigor with every syllable that resonated.

"I'll sing my heart for all who'll heed.

So lend your ears to the wind as it blows."

"I'm Meya, Me—"

"—ya. I'm born on May's Eve. As my father grieve...for my mother's Song."

Meya whipped around, eyes as wide as she had ever opened them. Coris was also staring at her, his cheeks bloodless and his body rigid, his gaze clouded in resurrected memories. He turned away, his mouth hesitantly moving as he stammered out the lyrics he for some reason knew—remembered...

"Oh Meya, they say...what good...is a lass. As unruly and poor...as Me...ya...Hild."

Silence gradually drifted in to replace the last echoes of Coris's cracked, dissonant voice. It was out of tune and vaguely recreated. But there was no mistaking it. It was her song.

Meya could feel the dawning realization sending trembles spreading throughout her body. She fell limply against the headboard, wide eyes staring in utmost disbelief and shock at the frail young man before her.

"No way in Fyr's Lake." The words left her lips in a hoarse rasp. "H-how?"

"I've heard this song before." Coris's voice sounded just as strangled, as his eyes remained staring unblinkingly ahead, "Three years ago. In Crosset..."

His gaze slid back to settle on Meya, and for a breath she felt as if the whole world had fallen out of existence. Memories once shattered and nebulous coagulated and conjoined into flashes of sharp images and distinct voices. And the words barely left her lips.

"Emerald-Stone Boy?"

"What?" Coris raised his eyebrows, not quite catching—let alone comprehending—that. Meya scrambled off the bed, a toe snagged in the silk blanket almost sending her face-first to the floor. Coris watched as she sped off to the adjoined solar, still in her birthday suit.

The door hadn't even stopped swinging when Meya came hurtling back through it, clutching something to her chest with both hands. She skidded to her knees by the bed edge and stretched out her arms. In her overlapping palms laid a small lump of dark-gray stone beset with glinting shards of vert crystal.

"You gave me this. Remember?" Panting hard, Meya pressed, shaking her hands impatiently.

Coris stared down at the twinkling pebble. Flashes of strange yet somehow familiar surroundings, snippets of voices and the warmth of spring.

He knelt before the simple carpet stall of a portly Tyldornian merchant and his daughter, selecting raw ore stones as souvenirs for Zier.

Large, glowing acid-green eyes shimmering with tears stared into his in the descending dusk, as he entrusted the emerald stone in her hands.

Coris looked up and found the dragoness's eyes waiting for him, similar to the last dewdrop of bitter joy clinging to those lashes. And as his frown of confusion made way for a faint smile of remembrance, Meya catapulted herself from the floor straight into his arms.

"Meya!"

Coris found himself sprawled on his back, with Meya ironing the air out of his lungs with her embrace. But it wasn't her vigor that caught him off guard—It was the boiling tears seeping onto his shoulder.

"Oh, Freda—" Meya choked out a whisper as she tightened her arms around him, her voice thick with tears and breathy with happiness. "You have—no idea—how long I've been waiting—for you to come by again."

As the new, old memories settled down and made themselves at home in his head, Coris ran his hand down her wiry back, feeling the tremors of her sobs conveyed to him through their nestled bodies, hearing her heart-wrenching tale,

"Every bazaar day, I went looking for you at every spice stall. Asked every merchant I came across if they knew Simon of Hadrian. But no-one ever heard of you. You looked so ill back then so I thought you must've died. You lying—fish-brained—donghead!"

Meya landed a thump so resounding on Coris's chest that he felt his whole ribcage wobbling. She crumpled into his arms, her sobs muffled by his shoulder. Her body was hot iron on his cold skin.

"Why didn't we recognize each other?" Meya finally drew back. With red-rimmed eyes she scoured him up and down, then shook her head with a frustrated frown. "You haven't changed. Not that much."

"Same goes for you, too." Coris concurred with a gentle grin, which swiftly turned sly as he teasingly poked one of Meya's breasts, still squashed up against his meatless chest, "I'm feeling substantial growth and springiness here, though. Ow!"

Coris yelped and cupped his forearm, glowering in mock petulance at Meya, who had flounced away, arms crossed and her back to him. Smiling at that strangely familiar and endearing sight, the young lord crept close to his silently fuming paramour, a pale finger traveling down a light golden curl, unraveling it to its full length.

"Your hair's different."

Meya picked up a lock of hair and tugged absentmindedly on it, feeling its coarseness chafing against her equally rough palm. The bleach, the dye and the curling potions had sapped up the moisture and scraped away the luster of her hair as mercilessly as blazing sunlight, leaving it brittle, frizzled and dry.

"It's for the disguise." She stated the obvious, struggling to fill the melancholic silence. Coris sighed sadly in her place.

"Pity. It was such a rare shade." He combed his long, icy fingers through her tangled curls, and Meya closed her eyes sleepily in contentment as his soothing voice trickled down the curve of her back,

"Rich, lustrous rose gold. I wish I'd live long enough to see it grow back out."

Meya's eyes snapped open at that.

"Of course you will." She whirled around abruptly, glaring in annoyance at a taken-aback Coris, "You've just got yourself one more reason to, haven't you?"

Coris averted his eyes, scratching absently at his cheek. Frustrated, Meya hooked a finger around his chin and turned his face to her, forcing him to meet her gaze.

"I know what you've been doing." She said brusquely, piercing luminous green staring into wavering silver, "You avoid trying out new things because you're afraid you'll like them and you'll miss them when your time comes."

Coris tensed up, eyes wide and scared, confirming her guess, but he did not shy away. Emboldened, Meya leaned closer to him, her voice now gentle and somewhat tragic.

"But we're all going to die someday anyway, Coris. Yet, we're all going about doing the things we want to." A shrug rippled down her wiry shoulders, before her eyes wandered off in silent reflection, and she concluded in a low, grave voice,

"Now that I think about it, it might be better to regret doing something than regret not doing it."

Like a clinging teardrop, Meya's finger slid heavily off his chin, leaving behind a patch of heat like a candlelight. Coris looked on as she lowered her face, sorrowful eyes staring unseeing down at the white sheets.

"You were right." She finally continued, her sweet yet rueful voice leaving a bitter taste in his ears, as the trembling glow of those acid-green eyes focused on him,

"I was lying. I love my Song. I love to sing. I love this voice. It was a torture hiding them. Every single breath of it."

A moment of silence descended between them. At long last, Coris reached a pale hand towards her. His knobby thumb tracing her lips, he repeated his same words from years past that had solaced the forgotten and embittered May Queen of Crosset.

"Then please, let me hear your Song."

And so Meya sang. As the young Lord Hadrian rested his head on her lap, with one hand caressing his hair, she sang the tales and lullabies of Latakia. She sang of war and peace. Of hatred and love. Of winter and spring. Of death and birth. Of sorrow and joy. Of pain and perseverance. Of despair and hope.

And that day, from high noon til sundown, for the first time in sixteen years, The Song of May Day echoed within the solemn stones of the bustling Keep, and carried on the gentle spring wind throughout the castle's hill.

And, for the first time in sixteen years, Meya Hild felt free.