Chapter 4: What Remains

ANKER’S HADN’T CHANGED.

The same scarred tables. The same smell of yeast and woodsmoke. The same collection of students arguing about subjects they barely understood, their voices rising and falling like waves against stone.

I’d called for a gathering---not a celebration, exactly, but something close. My friends deserved to hear my story, or at least the carefully edited version that wouldn’t get me locked in Haven. And I needed to see them. To remember what I was fighting for.

Simmon arrived first, Fela’s hand in his. She looked the same—the kind of face that made you forget what you were saying mid-sentence—but she carried herself differently now. Like someone who had stopped waiting for permission.

“Kvothe.” She embraced me, and I caught the scent of cedar and old books. “We thought—”

“I know.” I held her for a moment longer than strictly necessary. “I’m sorry. Time moved strangely where I was.”

Wilem appeared next, settling into his usual seat with the quiet economy of motion that marked everything he did. He ordered scutten without being asked and pushed it across the table toward me.

“You look like you need it.”

“You have no idea.”

The door opened again, and I looked up expecting—hoping—but it was only other students, strangers who glanced our way and moved on.

Simmon noticed my expression. “She’s not coming.”

“Who?”

“Don’t.” His voice was gentle but firm. “Denna left a week ago. No one knows where she went.”

The words hit like a physical blow. I’d been preparing myself to see her, to confront her about the song, about her patron, about everything the Cthaeh had whispered in my ear. The idea that she might simply be gone—

“Tell me about her song,” I said. “The one about Lanre.”

The three of them exchanged glances. A silent conversation passed between them—the kind that develops between people who have spent years reading each other’s silences.

“It’s complicated,” Fela said finally.

“Uncomplicate it.”

Another exchange of glances. Then Wilem spoke.

“She performed it at the Eolian. About three weeks after you left.” He paused. “People wept, Kvothe. Not the usual tavern sentimentality. Real grief.”

“What did the song say?”

“A song about Lanre. It painted him as tragic hero. Made people weep.” Fela’s voice was soft. “Beautiful. Heartbreaking. And wrong.”

“Wrong how?”

“Wrong.” Simmon’s voice was harder than I’d ever heard it. “Everything in it contradicts what we know. It paints the Chandrian as tragic heroes instead of monsters.”

“That’s the point,” I said. My voice sounded distant to my own ears. “The song is designed to change how people think. To rewrite history in the public consciousness.”

“How do you know that?”

I couldn’t tell them about the Cthaeh. Couldn’t explain the web of manipulation I was caught in.

“Because I’ve met the man who commissioned it,” I said instead. “Denna’s patron. He’s not teaching her music. He’s using her. Turning her into a weapon.”

The table went silent.

“You know who he is?” Wilem asked carefully.

“I know what he is.” I met his eyes. “And when I find him, I’m going to kill him.”

Even as I said it, I recognized the particular brand of arrogance. The boy who’d burned Ambrose’s rooms, challenged a master on his first day, and leapt into the Fae on a whim was making promises again. But this time I meant every word.

The night wore on. We drank, though not as much as we might have in easier times. We talked about smaller things—Simmon’s research, Fela’s advancement, Wilem’s family troubles back in Ceald. Normal things. Human things.

But beneath the conversation, something else moved. I could feel it in the glances they exchanged when they thought I wasn’t looking. In the way Simmon’s hand found Fela’s under the table, seeking reassurance. In the weight of Wilem’s silences.

They knew something was wrong. Not the specifics—I’d told them little, and they hadn’t pressed—but they could sense the change in me. The darkness I carried. The cold that had settled into my bones.

“You’re different,” Fela said finally, as the candles burned low. “Not just the Adem training. Something else.”

“I’ve seen things,” I said. “Learned things. Bedded the most dangerous woman in the Fae and argued philosophy with warriors who could kill me with their thumbs.” I gave a theatrical shrug. “Some of it was beautiful. Some of it was the price of beautiful.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No. It isn’t.”

She studied my face for a long moment. Then she nodded, accepting what I couldn’t say.

“Just promise me something.”

“What?”

“Promise you’ll let us help. Whatever’s coming, whatever you’re planning—don’t shut us out.” Her eyes were bright. “We’re your friends, Kvothe. We’ve been worried about you for months. Let us worry about you now, too.”

I thought of the Cthaeh’s words. Of the destruction I was fated to cause. Of the danger that loving me would bring to everyone I cared about.

“I’ll try,” I said. Not quite a lie. Not quite the truth either.

Later, walking back to Anker’s alone, I found Auri waiting on the rooftops.

She didn’t say anything. She simply fell into step beside me, moving across the tiles with the silent grace of a shadow. Her presence was a comfort—something pure in a world that had grown very complicated.

“They’re scared,” she said eventually. “Your friends. They can feel the storm coming.”

“Can you?”

“I can feel everything.” She stopped at the edge of a roof, looking out over the sleeping University. “The world is getting heavier. The doors are pressing from both sides. Something is going to break soon.”

“The doors?”

“The ones that should stay closed. The ones that keep the bad things in and the good things out.” She turned to face me, and her eyes were very old. “You’ve been touching them, haven’t you? The doors. Pressing against them. Trying to see what’s on the other side.”

I thought of the Lackless box. The four-plate door. All the mysteries I’d been chasing since my parents died.

“I’ve been looking for answers.”

“Answers aren’t always behind doors.” She tilted her head, bird-like. “Sometimes they’re in the spaces between. In the cracks. In the places nobody thinks to look.”

“Where should I look?”

“Everywhere. Nowhere. Both at once.” She smiled—that strange, sweet smile that always made me feel like I was missing something obvious. “Start with the people who watch you. The ones who’ve been watching since before you knew they were there.”

“Who?”

But she was already gone, vanishing into the shadows like she’d never been there at all.

I stood alone on the rooftop, the wind cold against my face, and wondered which watchers she meant.

Lorren, with his silent assessments and his pruned Archives?

Bredon, with his beautiful games and his knowing smiles?

Or someone else entirely—someone I hadn’t noticed yet, hiding in plain sight?

The moon rose higher. The University slept.

And somewhere out there, in the dark between the stars, the watchers watched back.

I smiled. Let them.