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my goal for this chapter is to summon celine bc i miss that mf <33
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Eight years ago.
Ever since Anya had been arrested and taken away by the Empire, Kian's life had seemed to go from bad to worse. He had struck out from his home--leaving his parents behind--in an attempt to find his little sister, only to move from one shithole of a town to another. And there had been no sign of Anya in any of them.
He tried not to think about it. All of the signs were pointing to her being dead, and as much as he didn't want to believe it, the little logical voice in his head just wouldn't shut up about it.
But given that he was a stubborn bastard, and as per usual when it came to his sister, he chose to ignore that logical voice and follow his heart.
He just never expected his heart to lead him to breaking into the Imperial records office to look for anything they had on Anya. Imprisonment records, enslavement records, hell, as much as he dreaded it, even finding execution records would be helpful, if only to ease his worrying about where she was and to know that she was at least in a better place now.
Kian scanned the dark rows of shelves, the papers and bins stacked along them. This room had to hold the answers he was looking for. He just had to find them.
(He refused to think about what to do if he didn't find anything).
As he worked, the aisles got steadily and steadily messier, as Kian threw down boxes and discarded papers left and right, until the floor was covered in forms and documents. At that point, he would just up and move to the next aisle.
Over and over he did this, pulling out papers and scanning them in the dim lantern light, his chest tightening with every aisle that he searched with no sign of his sister.
And then the window on the opposite wall slid up, and two figures slipped inside, forcing Kian to duck out of the aisle and into the shadows on the outer edge of the room.
"And you're sure this is the right place?" one of them whispered.
"Positive." the other said. "Let's just get this over with."
