Hettie’s Abduction

Hettie’s Abduction is the separation at the heart of her hidden family history: a Romani midwife took her as an infant without realizing she and Annon were twins, and Tyrus’s desperate choice to save Annon left Hettie behind. The truth transforms a childhood story of kinship into a reckoning over loss, responsibility, and the possibility of freedom.

The Separation at Birth

Tyrus explained that Hettie was stolen nearly at birth by a Romani midwife who did not know there were twins. He, too, had lacked the knowledge necessary to save both children. Faced with the possibility of losing Annon in the birthing process, he chose to save him, knowing that Hettie would be lost to the Romani. He described the choice as terrible, making clear that her separation from her family began not with a deliberate rejection but with a life-or-death decision made under uncertainty.

The twins’ different upbringings followed from that single loss. Annon had no recollection of a sister and asked Tyrus why he could remember none. Tyrus’s revelation supplied the missing explanation: Hettie had been taken before the siblings could know one another. He had also told locals that Merinda was his sister, a cover story connected to the Romani kidnapping Hettie to blackmail him.

Truth and the Promise of Freedom

When Tyrus disclosed Hettie’s history to her, he corrected another part of the story: he was not her uncle, and she was not his blood relative. She and Annon were twins, taken from one another as infants. Tyrus said he deeply regretted losing her then, but argued that he could save her now by asking her to join his quest.

The offer tied Hettie’s personal freedom to a larger danger. Tyrus warned that the Arch-Rike intended to exterminate the Romani through the next Plague, while claiming that Hettie’s blood would protect her. He presented participation in the quest as a chance to help her people and to earn freedom from the life imposed on her. If the quest succeeded, he promised, she could reside in Silvandom, where Romani were forbidden. The proposed future thus answered the original separation with a choice Hettie could make for herself.