I stop only a few paces from her.
Ah, but you forget I can read your mind, and that memory, the one that just surfaced, says you’re not being completely truthful. Tell me about the road and the wheatfield.
The Blood Moon washes her in crimson light as she curls inward, a sharp cry tearing from her throat. Pain ripples through her—not from the bindings, but from the memory. From guilt. From recognition.
She turns her face away, gasping, as though struck through the heart.
“White one…tell me. When was the first time we met?”
“Stop.”
The word almost reaches me. Almost makes me pull back.
Then I hear Orán’s steps on the forest floor.
He emerges from the trees moments later, soot and moonlight clinging to him, and leans against a nearby trunk. His presence steadies the air, grounds it. His gaze settles on her with something dangerously close to reverence.
“I’ve felt it too,” he says quietly. “The same familiarity. As though her life is one I’ve brushed against before—one I was meant to take and chose not to.”
Her breath hitches.
“Is that true, little one?” I ask gently.
A quiet sob slips free of her before she can stop it. She turns her face away and buries it in the crook of her shoulder, shaking.
Mind to mind, Orán reaches for me.
Keep going, he urges. It’s working. She’s recoiling from the truth, but it’s also what’s drawing her back. The animal is receding.
“Orán,” she pleads aloud, her voice breaking. “Tell him to stop.”
Conflict crosses his face, but after a beat, he nods to me.
I soften my voice, but not my resolve.
Think, Eridessa.
Show me the wheatfield.
The sunlight.
The tied bundles of stacked wheat you worked on that day. When your small hands were red and near blistering. I’ve seen fragments. I press gently. But show me why that day is so hard to face.
I push—not cruelly, not violently, but with purpose. I shape the edges of her thoughts, guiding her back to the place she’s buried deepest.
She lifts her face to the bloodred moon, and she screams.
It tears out of her, raw and unrestrained, a sound of grief too large to stay contained any longer. Pain pours out of her in that cry—years of it, locked away and denied. She screams until there’s nothing left to give, until her voice drains away and tears flood her eyes, spilling freely down her cheeks.
When she finally goes quiet, spent and shaking, the memory unfolds.
I open my mind fully to Orán.
We see it together.
Her small hands were aching with pain from the work in the field. The wheat was irritating her skin. The ties were burning as they constantly slipped from her grip. The ache in her shoulders. Her, as a small child, begging an older woman for a brief rest from her long day of labor.
Rows of women, bent beneath the sun, toiling the day away.
