Page 146 of The Reaping Rose

“Where do I even start?”

“At the beginning.”

Esen focuses on a spot on the wall behind me. She’s quiet for so long; I think maybe she won’t speak. Finally, her gaze meets mine.

“The beginning.” She shakes her head. “For me, that might be farther back than you bargained for. I remember it all. I’m told it’s impossible to remember your own birth, but I do. I remember being nothing more than a speck of light, content and peaceful. I was somewhere else.”

Her voice drifts, and she glances away.

“Then there was this darkness that tore me in two. Something broke, and after that, I was plummeting for so long that time was nothing. I was nothing. Until I came here, to this place. To this body.”

She holds her hands out in front of her, rolling them over as if her skin is not her own.

“My memories blur after that. I was too small and fragile to keep them. But I was told about the reaping, how my parents offered me to the gods in return for a good harvest, but that the gods rejected me. And so I became this.”

The fine dark webbing on her face shifts as she moves, as if it blows in an invisible breeze.

“My parents could not forgive me for what I’d brought on our family—our realm. So they cast me out. But I stayed close, not able to let them go as they’d done to me. I had been floating so long, but here I had a place. I was someone even if they feared me. And I promised to keep them safe. But then I made a mistake.”

“What kind of mistake?”

“I was barely eighteen, and all the crops had died. They were starving—I was starving. I meant to simply bring them a gift. They were so hungry, and my father was so sick.” Her voice catches; her eyes gloss over. “The local watch from the queen’s army thought my father stole their grain, but he didn’t. I did, trying to keep them fed and healthy. The watch came to the house and they—” She shakes her head, her voice shaking. “My parents were in so many pieces I could not bury them all. It was then he found me.”

“Overlord Farseth?”

“Yes.” Esen clears her throat. “He said he knew what I’d done. I don’t know how, but he knew. He promised to protect me. To never tell them of my crime, all I had to do was help him. He said it was the queen who ordered that fate for my parents. That the queen was desperate in her dying realm, and that he knew how to save it. I wanted to believe him. I needed to.”

“I understand that.” I glance down, thinking of Malachi’s words at our first meeting.

I wanted to believe him too. I thought he understood his people’s suffering, and he truly wanted to save them. More than anything, I wanted to believe we were helping.

“When the overlord gave me this ring, he said it was a promise to each other. A tie to keep me safe. A tie—when I’d spent so long floating.” She rubs the back of her hand, pressing her palm to her chest. “I don’t know why I remember all that, but I do.”

I glance at Callum, but he shrugs, hinting he doesn’t know how she could remember that either.

“I was visiting my parents’ crypt that night you saw me,” Esen says. “It’s all I have left of them. As if they are actually there in the bone and dirt.”

“It doesn’t matter if they are there or not if that’s where you feel closest to them. My father is gone. I lost him, and now he’s been burned, and there is nothing left either. No grieving pillar, no belongings.” Tears sting my eyes. “It does not matter what we hold in our hands, only what we hold in our hearts.”

Esen presses her palm to her chest, her eyebrows pinching, as if she’d forgotten she had a heart at all. “I’ve done too many things I regret.”

“We all have,” I tell her. “To live is to hurt in so many ways.”

“Then why fight it?”

I glance down at Perame, squeezing her hand and remembering what Letia said to me in Vaelier. “Because we don’t just live for ourselves. We do it for those we love. Everyone makes mistakes. We all do bad things, but we do good things as well. We do it for the people we care about. For our family and friends.”

“I’ve not had either.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, meaning it.

Loneliness is worse than any sickness.

Esen frowns. “Is it true what you said? That I am hurting this realm? That what I am destroys it?”

“Not what you are, what you possess. And the more he forces you to use it, the more it will drain what little is left.”

Her lips press tight as her gaze slides from me to Callum, who has been quietly watching. The anger that once tensed his shoulders has relaxed, sympathy returning to his gaze. But not pity. Callum looks at her with understanding.