"...That's not funny, Ester." Saphy tried to force a strained laugh. But upon seeing Ester's eyes, her reaction pointed otherwise.
Saphy's wide, hazel stare went blank. The playful light snuffed out like a candle, replaced by something processing, stuttering. Her lips quivered, as if they had a mind of their own. The silence pressed down on Ester like water, filling her lungs while she waited for Saphy's response.
"So...when you first arrived at the dorm…"Saphy took a step back from the bed. "The way you looked…"
"I had just been released from the Geneevan dungeons in the capital...They gave me a choice." Ester shifted forward. Saphy moved back another step."Rot down there, or become a weapon for the Church."
"B-but the way they described the murder." Each word made Ester flinch. "You brutalised him. They say when they found...you...you were in a pool of his own blood, his face unrecognisable. You caused so much shame your family was made an example of. Your father..first, then your mother...They died." Saphy's voice climbed. "How could you?"
There it was. The final nail.
Not because Saphy accused her. Not because the words cut—they did—It was the look. The same look the instructors wore. The same one in Jacen's eyes. Even Saphy couldn't hide it now. Like she wasn't human.
Pity
"How could I?" Ester's jaw worked around each syllable. "How could they.."
Saphy's eyebrows pulled together. "What do you-?"
"HOW COULD THEY ALL..!"
The shout tore out of her. Ester, who had always internalised everything from everyone, found herself unable to stop it from escaping her. Or the tears that came with it. "How could they all treat me like that…" Her voice splintered into something sharp and small, breaking between breaths.
Saphy who had been slowly trying to reach the door, stopped. "What are you talking about?"
Ester dragged air into her lungs. Once. Twice. "My mother. My father." The next words like a bad taste in her mouth. "My uncle."
"Your Uncle?" Saphy's face twisted into something between disbelief and horror. "An Archon candidate...And you killed him." The phrasing was supposed to show how stupid what she did was. "Why?"
Ester just shook her head. "He wasn't a good man, Saphy." Ester's gaze drifted sideways to the wall, the closets, anywhere else. "He didn't leave me a choice."
"He didn't leave you a choice!" Saphy gestured around the whole room as if it all made sense now. Her scoff cut through the newly furnished room. "Do you hear yourself Ester? Who're you to decide someone's fate?"
Ester had asked herself similar questions in the dark. In the dungeons. In the nightmares where she would see her parents. Standing there, with Saphy's righteous anger filling the space between them, amidst all the sadness and pain, she felt something crack open. Was it relief? Gratitude?
Finally there was a voice who, for once wasn't her own.
"If not me, another girl would have." The smile crept across Ester's face like a thief. Too calm. Too smooth. Too wrong. "I just happened to be the one chosen to give him what he deserved."
Saphy, who had still been backing toward the door, stumbled as her heel caught the leg of the table. She stumbled, steadied herself. "Why would you say that…" Saphy's fire gutted out.
"He paid my parents for their silence. Paid them while he tried to...have his way with me." A laugh bubbled up from somewhere hollow. It rattled in the air. "And do you know what they did? They took the money! They let him." The smile pulled tighter. "Isn't that funny?"
Saphy's shoulders hit the door. "How is that funny?" Her voice a whisper.
Ester turned back. Their eyes met, a manic glint in Ester's.
Saphy jerked away like she'd been struck. It was the sound of Ester's tears dropping onto the floor that she realised what she had shown Saphy. The side she wanted to bury.
Her mouth opened. Nothing came.
Saphy's hand found the latch, fumbling with it. She wrenched the door open, it swung inward, forcing her to step aside, and fled into the corridor. The door slammed behind her, hard enough Ester winced from it.
Ester stared at the closed door. Then at the white table Saphy had stumbled into. Then she turned and collapsed onto her bottom bunk, pulling the stiff sheets for a hug. They smelled of harsh soap and nothing else, no history, no previous occupants. Just the chemical clean of Church funded things. She was fucked. Any moment now Saphy would tell someone. Tell someone that she was room mates with a murdering maniac. But the question was, who would it be? An instructor? A guard? One of the students? It was the first full day and she was already hollowed out.
The book lay on the thin mattress where she'd left it. Might as well, she thought. It was just getting good.
But her eyes wouldn't focus. Outside, beyond the window a few paces from the bed, the sun bled gold across the sky, then amber, then the bruised purple of dusk. Voices drifted up from the grounds below, laughter, shouting, the ordinary sounds of people who hadn't killed anyone. The lamp on the cabinet flickered. She turned pages without reading them, the words incoherent to her. The room was too quiet, all except her breathing and the whisper of pages and the occasional question circling back, again and again.
Who're you to decide someone's fate?
She'd reached chapter thirty-five when the door creaked.
Her heart lurched into her throat. Saphy stood silhouetted in the doorway, alone, before closing the door behind her. Her eyes were rubbed raw and red in the lamp's light. Ester's hands went numb. She sat up too fast, the book tumbling from her lap onto the floor with a flat smack.
This, she decided, was worse than her uncle.
"Saphy...I-"
Saphy shook her head. Her gaze stayed pinned to the table, to anything but Ester.
"To be in that situation.." Her voice came out raspy. "With your family. And to end up in those dungeons. Alone…" Slowly, she lifted her eyes, and they were glassy, swollen. "It wasn't easy, was it?"
Something lodged itself in Ester's throat. She wanted to tell her everything, how she'd needed someone, anyone, to understand. To not paint her in the shapes of their worst nightmares. To say it was okay, even if it wasn't, even if it never would be.
Nothing came out. Just tears, hot and stinging, welling up faster than she could blink them away.
"It wasn't." The words barely made it past her lips. "I tried to tell myself it had to happen. That there was no other choice. It was me or them. And now..."Her voice fractured. "And now…"
Saphy crossed the room, footsteps quiet. She hesitated when she reached the bed, close enough that Ester could see her hands trembling. Then she sat on the edge of the bottom bunk and pulled Ester into her arms.
She smelled like night air and salt and something floral. Ester pressed her face into Saphy's shoulder and came apart. The room stayed silent around them, just new emptiness holding their grief.
A knock at the door shattered it.
Both of them jerked apart. A maid with a stern, pinched face pushed the door open without waiting for an answer, took one look at them, eyes red, faces wet, sitting too close on the bed, and her cheeks flushed.
"The train will depart shortly…" She cleared her throat, gazing at anywhere in the room. "Please be ready before then."
Then she was gone, door clicking shut behind her. Off to the next room.
Saphy pulled back, avoiding eye contact after the misconception.
"We need to get our dresses. For the Banquet."
The Starless Banquet! Ester blinked. How had she forgotten? Was she ever told about it?
"From where?"
Saphy's face darkened.
"The capital."