“Cassian!” His mother’s voice pierced the roar, high-pitched and urgent.
“Mother?” he called back, squinting through the smoke to see her running out the door toward him.
“Cassian, your father, he—he is trapped. Something fell before he could leave our room, and—you have to help him, Cassian.”
He froze in the doorway, the words hitting him harder than the heat. Panic clawed at his throat. He wanted to obey, to move,to rush to his father’s aid, but the thought of the flames, the collapsing beams, the suffocating smoke, kept him rooted to the spot.
Every instinct screamed at him to flee, yet he knew the right thing to do was to rescue his father. He went to step toward the danger, but he could not force himself to move.
“Cassian, go!”
But fear held him fast.
“Cassian!” His mother grabbed at his arms, shaking him, trembling against him as she pressed her face close. “Please help him!”
He could hear his father struggling through the smoke in the hallway beyond. The man was strong, commanding even in chaos, and yet Cassian saw the fire hungrily licking at the wood around him, threatening to collapse the beams overhead.
And he did nothing.
The beam fell with horrifying inevitability. A crack, a groan, and then a thundering crash that shook the floor beneath him. The timber slammed down on his father, pinning him instantly.
Cassian’s stomach dropped, a cold, empty void opening within him. He wanted to scream, to move, but his body refused to cooperate.
“Father!” His voice broke, useless.
His mother screamed too, pressed close to him, shaking him, her tears scalding his arm, but he could not move. He could only watch as the man he had revered, the embodiment of all firmness and courage, struggled to free himself.
When he finally moved, it was too late. He pulled his mother back from the hallway by sheer instinct, his hands blackened and blistering as he dragged her away from danger. She clung to him, trembling and whispering frantically. He could feel the heat on his face, the smoke in his lungs, the ash on his hands, but he felt no pain at all.
They stumbled across the lawn to safety. His mother was pressed against him, clinging to him desperately, and he held her tightly. His mind was consumed with a single horrifying thought: his father was gone, and he had gotten what he thought he wanted.
He could still hear it, the snap of the beam, the muffled groan. The man he had so admired, the model of calm authority and judgment, was destroyed not only by the fire alone, but also by the boy who had frozen in fear.
And in that moment, the lessons from the orchard, the wisdom of his father, came crashing down on him with unbearable clarity. Firmness, courage, decisiveness; he had failed at all three, and he would suffer because of it.
The fire was extinguished after a while, but the smell lingered in his clothes, his hair, his skin. He and his mother were both injured, but since the fire did not spread, the servants were unharmed.
It was a small comfort, but nothing could be done to replace what had been lost.
Days passed without Cassian being able to see his mother. Their family physician tended to them in separate rooms, and when Cassian felt the burnt hair on his head, he refused to leave his room at all. He could not allow anyone to see him in such a state, even his mother.
And when he did see her, her grief and anger were unmistakable.
“You should have saved him,” she coughed out. “He trusted you, Cassian. He was your father.”
Cassian flinched at the words, though they were not new to him. He had thought them a thousand times since the beam fell, each time imagining himself acting differently, and each time arriving at the same paralyzing truth: when it mattered, he had done nothing.
“I-I tried,” he stammered, though it sounded hollow even to his own ears. “I could not?—”
“You could not what? You could have done something, anything, and you did nothing!”
He closed his eyes, wanting to argue, but knowing that his mother was grieving a loss far greater than he could ever understand.
“I panicked,” he admitted, his voice small and broken.
“You panicked?” she spat, her tears falling freely. “While your father was trapped beneath a beam, youpanicked? You were meant to protect him!”
“I know!” His voice cracked.
