Esther had always believed she understood what work looked like. She had watched it, after all—servants moving silently through palace halls, guards drilling in the courtyard,seamstresses hunched over embroidery frames until their fingers ached. She had thanked them. She had been kind. She had noticed.
She had never lifted anything heavier than expectation.
The first bucket of water sloshed against her boots and soaked the hem of her borrowed skirt within seconds.
“Oh,” Esther said faintly.
Lyssara snorted from beside her. “Careful. That one bites.”
Esther tightened her grip and tried again, bracing herself the way she had seen others do. The bucket still dragged, her arms trembling as she hauled it across the orphanage yard. Her shoulders burned almost immediately, muscles protesting a life of disuse.
She told herself not to complain. Not even internally.
Around her, the children moved like a practiced unit. One passed her a cloth without being asked. Another took the bucket from her when it tilted too far, sloshing water onto the dirt. No one laughed.
No one scolded her.
They simply adjusted.
A girl no older than ten wrung out a rag beside her, hands moving quickly and efficiently. “You’ve got to tilt it first,” she said kindly. “Otherwise it fights you.”
“I see,” Esther said, swallowing hard. She tried again, copying the motion.
The bucket obeyed.
That felt worse, somehow.
By the time the sun climbed higher, Esther’s palms were raw. Soap stung tiny cuts she hadn’t known were there. Sweat trickled down her spine beneath borrowed clothes that smelled faintly of smoke and old linen. Her magic stirred restlessly under her skin, reacting to exhaustion the way it always did—flaring, then pulling back, uncertain.
She kept working anyway.
She scrubbed floors until her knees ached. She stirred soup thick enough to feed too many mouths with too few ingredients. She hauled sacks of grain and stacked them carefully, apologizing every time she dropped one—until Lyssara gently took her wrist.
“You don’t have to say sorry,” Lyssara said. “You’re helping.”
“I know,” Esther admitted. “I just… I slow you down.”
Lyssara smiled, soft but tired. “Everyone does, at first.”
That didn’t help.
At the soup kitchen, the line never seemed to shorten. Bowls were passed down, worn wooden counters. Children carried them carefully, hands wrapped around chipped rims for warmth. Esther ladled until her arm shook, steam fogging her vision.
Voices drifted around her.
“They say Kraggmar won’t join the alliance.”
“They say Valedara’s hoarding grain.”
“They say Queen Estella would've fixed this.”
Esther’s ladle paused.
No one noticed.
“She would’ve,” an older man said firmly. “She always did.”
"She’s dead," someone muttered.
