Charon approached then, calm despite the lingering horror in the air. She looked at Esther with a strange tenderness.
“You really are just like your mother.”
Esther blinked. “What… what do you mean? My mother didn’t reanimate rodents.”
Charon laughed softly, eyes filled with nostalgia. “Oh, she absolutely did. Squirrels, frogs, an entire flock of birds once. Estella’s magic was… unpredictable back then. Wild. Just like yours.”
Esther stared.
“She caused chaos wherever she tried to help,” Charon continued fondly. “But that’s how the Council noticed her. They took her in, trained her. Even then, she could barely keep her power from spilling out.”
Esther swallowed hard. “And the foresight? That wasn’t something she learned?”
“No,” Charon said quietly, eyes softening as memories swam behind them. “She didn’t see the future until she carried you. That magic had never appeared before—and hasn’t since.”
A strange warmth spread through Esther. Pride, fear, grief, awe, and confusion all tangled together.
“I miss her,” Esther whispered.
“I know,” Charon murmured. “But she would be proud. You’re beginning to see the world she tried to protect. When her visions first began, she tried to change the future. But along the way, she changed. She decided to lay the groundwork instead.”
Esther’s chest ached.
“So I’m following her path.”
Charon shook her head. “No. You’re walking beside it.”
Nythir found her later, sitting alone under the stars.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted, voice barely audible. “I want to help, but everything I touch feels like it could break.”
Nythir sat beside her without speaking for a long moment. Then he said, “You stayed.”
She looked at him.
“You could’ve left,” he continued. “You didn’t.”
That was all.
Esther looked down at the bracelet in her hands. The younger children were sleeping inside. In the shadows of a war she’d been sheltered from.
Esther exhaled slowly, the weight of the day settling into something steadier. Not certainty. Not confidence.
Resolve.
Tomorrow, she would wake sore and tired and unsure again.
But she would wake here.
And that, she realized, was the beginning.
34
Lucy
How to Travel: don't. You will regret it immediately.
Lucy had thought that the Baroness joining their travels was the worst that could happen.
