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The room is small, utilitarian, and borrowed - a cabin not meant for confession. A table bolted to the floor. Narrow bunks folded up against the wall. The faint, ever-present creak of the ship’s hull shifting around them, wood complaining softly as it cuts through dark water.
It smells of salt and old rope and something vaguely medicinal. Not sacred. Not personal. Just used.
Essek stands near the table, shoulders slumped and hands clasped behind his back because he does not trust them to stay still otherwise. He has not sat down. Sitting would imply permanence, and he does not yet know what shape the next hour will take - whether it will end in imprisonment, exile, or something quieter and worse.
They know.
The truth has surfaced, dragged up from the depths by proximity and inference and the kind of attention the Nein seem incapable of turning off once they scent something wrong.
This conversation was always coming.
Essek had known it the moment the pattern clicked into place - the questions that circled too precisely, the glances exchanged when they thought he wasn’t looking. The Nein do not let mysteries rot quietly. They worry them open with persistence and teeth.
He had imagined it before - rehearsed it, even. In those imaginings, they were furious. They shouted. They condemned him. They turned away.
That, at least, would have been familiar.
Expected.
Deserved.
What he did not know how to imagine was this: the waiting. The quiet. The way none of them have reached for restraints or spells or threats. The way they have gathered instead, close and intent, as if truth itself might respond better to patience than force.
Essek feels boxed in - not by walls, but by people who will not leave.
He shifts his weight and, without quite meaning to, his gaze drifts toward the door.
Yasha stands there, broad-shouldered and silent, filling the narrow space with the certainty of someone who does not need to posture to be understood. She is not threatening. She is simply present - an end to movement, an answer to escape.
Essek had heard it.
Caleb’s voice, low and even, asking her to guard the door. Not as an order. As a request. Yasha had nodded once and taken her place.
That detail lodges in Essek’s chest.
And the room feels smaller for it.
This is not a public reckoning. Not a spectacle. Only Caleb, Caduceus, Jester, and Nott.
And a door that will not open.
He could teleport again. Try to run. But for how long? And to what end?
Besides, he's already agreed to talk.
Essek draws a slow breath, steadying himself against the gentle sway of the ship. The night presses in around them, the hull creaking softly as if the sea itself is listening.
Whatever happens next, it will happen here.
He is not afraid of death. He has accepted that consequence for some time now, tucked it neatly into the same mental ledger as betrayal and necessity. What tightens his chest is the possibility that they will ask him why - and then refuse to let that answer simplify him.
He does not want their forgiveness. He does not want their sympathy. He does not want to be understood in a way that makes what he has done survivable.
He is trying to stay alive, to see that his secrets - and life - outlast the war. That instinct is ingrained, honed by decades of careful self-preservation. He will not surrender himself cheaply. He will not hand his fate to the Dynasty, or to the Bright Queen, or to the Luxon’s faithful and call it justice. Won’t give them the satisfaction.
Not after what their blind devotion demanded of his mother. Of him.
But there is a part of him that yearns for something else.
Not absolution. Not escape.
An ending that is earned.
And perhaps - only perhaps - that ending could come from the Nein.
They are not his gods. They are not his judges by right. They are simply people who know what he has done and will not look away from it. People who might condemn him without turning him into a symbol, or a sacrifice, or a cautionary tale.
He wants judgment.
He wants an end.
Even anchored, the ship rocks gently beneath his feet, a reminder that they are in motion whether he likes it or not.
“Well,” Caleb says, and the word is a careful thing, placed deliberately between them. “We have a limited amount of time.”
Caleb looks away then - not at Essek, but at the room, at the walls, as if orienting himself.
He draws a slow breath, eyes tracking the space with forced steadiness. Measuring. Containing. Taking stock of how much damage could be done here if he let himself. If he let the wrong feelings take the lead.
“And I would very much like for you…”
He stops.
Breathes in.
Breathes out.
“...to see the sunrise.”
When he looks back, his expression is composed. His voice is not raised. But the restraint is evident. Something raw and unshielded has slipped through the cracks - grief, anger, betrayal, all folded tightly enough to pass for calm interrogation.
The threat, while poetic, is still quite clear.
“So,” he continues, hands folding together, fingers lacing with deliberate care, “if there is a reasonable explanation… we would love to hear it.”
For a moment, Essek says nothing.
He has lived with betrayal before - has wielded it like a tool. He remembers the calm precision with which he named his friend as the thief, remembers how easily the words came, how necessary they felt at the time. Survival had demanded it. Progress had demanded it. He had told himself that pain, once inflicted, could be justified if it served something greater.
And then there were the other reasons.
Grief and anger and the starving need for vengeance against Verrat for threatening to reveal his mother’s condition, at the whole damned Dynasty itself for letting her die, at the Luxon and its faith for demanding such sacrifice, for requiring devotion without mercy.
And at his mother herself - for believing in it so completely that she would choose to leave him, and choose to make him the one to see it done.
She had held his wrist and pushed the knife into her own chest, and he had watched her soul disappear into the stars forever - taking his with it.
After that, setting up the execution of his best friend had been almost too easy.
Verrat had held the truth like a blade. Had made it clear what would happen if Essek did not confess.
But Essek wasn't going to be put down so simply. He had not gotten this far for nothing. For it to all end here, like this.
If the world insisted on taking everything from him, then he would take something back. He would harness the Beacon's magic.
A small prize, measured against his mother’s life. Insufficient. Inadequate. But a prize nonetheless. Something to make the betrayal and the grief and the fury worth something. Something to shove in the Dynasty’s face - and the Luxon’s - and say: I beat you. I was right.
And maybe -
Maybe something that could bring her back.
For a long time, Essek had believed his soul had followed her into the dark. That whatever remained was only selfish cleverness and momentum, moving forward out of habit rather than hope.
He understands now that this was a lie he told himself to make survival easier.
Something in him remained. Cracked and blackened, but stubbornly intact. And the Nein - curse them - had found it, simply by refusing to leave.
With that clarity comes understanding.
Verrat was right. Even if Essek doesn't share the faith. His choices lead to the slaughter of his people.
He deserved to be exposed.
He deserved worse.
But these people -
- the Nein -
They are different.
Essek knows it with the certainty of bone and marrow: none of them would have threatened him with exposure. They would not have approved - no, they would have argued, loudly and relentlessly, would have refused to let him gamble with so many lives for the sake of one.
But they would have stayed.
They would have helped.
They would have found another path - some crooked, impossible route that defied the Bright Queen’s decree and laughed in the face of proper procedure and probably logic or fate or chance. They would have stolen knowledge without sacrificing people. Broken rules instead of bones. Bent the world until it cracked open just enough to let hope through.
That is the part that undoes him.
Because it means his mistake wasn’t only moral - it was assuming the world could only be solved one way.
That the problem wasn’t just the moves he made, but the board he believed he was playing on.
And he thought he was clever?
He never even imagined the Nein on that board to begin with.
Not as allies. Not as co-conspirators. Not as people who might look at the impossible and decide it was merely inconvenient.
Now, they are voices, hands, shared silences. Jokes traded in the dark. Trust given without proof. Absurd antics and questions about favorite foods no one else ever bothered to ask. Invitations extended without leverage. Warmth offered without return expectations. Sure, they begged him for help with teleporting here and there and everywhere. But they were always grateful. And never demanded.
They asked because asking was easier for them than taking.
Because they trusted that help, once given, did not need to be repaid in blood or secrecy. Because none of them treated his power like a debt he would someday be forced to settle. When he hesitated, they waited. When he refused, they adapted. When he agreed, they thanked him as if the choice had been his all along - as if it mattered that he wanted to help, not merely that he could.
He had watched them offer the same grace to one another. Had seen how quickly they closed ranks when one of them faltered, how arguments burned hot and brief before resolving into something sturdier than before. They fought, yes - loudly, messily - but never with the intent to wound. Never to control. Never to make obedience feel like love.
It unsettles him, this hindsight.
Because none of it was hidden.
They had been exactly who they claimed to be - well, mostly - from the beginning. Open-handed. Reckless with trust. Terrifyingly willing to believe that people could choose better if given the chance.
Essek had mistaken that for naivety.
Now he understands it was courage.
And the cost of realizing that comes too late to be anything but painful.
And Caleb -
Caleb had been playing the game from the start. Essek wasn’t a fool. The human mage saw him as an asset: a path into the Dynasty’s magic, a conduit to dunamantic theory, a man positioned close enough to the Bright Queen to be useful. Caleb had most likely Cnoticed the glances, the pauses, the way Essek’s attention lingered without permission - and he had not not used them.
Essek had known this.
Had allowed it.
Had, in his own way, done the same.
But also, Caleb didn’t use Essek for his knowledge in the same way Trent had. He didn’t hold a dying mother over his head like a carrot on a stick. Didn’t take more than what was offered.
And then…
Then.
Somewhere along the line, the game had changed.
Caleb had stopped trying to extract answers and started asking questions. Not to trap him, but to understand him. Had sat beside him not as an interrogator, but as a peer. Had spoken of magic not as a weapon or a heresy, but as a language they were both desperate to learn.
Considered Essek a mind worth meeting -
- and more than that.
A mirror, held at just the right angle.
Someone who saw Essek’s thirst for knowledge not as a flaw to be corrected or a risk to be contained, but as something shared. Someone willing to drink from the same cup, to reach together into the fabric of reality and pull at its seams, just to see what truths might unravel.
That is the betrayal that burns.
Hurting the others aches, truly and fiercely.
Hurting Caleb feels like having named himself a liar aloud.
Essek’s mouth twitches. “It is complicated to express.”
“I am fairly intelligent.” Caleb says. The words are mild; the effort behind them is not. “I think I can follow along.” Another pause, shorter this time. Sharper. “We have all night.”
The silence that follows is not empty. It is restraint.
“I had a plan,” he says at last, voice thin with the effort of keeping it even. “A very good one.” A humorless breath leaves him. “I told myself that was enough.”
He does not move immediately.
Standing, floating, has always been a way to stay ahead of things - to remain steady, untethered, capable of leaving if the moment turned. Sitting would mean conceding time. Would mean accepting that this is not an exchange he can outlast through endurance alone.
But there is nowhere left to go.
With a flick of his wrist, he draws a small crate toward him across the floor. It scrapes softly against the planks before settling where he wants it. The sound feels louder than it should.
Essek sits.
The choice costs him more than he expects. The crate is hard beneath him, its edges unforgiving, but that almost feels appropriate. He plants his feet, grounding himself not because he is steady, but because he is done pretending. Performing.
If he is to be judged, it will be from here.
Like this.
Caleb is across from him now, hunched slightly over a table that is too low for him, fingers steepled not in thought but restraint. Like a man holding a spell at bay. He is giving Essek space, but he isn’t looking away either. Offering Essek the dignity of being witnessed.
“I did terrible things,” Essek continues. “Things I thought I was doing for the right reasons.” His jaw tightens. “I cannot say I regret the goal. I only regret…” He falters, then corrects himself with surgical precision. “I regret how everything changed after I made the choice.”
Caleb’s eyes flicker - not surprise, but recognition.
“I stole a beacon,” Essek says. “I gave it to a man I knew I should not trust. I betrayed my people because I believed - because I was certain - that if I understood enough, calculated enough, sacrificed enough, I could control the outcome.”
He laughs once, broken. “You were not part of the plan. Any of you.”
Caleb’s mouth tightens at that, but he does not interrupt.
“Yeah, the plan,” Jester waves her arms, “you keep mentioning ‘the plan’. What was it? Huh? World domination?”
“Yes,” Caleb speaks again, calmly, “what were you trying to accomplish?”
The question lands heavier than the threat had.
“Right,” Jester nods, “because we’ve been guessing and it’s annoying and I don’t know if we’re right.”
Essek risks a glance at Caleb. There is something in the man’s eyes that says he very much does not like guessing. Essek can relate.
Essek’s shoulders tense. He feels suddenly like he has been pushed to the edge of a platform he did not realize he was standing on.
“He doesn’t want to say it out loud.”
Essek’s eyes snap toward Caduceus and then quickly drop again. It would be infuriating how easily the cleric can read him like a children’s book - infuriating, if he were cruel about it.
But Caduceus is never cruel.
The firbolg’s insight does not feel like a trap. It feels like an open hand, held steady and patient, as if Essek might choose to place the truth there on his own. He does not pry. He does not demand. He simply knows, and waits. There is a quiet confidence in that - the kind that comes from faith unshaken by cleverness or power. The kind Essek has spent a lifetime mistrusting.
“You want to write it down?” Jester offers, seriously. “You want to draw it?”
Oh, Jester. Bless her naive, pure, wild and strange heart. It is a bright and shining thing he never should have been allowed to get close enough to touch.
She asks questions the way children do - not to corner or expose, but because the world is interesting and people are worth understanding. She has never treated his secrets like currency. Never wielded his knowledge as leverage. Her curiosity is disarming precisely because it does not sharpen itself into a blade.
If Essek were better, braver, less practiced in ruin, he thinks he might have trusted her with the truth immediately. Might have believed, impossibly, that sincerity alone could be enough.
But sincerity has never saved anyone he loved.
And yet -
The thought lingers, unwelcome and persistent.
She would not have threatened him. Would not have laughed at his fear or used it to bind him tighter to her will. She would have cried, perhaps. She would have been furious. She would have demanded better of him.
And then she would have tried to help.
Jester would have been the one to believe there was another way.
And Caduceus would have believed Essek could survive it.
“If he says it out loud, then he’s going to have to hear what it is and he’s not going to like who he is when he hears it.” Caduceus pauses. “I know you’re a good man.”
The words land softly.
They should not hurt. They should not matter.
Caleb looks away then, jaw tightening, his expression pulled into something pained and private - as if the sentence has struck him too. As if there are truths he has not yet said aloud, either.
Essek scoffs. “I am but a humble, selfish creature.”
It is easier to wear the insult himself than to let anyone else hand him something gentler. Easier to be small and sharp and correct than to risk being seen as something salvageable.
“But avarice and fear,” Caduceus continues, unbothered, “can often disguise themselves in a good man as strength and righteousness until he’s forced to unveil them in front of people that he trusts.”
The cleric sighs.
Not in disappointment. In understanding.
And then Caduceus looks at him - really looks - right through to Essek’s unconsecuted soul, as if there is nothing he could reveal that would surprise or repel him. As if truth has already been accounted for.
“Just say it,” Caduceus says. “We’re here.”
Something in Essek’s chest tightens painfully.
We're here.
That, more than anything else, is the problem.
“I am sorry,” Essek says at last, the apology torn from him before he can dress it up. “Sorry that you were pulled into this web of lies.” He swallows. “When I first saw you arrive with the beacon - one of the two I had given - I knew I had to stay close to you.”
Caleb’s jaw tightens.
“I needed to protect what had been done,” Essek says. “To make sure you did not get too close to the truth. I thought if I could… guide you. Control the direction of your curiosity. It might be safer.”
“For whom?” Caleb asks quietly.
Essek hesitates.
“For everyone,” he says, and knows it is only half true.
“And then?” Caleb presses.
“And then,” Essek admits, voice dropping, “I did not account for liking you.”
The confession sits between them, fragile and humiliating.
“There is nothing worse,” Essek continues, “than betraying people you have come to care about before you even came to care about them.” A bitter smile. “Regret is… new to me.”
Caleb watches him closely.
He does not see through him - not in the way the cleric does. That kind of clarity belongs to Caduceus alone, offered freely and without effort.
But Caleb still sees him.
Not by piercing defenses, but by recognizing their outlines. By knowing the weight of choices made too early and borne too long. By understanding what it looks like when someone is already measuring the cost of their own condemnation.
Essek does not know the full story.
He has only caught fragments - half-finished conversations that go quiet when he enters the room, a stiffness in Caleb’s posture at the mention of a name, the way bitterness sharpens his voice. He knows Caleb studied at the Soltryce Academy. Knows there is a history, heavy enough to leave scars even when it goes unspoken.
That is enough.
It tells Essek that Caleb is not guessing. That he is not theorizing from a safe distance.
Caleb sees more than Essek has ever allowed to show.
And worse -
he sees it without turning away.
“The pain,” Essek says, almost defensively, “is somewhat comforting because I am my own punishment.”
Caleb does not let that stand.
“Do you still want,” he asks, “what you started out wanting?”
Essek hesitates. The answer is complicated. The answer is dangerous.
“I have spent my life working toward it,” he says carefully. “But things…” A pause. “Things got out of hand.”
It is more than an understatement.
Caleb’s patience finally frays - not into anger, but into urgency.
“What do you want, Essek?”
The question cracks something open.
“I want to understand,” Essek says, too quickly. “The beacons. Dunamis. What it can do.” His voice steadies as he speaks - this, at least, is familiar ground. “I was raised to believe I might be worthy of breaking those boundaries. Of finding applications for that power that could change everything.”
Caleb’s eyes flicker - sympathy, and something sharper.
“And if I do not do it,” Essek finishes, “I do not trust the person who will.”
Silence.
The logic hangs there, immaculate and hollow.
Caleb does not argue it. He only says, gently, “That is not why you did this.”
Essek’s breath catches.
Because Caleb is right.
All the theory, all the ambition, all the careful scaffolding of justification - it collapses under the weight of the truth he has been circling all along.
But he can’t tell them. Not yet. Not like this.
He cannot tell them about his mother. About the sickness that hollowed her out. About the quiet terror of watching someone brilliant and formidable diminish, day by day. He cannot tell them about the moment hope curdled into desperation, about how every equation he solved began to look like a lifeline.
Because he knows these people too well now.
It would not excuse the death. The deceit. The betrayal.
But it would soften it.
They would look at him differently - not as the architect of a catastrophe, but as a son who tried and failed. They would offer understanding where he believes there should only be consequence. Sympathy instead of judgment. Pity instead of truth.
And worse - they might forgive him.
The thought makes something in his chest shrink away.
Forgiveness would mean he gets to keep breathing after what he has done. Gets to carry the weight forward instead of being crushed beneath it. Gets to live with the blood on his hands and still be offered a place at the fire.
Essek does not believe he deserves that.
He does not want his choices wrapped in grief and made palatable. He does not want the horror of them diluted by love.
If he says her name aloud, the room will change. The edges will dull. The anger will falter. Someone - Jester, perhaps - will reach for him without thinking.
And he cannot bear the idea of being comforted for this.
So he stays silent, jaw tight, letting the truth press against the inside of his teeth like a blade.
Because as long as he does not speak it, the punishment remains intact.
“What do you want?!” Jester practically shouts it now.
“I’ve already told you,” Essek flounders, forcing his spine straight even as his words begin to collapse. “There are so many mysteries around those beacons, around dunamis, what’s it's capable of -”
Caleb moves.
It is sudden enough that the rest of the sentence dies in Essek’s throat.
The human crosses the space between them in two long strides and drops to his knees in front of him. The distance vanishes. He is too close - close enough that Essek can see the tightness at the corners of his eyes, the way his jaw works as if holding something dangerous in.
Essek turns his face away instinctively.
Caleb does not allow it.
Strong fingers - careful, steady - guide Essek’s chin back until he has no choice but to look at him.
“You listen to me,” Caleb says.
The words are not loud. They do not need to be.
Essek’s breath stutters.
“I know what you are talking about,” Caleb continues. “I know.”
The certainty in it is worse than accusation. It strips Essek of the comfort of being misunderstood.
“The difference between you and I,” Caleb says, voice roughening despite himself, “is thinner than a razor.”
Essek feels something inside him recoil.
Caleb sees it.
“I know what it means,” he goes on, “to have other people complicate your desires and wishes.”
There is a pause - brief, but deliberate - as if Caleb is deciding how much of himself to place on the table.
“And I was like you,” he says.
The words land, quiet and irrevocable.
“Was.”
Essek’s pulse hammers. He wants to deny it - wants to insist this is different, that Caleb does not understand, cannot possibly understand - but something in Caleb’s eyes stops him.
“I know what a fool I have been for years,” Caleb continues. “And I am looking at you now as if I am looking in a mirror.”
The room seems to tilt.
A mirror, held at just the right angle.
“You didn’t account for us,” Caleb says. There is no bitterness in it. Only fact. “Good. That is life.”
He stays close - close enough that Essek can feel the heat of him, the steadiness of his presence without the pressure of his hands. Essek registers the distance between them shrinking - not through touch, but through intent. Through Caleb choosing not to step back.
“Shit hits you sideways in life,” Caleb says, the words breaking free now, “and no one is prepared. No one is ready.”
Essek’s throat tightens. He feels suddenly, terrifyingly seen - not as a criminal, not as a traitor, but as a man who made a choice and cannot unmake it.
“These people changed me,” Caleb says, and for the first time his voice wavers. “They changed me.”
Essek’s gaze flickers, helplessly, toward the others.
“And they can change you,” Caleb insists.
Hope flares - brief, involuntary, horrifying.
“You were not born with venom in your veins,” Caleb says, earnest, urgent. “You learned it. You learned it.”
Essek shakes his head faintly.
No.
No, you don’t get to take this from me too.
“You have a rare opportunity here, Thelyss,” Caleb says, voice soft but still stern. “One chance to save yourself.”
Essek’s chest restricts painfully.
“And we are offering it."
The last word catches.
Caleb’s breath hitches, just barely - a fault line running through the control he has held so carefully until now. When he speaks again, the steadiness is still there, but it is strained, pitched too tight to be effortless.
He sounds desperate.
Essek cannot tell what, precisely, that desperation is for.
For Essek’s cooperation, to help end a war that has already devoured too much of the world? For the fragile possibility that the Empire and the Dynasty might yet be pulled back from the brink?
For Essek himself? That his - what, friend? - might choose to live, to stay, to bear the weight of what he has done instead of disappearing beneath it?
Or something worse.
For proof.
For proof that someone like him - brilliant, compromised, already bloodied by betrayal - can still turn aside. That redemption is not a lie Caleb has been telling himself in the dark. That salvation, however imperfect, is not already out of reach.
Caleb's hand presses firmly onto Essek’s shoulder.
Essek goes still.
Not from fear fr-om shock. From the sudden, undeniable reality of being held rather than restrained. The contact is steady, grounding, infuriatingly gentle for something that carries so much weight.
His first instinct is to pull away.
His second is worse: to lean into it.
He does neither.
The warmth seeps through the thin layers of his coat, anchoring him in the present in a way he did not ask for and does not know how to refuse. This is not leverage. Not coercion. Not the pressure of a blade at his throat.
It is choice, made visible.
And it leaves him unarmed.
“I am pleading with you,” Caleb says. “Find your better self. He is still there.”
Something inside Essek breaks.
Because Caleb doesn’t understand.
Because Caleb cannot understand.
Because if he did - if he truly did - he would not be offering this. Would not be kneeling here, asking Essek to live.
It isn’t right.
It isn’t fair.
And Essek will not be allowed to walk away from this with absolution he does not deserve.
So he does the only thing he has left.
He tells the truth.
Not to be forgiven.
Not to be understood.
But to end it.
“I did this,” Essek says hoarsely, cutting through the moment like a blade, “for my mother.”
The words feel like stepping off a cliff.
Caleb stills.
“She was sick,” Essek continues, forcing the words out before he can stop himself. “Dying. And I believed - I knew - that if I could understand enough, if I could unlock what the beacons were capable of, I could save her.”
His hands curl uselessly at his sides.
“I stole. I betrayed. I handed power to monsters because I thought I could control the cost.”
His voice drops to a whisper.
“And in the end,” he says, “I killed her anyway.”
The silence that follows is dense, expectant. Like a spell waiting for its final syllable.
“There was a ritual,” Essek adds. “She asked me to do it.”
His chest burns.
“And I did.”
He meets Caleb’s eyes then - finally, fully - bracing for the recoil. For the pity. For the revulsion. For the distance this should create.
“Do you have any idea,” Essek demands, his voice finally splintering, anger shoved into the cracks to keep it upright, “what it is like to murder your own parent?”
For a heartbeat, Caleb does not move.
Then he nods.
“Yes,” he says. “I do.”
The words are simple. They are devastating.
And the punishment Essek built for himself shatters.
For a long moment, neither of them moves.
Essek has long forgotten the others are even in the room.
Then Caleb looks at him - really looks - and there is no judgment there. No absolution either. Just recognition. The terrible, intimate relief of being seen by someone who knows the shape of the wound from the inside.
“There is a moment afterward,” Caleb says quietly, “when you realize that even if the world can be bent - even if time itself might someday yield - it does not change what your hands have already done.”
His voice stays steady, but it costs him something.
Ah.
The understanding flickers and is almost gone again, drowned beneath the surge of everything else pressing in. But it is there - sharp enough to sting.
Caleb’s interest in dunamis. In the magic of reality and time.
Essek is not the only one who has looked at the universe and thought: I could fix this.
The thought is filed away, not examined. There will be time for it later. Or there will not.
Either way, it changes something.
“You can chase a future where the outcome is different,” Caleb continues, “but that does not mean the blood was never spilled.”
Essek’s breath leaves him in a broken rush. He presses a hand to his mouth.
“I thought,” he whispers, “that if I understood enough, if I calculated enough, if I sacrificed enough -”
“So did I,” Caleb says.
The words settle between them, not as comfort, but as company.
At last, something in Essek gives. His shoulders sag, the rigid line of his spine softening as the fight drains out of him where he sits. Essek’s grip tightens briefly on the edge of the crate, then loosens. He had sat to endure this. He hadn’t expected to survive it.
“I don’t know how to live with this,” he admits.
Caleb exhales, slow and careful.
“I don’t either,” he says. “But I am still here.”
Essek swallows. “There is no path to redemption for me,” he says quietly. He does not look away this time. “If what has been done comes to light - if what you are seemingly trying to correct is known - then I am a dead man.”
He says it without drama. Without fear. Like a conclusion long since reached.
Caleb does not argue it.
Instead, he leans closer - not enough to crowd him, just enough to make the choice unmistakable. Before Essek can think to pull away, Caleb presses a brief, gentle kiss to his forehead.
It is over almost as soon as it begins. Not possessive. Not indulgent. A quiet, deliberate promise, offered without apology.
Essek freezes.
Not because it is unwanted - but because it is unearned. Because no one has ever touched him like that without asking something in return. Because the gesture is so small and so final, offered without negotiation or spectacle, that it slips past every defense he has left.
For one disorienting heartbeat, Essek forgets how to breathe.
The warmth lingers where the kiss was placed, a quiet, impossible thing. Not forgiveness. Not absolution. But presence - chosen, witnessed, and irreversible.
Caleb pulls back at once, giving him space again, as if nothing extraordinary has occurred.
When Caleb speaks, his voice is low, fierce with intent.
“Maybe you and I are both damned,” he says. “But we can still choose to do something.” A beat. “We can leave it better than it was before.”
Essek lets out a thin, disbelieving breath.
“You weren’t part of the plan,” he repeats. “And now you are all in terrible danger for the things that you know.”
Caleb’s answer is immediate.
“So be it.”
There is no bravado in it. No martyrdom. Just resolve.
Essek lowers his gaze, heart pounding.
“I don’t know how to live with this.”
“I don’t either. But I am still here.”
And somehow, impossibly, so is Essek.