“As far back as then?” Jasmine asked. “A year and…”

“A year and a half before the biggest attempts, yeah,” I confirmed. “Nobility never connected the poisonings to House Byron?”

“The history books say it was one of the conflicting Houses,” Jasmine frowned. “Though I never did ask my parents about it.”

“Huh. I suppose Lord Byron did a better job at hiding it than I thought.”

“About that,” Jasmine said. “You’ve been mostly calling him Lord Byron, but the glimpses of your thoughts that I’m getting from this communication that you have indicate that you thought of him as your father before.”

“He contributed to my birth,” I said icily. “Any familial association was lost when he decided to throw the House away for no good reason.”

Well, thinking back on it, his reasons hadn’t been good, but they weren’t as confusing and opaque to me as they once had. When I’d been younger, growing up in Syashan as an angry ex-noble youth, I had wondered why without ever coming up with an answer.

Now, though, cuddled up next to Jasmine in the early morning, the light and heat of the fireplaces in the great hall staving off the night, I could get an inkling. She’d been nothing but understanding and caring towards me, even if she had her own secrets that still lay hidden, and if she had asked me to move the world right now, I was pretty sure I could be talked into at least taking a decent shot.

“I… I will not say I empathize, because I can’t,” Jasmine said. “But I am sorry that you had to go through all of that. No child should need to choose between their family and their kingdom.”

I laughed at that, the sound humorless and bitter. “Believe me when I tell you, the bastards who dared call themselves my parents made that an easy choice to make.”

“I would imagine they did,” Jasmine said, her gaze off in the distance. Remembering how she’d been affected, maybe.

“They… we killed a lot of people,” I said. “I’m—I’m sorry too.”

“House Byron did,” Jasmine acknowledged. “And—“

“Not just House Byron,” I cut in. I didn’t want to associate myself with the clusterfuck that Lord and Lady Byron had created, but I didn’t want any more secrets splitting the two of us apart, any more latent skeletons in the closet. I wouldn’t dodge responsibility for what I’d done. “I killed a lot of people, too, and you can’t attribute that all to Lord Byron. I could’ve stopped at any time, gone against his wishes, but I didn’t.”

“No,” Jasmine said, shaking her hand. “No, you do not need to take the blame for that. I want you to understand that you had less of a choice in the matter than what you seem to believe. From an outsider’s perspective looking in, you were manipulated and controlled by your father almost from birth. To be completely honest, it is rather impressive that you managed to escape that cycle at any point.”

“I guess so,” I said. It was nicer than I thought it’d be to hear Jasmine functionally absolve me for the things I’d done. “Still…”

“You committed horrific crimes,” Jasmine said, the lightness of her speech softening the words. “But what has happened has already passed. Your actions will always stay with you, but the fact that they do prove that you are not as terrible as you think you are. Lily, you are a far better person than you give yourself credit for.”

I wasn’t totally willing to buy that, given Jasmine hadn’t spent any time inside my current mind, but I took the comment for what it was.

“I hope I’m not touching on any sensitive memories,” I said, changing the topic. “I know House Byron’s rampage hit a lot of families.”

“A little bit, but it’s fine,” Jasmine said. “It still stings some, but not in a way that interferes. My House got off lightly. Someone close to me died, though it’s far enough in the past that I think I am over it.”

“May I ask who?” I asked. It would be more than a minor issue if it turned out that I had played a direct part in their demise.

“My best friend. Victoria of House Lysin,” Jasmine said wistfully. Not someone I had killed, thank the gods. “She was one of the few playmates that I truly connected with. She wound up on the wrong side of a mercenary’s blade. You know, the Crown told us eventually that she was not even the true target. Collateral damage.”

I didn’t know how to respond. I’d grown numb to death over the years, too many killings passing before my eyes for any single one to stand out—I didn’t even recognize Jasmine’s friend’s name—but somehow I still felt horrible about this. There was a sour pit forming in my gut, one that nagged like it was chained to me.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, eyes downcast.

I truly was, for once in my godsdamned life. It was a painful memory, I could tell that much, and it was one that I could have potentially stopped from happening in the first place. There was still hurt there, and it pained me to see Jasmine, always there for me, suffering from her past while there was nothing I could do to help. She’d provided me so much support, and what could I offer her in return? The consolation of the murderer who had helped put her childhood friend into a casket?

“You know,” Jasmine said, her voice tinged with an ever so slight edge of shakiness, “Victoria was how I got my Nacea oath? I saved her life once that day, brought her back from the brink of death, and yet it wasn’t enough. The blade was magical or poisoned or something else and—and it just wouldn’t stop taking more from her. I saved her again and again, and by the time I finally gave up I think she was less a girl and more flesh being held together by my efforts.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Her explanation hadn’t been accompanied by any of the godly image-bursts that I had been getting used to conjuring, but the pain behind it was no less raw.

What could I even say, when it was more than partially my fault that things had ended up this way? If I had pushed back harder, argued for subtler assassinations, less messy ones…

That pit in my gut was worsening in intensity.

“I am truly sorry,” I tried. Fuck it. “I… she might not have died if not for me.”

“Please don’t be,” Jasmine said, already recollecting herself. The pain behind her words was gone already. “It’s a deep scar, but it’s one that I’ve long since accepted. Victoria’s soul is at peace, that much I know, and besides, you were a child. We all were. There was nothing more that—nothing more that any of us could have done.”

Her voice faltered at that last sentence, a hint of raw emotion flickering through that calm facade to the surface, and she gave me the best smile she could muster.

“I could have helped,” I said, shaking my head. “I could’ve pushed back—“

“You were eight years old, Lily,” Jasmine repeated. “As was I. As was she. Nobody could have done more. Not you, not m—not me.”

I shut up. As much as Jasmine was generally the more emotionally mature out of the two of us, I wasn’t dense. Anyone with half a brain could understand that she wasn’t wholly convinced of that herself, that she still thought that she had failed her friend and herself all those years ago.

I wanted to shoulder the blame, take some of that burden off her shoulders, but Jasmine was far too kind a soul to assign me any of it.

She was trying to hide the fact that she was shaking, but Jasmine wasn’t doing it terribly well. We’d reopened old wounds, it seemed, uncovering an issue that hadn’t been fully resolved before being hidden away in a dark recess of her mind.

Looking at her, watching the battle behind her eyes, the familiar self-blame painted all over her anguished face, I could understand that she didn’t need a target to blame. After years of thinking back on what happened, countless nights of reexamining a few frantic days of action, imagining what she could have done better?

It was a familiar feeling, and I was well-acquainted with the result of that line of thinking. Her target to blame was always going to be herself.

She needed reassurance, and while I didn’t know if I was the one who could properly provide it, I’d be damned if I didn’t at least try.

I turned towards her and reached out, pulling her into a hug. It’d been near an hour since the last time we’d made proper physical contact, the two of us too enraptured in my retelling of my past, and I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it until I embraced her.

Jasmine made a small noise at first, and then she leaned in, squeezing me back tightly. It was nothing like the soft, measured caress she’d given earlier. Now, her grip was desperate and needy like a child who’d had a particularly bad nightmare.

She moved from the couch, orienting herself so she was sitting on my knees and leaning into my chest.

The positioning was unwieldy, worse than it had been last time, and she was squeezing me far more than was comfortable, and yet it somehow still felt right.

I held her as much as she held me, the two of us anchoring each other in the storm of pent-up emotions. Jasmine quivered underneath my arms, her chest heaving, and her breaths were coming out shallow and rapid. I could feel the shaky rise and fall of her breathing against my chest, her face buried into the embrace.

It took me a moment to realize that Jasmine—strong, unflappable Jasmine—was quietly crying into my shirt.

She’d had her turn to comfort me, and now it was mine for hers.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, one more time. “You did everything you could.”

I patted her back, feeling more than a little awkward as I did so, but it seemed to help a little. Over the course of the next minute or so, Jasmine’s silent sobs faded away to nothing.

Still holding the hug, she looked up at me, an emotion I couldn’t describe in her eyes, and when she got off my legs and returned to her spot next to me, it was with renewed vigor.

“Thank you for that,” she said, a wan smile playing across her lips. “I do not think I can overstate how much I needed that.”

“You gave it to me earlier,” I said. “We both have shit we need to work through. I’m just returning the favor.”

“Sorry you had to see that,” Jasmine replied sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand. “It’s… it’s not a spot that gets touched on a lot, but it’s a very sore one.”

“I’m sorry I touched on it,” I said.

Jasmine waved the apology away. “You’ve apologized a lot for not having done anything wrong. Like you said, we’re working through it. Helping me do so is more than enough.”

It wasn’t quite convincing enough for me to believe that she was truly, one hundred percent okay with everything, but then again, were any of us? So long as she was dealing, that was what was important.

I wasn’t one for helping people through their issues. My childhood in Syashan would have been lonely by most metrics. The world I lived in and the one the oathless commoners had were entirely divorced from each other, so there hadn’t been much opportunity to connect with anyone. Not that I had any problem with that, of course.

Still, being told that I was helping Jasmine… maybe it was just because it was this girl in particular, but I felt comfortably warmed by her words. The fuzzy feeling in my chest had returned, and though I wasn’t quite sure what it was, it was rather nice.

“Alright then,” I said, more to break the silence and collect my thoughts than anything else. “Moving on.”

Jasmine nodded, still a little unstable even if she was looking much more put together than she had just minutes ago.

Even if I was not the queen of social interactions, I could still get the impression that she didn’t want to dwell on this topic much longer.

That was alright. We could always revisit it later.

Still, it felt wrong to just act like it hadn’t happened, and she was clearly still hurting on the inside.

I felt unsure of myself. It wasn’t often that I ended up in a position where I needed to emotionally support another. Unfamiliar waters, these were, but I was doing what I could.

Instead of going for another hug—that might be a little much, given that she wanted to move on—I reached a hand out. Jasmine took it gladly, giving me a little squeeze and a knowing smile that told me she knew what I was trying but was going to buy into it all the same.

“Right,” I said, drawing in a deep breath. “House Byron started taking more action, after that. All of it in the shadows, of course. Drawing the attention of the Crowned King and the Tayan military by association would have been an instant death knell for the nascent coup, so the House made sure to stay silent about it.

“It started with assassinations. Key opponents to House Byron’s rise, including the then-patriarch of House Tempet, the Crown Prince—thrice more, if I remember correctly—“

“The Poisoned Crown,” Jasmine interrupted. “That’s what they call it these days. For a time, the royal family did not even want to announce another Crown Prince after the previous one died three days after his appointment.”

She sounded almost mechanical reciting it, and I recognized it for what it was. Even if I had helped her process things, I wouldn’t delude myself into thinking it was nearly enough to solve her fundamental issue. Jasmine still needed a way to cope, something to take her mind off her painful past. If reciting my own history to me was the way she was going to do that?

I could live with that.

“Oh, so that’s what that was called,” I said. “Yeah, it was towards the middle of the campaign. A particularly bloody period, that one. An assassination every day, I think was what Lord Byron had planned.”

“Merciful gods,” Jasmine said. “I… I think I remember that, too.”

“It wasn’t a good time,” I said. “The plots started to get more complex, the killings more frequent. I remember coming to the supper table and hearing about how many key plans that the Lord and Lady Byron had undermined that day.”

“And this went on for a full year and a half?”

“Well, there were some critical points that I remember more clearly than the rest. One of the turning points was the fifth time we tried to assassinate the Crown Prince…”