The Square was bustling then, but it felt empty. It felt like it was just me and my wounded mentor. He stared me down, his face hard, the hardness masking a wary vulnerability. “I’ve been told you want to make amends,” he said.

“I do. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I never guessed.” The words tumbled out in fits and spurts. I tried to remember the things I had decided to say to him, but the pipeherb had gotten the better of me. “It’s been very confusing here. Seeing you with them. Sorcha. It’s been strange.”

Dirva sighed. “You’re stoned.”

I let out a strangled laugh. “I am. I’m sorry. But it helps. It’s helped me from falling into it—him—all of that again. It is a…preventive measure? I guess that doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t be smoking it, I know, but I can’t build the walls. I’m sorry I keep doing everything wrong.”

Dirva studied me for a moment and sighed again. His hands were on his hips, and his head was bowed slightly. He looked to be at a loss with me. Something about the way he stood there propelled another incoherent stream of words from my mouth. “I didn’t know. And I-I thought…it’s strange here because sometimes you’re still Semadran and sometimes you aren’t. And if it had happened in the Empire, I thought you’d, uh, that you’d disapprove. Or worse. You’d send me back to Ardijan, and people would know, and I’d be pushed out. Because that’s what we do, and that’s how we think.”

He looked at me. The brightness of his eyes in that moment was harsh, forbidding. “No, Ariah, that’s how you think.”

“No! No, I mean to say that’s how Semadrans think.”

“No, that’s how you think. You never stopped to wonder. You never questioned. You took what they told you, and you drank it in. You stand there, you who will never know, and you tell me that’s just how Semadrans think. Not all Semadrans are the same, Ariah. You are…were…my student, and I welcomed you into my home and my life, and this is what you think of me and my brother.”

“You never told me!”