“Is there something you want?” Her voice cracked the air.

“Senera, what happened?” I crossed the room to her, but she wouldn’t look at me.

“Are you going to make me repeat myself?” she countered.

“I came to ask you a favor, but you seem upset. Do you want to talk?”

Senera turned to me then, and her nostrils flared.

“No, I do not. Now tell me what you want and leave. Or better yet, just leave.”

I didn’t answer her immediately. I sat there and enjoyed the flames crackling in the fireplace, the scent of hot tea and burning pine needles in the air.

I heard her intake of breath, knew she was about to start yelling at me.

“When is the price too much?” I asked her, looking up.

“That doesn’t sound like a favor,” she snapped.

“It isn’t,” I admitted. “But I’m curious when it all becomes too high a price to pay. What marks the line?”

She closed her eyes and muttered a curse under her breath. I’m certain it involved unpleasantries involving my genealogy.

I leaned forward. “How many lives are too many? How many have to die before it’s enough?”

She scoffed. “Death is a meaningless term. They go to the Afterlife. They’re reborn from the Afterlife and start over. Who cares?”

“Oh no. Did no one tell you? Demons and magic both changed the rules. Souls are only immortal to a point, and past that point, oblivion is real. When Xivan kills someone, they don’t go to the Afterlife. When demons eat their victim’s souls or, worse, transform those souls into more demons, they don’t go to the Land of Peace. The trauma those souls experience is real and, assuming Thaena can rescue them, carries on from one lifetime to the next. Who cares? You do. You just don’t want to admit it, because that would mean admitting you’re wrong.”

She stood up, her face a mask of righteous fury.

“How dare you. Do you have any idea what I went through when I was a slave? What every slave goes through? And you people give no thought—”

“Any sympathy I might have had for your past vanished when you started wiping out villages and you were willing to gaesh Qown. Willing to gaesh me too, even if that attempt failed.”

She closed her mouth mid-protest, eyes bright and angry. Oh, that had cut too close, I suspected, hitting at nerves still raw through guilt.

I dropped my head, turned away. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t come here to pick a fight.”

“And yet, here you are.”

“Here I am. I just…” I shook my head. “I’m sorry,” I repeated. “These months haven’t gone smoothly for me.”

“I heard about what happened to Oreth. I’d say I’m sorry, but…”

I smiled, looked back at her. “He was an ass.”

She nodded. “He was.”