Truths
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The secret couldn't be hers forever.
So little by little, she gives it away. First to Esau, because his strength is something she needs to say the first words, and then to Pearl. Word by word, sentence by sentence, story by story, they come to know her nightmares and how it is Lief smelled blood on her. Her story is not an easy one, not to her, not to them. That her magic is strong makes no difference now, not as she harrows the ghost of her memories.
She doesn't tell them everything, but she does tell them most things. She tells them about Brazell's son and the tortures, physical, emotional, all of it. Every dark, secret corner of her past, suddenly given away. But she keeps most of the guilt and shame to herself. They can guess at it, of course, but she's not quite ready to give them everything. They aren't ready either, to hear how much of her is darkness, how much of her would kill Brazell's heir again and again for the feel of rightness it gave her. Maybe she'll tell them someday.
After she has said enough, Yelena says very little. She sits across from Esau, her hands folded over her lap. Mostly, she is calm; a part of her ordeal is finally at rest, even if for her newfound family it's just beginning. They have their own kind of guilt to sort through.
Yelena's own silent poise reminds her, somewhere in the back of her mind, of the day she first met with Valek, of the day she promised to serve the Commander in lieu of execution. She can't help but feel that, like that day, this is a turning point. So she waits for what will happen, to see the distinct befores and afters unfold. This story should never have been hers, but it was and is and now it's so much more than that. For the first time in a long time, it belongs to someone else also.
She watches her mother, who gets up, paces and cries in turns. Like all the Zaltanas and their Sitian relations, her emotions are nothing short of unrestrained. Yelena is not quite used to the candor of her family, caught in the in between of Ixia and Sitia, not one and not the other. Esau is more collected, and Yelena appreciates his grim composure, but the guilt in his eyes is every bit as loud as Pearl's wailing. She doesn't know how she expected them to react, but it feels right.
Neither Yelena nor Esau say much to each other. Her father just sits and stares intently at the bottle he holds between his hands. It's a clear decanter filled with some of Pearl's new fragrance. He swishes it around with a heavy sigh, as though he had expected this. And maybe he had. Both knew her life in Ixia had not been an easy one, and under what terms prisoners are chosen to be the Commander's food taster. But hearing the truth and suspecting it are two different things altogether, and that's just what Pearl declares as she makes another dash around their home.
She's sure the news will travel. It probably has already. But instead of a violation, it feels like a blessing. They will know what happened and why they smell blood on the lost Zaltana girl.
After countless more laps around the home and out and back, Pearl finally settles next to her husband. Her tears aren't gone, but she's turned to anger instead of shock. She holds onto Esau and closes her eyes. She breathes in and out, and between each intake and release offers every curse she knows to the general's son, Reyad. Esau sets the decanter aside and gives another hand to Pearl, with both hands now clasped with hers.
Yelena eases back into her seat and watches her parents, awed and satisfied.
This is what it means to have a mother and father who love you, she thinks.
This heartbreak of theirs is something she needed to heal her own, just a little. It is an understanding of no small selfishness, but it is something that belongs to Yelena and not Reyad's ghost. It is wholly and fully hers.
At the end, through what feels like hours and hours of tears, anger and quiet, somber explanation, Esau and Pearl bring Yelena close. They stroke her hair and whisper beautiful things to her ear, and they let her grieve a little as well. She'll never be fully done with this sad, sorry business, but she feels owed these moments with her mother and father. She takes them, cries gently through them, and feels lighter towards the end.
The truth and history of things has not been altered; she is what she is and endured what she has as ever before. But it helps that they know. It's a comfort to bare the truth to them, like sunlight breaking through the Sitian canopy.
Yelena's uncovered truths do not change her past, but they do offer the hopeful promise that things may yet, with Valek, a mother, father, brother, and trees and trees of family, be better lived.