Interlude
Is there an end to the loathing I am able to feel for myself, the contempt with which I regard my own choices?
I think I am a vile creature – but that is the situation into which I have been forced, step by certain step, until I could be nothing else.
This is what they made me, this is the shape they shoved me into.
Some might suggest I should turn my revulsion not on myself, but on the Concord for how they forced my hand.
I know, in my core, the truth of the matter: I might have told him at any time. The Concord did not still my tongue; they did not insist on my silence. I made a choice, and I made it again and again, over and over.
I knew, then, that he trusted me entirely.
I knew that, though he imagined himself hardened, difficult to read, a skilled wielder of artifice, that he yearned for my affection like a flower tilts toward the sun.
He brightened under my care; he allowed himself to fall open, to show me the secret soft places where he had been hurt before.
The claim has been made that Sashen fell under my spell, that he was drawn to me as a virra is drawn to a sinnenthi. These are stories from our history that I have never believed; they are a holdover from times better left forgotten.
And yet – As I listen to him –
Sashen says it was gravitational, that how we fell toward each other was inevitable, and he is nearly right. I was drawn to him as well, but I did not permit myself to be pulled. I held the tether; I twisted the rope; I drew him near; and I did not tell him what was happening.
If he had known everything, he might have chosen differently. With the entire scope of our plan, he could have chosen, in the fullness of knowledge, to be a true ally. A partner. My equal, in that and all things.
Instead, I used him. I took control and set him into motion, a tool to be wielded.
I am meant to serve, to guard, to protect, to care.
I failed as sinnenthi, and no one can be more sickened by my failures than I am.