Chapter 33
Esther
How to help others: sweat, cry, haul buckets, and try not to traumatize any orphans.
Esther had always believed she understood what work looked like.
She had watched it, after all—servants moving silently through palace halls, guards drilling in the courtyard, seamstresses hunched over embroidery frames until their fingers ached.
She had thanked them. She had been kind. She had noticed.
She had never lifted anything heavier than expectation.
The first bucket of water sloshed against her boots and soaked the hem of her borrowed skirt within seconds.
“Oh,” Esther said faintly.
Lyssara snorted from beside her. “Careful. That one bites.”
Esther tightened her grip and tried again, bracing herself the way she had seen others do. The bucket still dragged, her arms trembling as she hauled it across the orphanage yard. Her shoulders burned almost immediately, muscles protesting a life of disuse.
She told herself not to complain. Not even internally.
Around her, the children moved like a practiced unit. One passed her a cloth without being asked. Another took the bucket from her when it tilted too far, sloshing water onto the dirt. No one laughed.
No one scolded her.
They simply adjusted.
A girl no older than ten wrung out a rag beside her, hands moving quickly and efficiently. “You’ve got to tilt it first,” she said kindly. “Otherwise it fights you.”
“I see,” Esther said, swallowing hard. She tried again, copying the motion.
The bucket obeyed.
That felt worse, somehow.
By the time the sun climbed higher, Esther’s palms were raw.
Soap stung tiny cuts she hadn’t known were there.
Sweat trickled down her spine beneath borrowed clothes that smelled faintly of smoke and old linen.
Her magic stirred restlessly under her skin, reacting to exhaustion the way it always did—flaring, then pulling back, uncertain.
She kept working anyway.
She scrubbed floors until her knees ached. She stirred soup thick enough to feed too many mouths with too few ingredients. She hauled sacks of grain and stacked them carefully, apologizing every time she dropped one—until Lyssara gently took her wrist.
“You don’t have to say sorry,” Lyssara said. “You’re helping.”
“I know,” Esther admitted. “I just… I slow you down.”
Lyssara smiled, soft but tired. “Everyone does, at first.”
That didn’t help.
At the soup kitchen, the line never seemed to shorten. Bowls were passed down, worn wooden counters. Children carried them carefully, hands wrapped around chipped rims for warmth. Esther ladled until her arm shook, steam fogging her vision.
Voices drifted around her.
“They say Kraggmar won’t join the alliance.”
“They say Valedara’s hoarding grain.”
“They say Queen Estella would've fixed this.”
Esther’s ladle paused.
No one noticed.
“She would’ve,” an older man said firmly. “She always did.”
"She’s dead," someone muttered.
“So they say.”
Esther swallowed and kept serving.
No one looked at her like she was royalty. No one bowed. A few thanked her. Most didn’t. They were too tired, too hungry, too busy surviving to care who she was.
That hurt.
It also felt… honest.
By the time they returned to the orphanage, Esther’s limbs felt like they belonged to someone else. She sat heavily on the steps, breathing hard, fingers trembling as she flexed them. Her bracelet weighed heavily against her wrist—a familiar anchor, a familiar cage.
She slid it off.
The relief was immediate. Her magic loosened its grip, the constant pressure easing like a held breath finally released. For a moment, the world sharpened—colors deeper, sounds clearer.
Too clear.
The ground beneath her feet vibrated faintly. Just once.
Esther stiffened, heart pounding.
“Essie?” Nythir asked quietly.
“I’m fine,” she said quickly, forcing the magic down, shoving the bracelet back on. The pressure returned, comforting and suffocating all at once.
She stood too fast.
The shout came a heartbeat later.
“Korin!”
A boy stumbled, clutching his arm. Blood welled bright against dirt. Esther’s breath caught painfully in her chest.
“No,” she whispered.
She was there before anyone else, hands glowing instinctively as she knelt. Her magic surged—too much, too fast—fear feeding it like fuel. The air crackled. A nearby squirrel twitched.
The ground beside them stirred, and Esther got a horrible feeling in her gut that this had happened once before.
A squirrel corpse, long dead and stiff, jerked upright as if yanked by invisible strings.
Lyssara screamed. Again.
Korin gasped in horror.
The zombie squirrel chattered.
Esther swore.
Vorrik stomped it flat without hesitation, leaving only fur, dust, and the faint sound of traumatized silence behind.
Korin stared at the flattened spot on the ground like it might bite him again.
“I’m so sorry—” Esther began.
“For the love of the stars,” Lyssara groaned, rubbing her face, “that is the second undead squirrel this month—! Why is it always squirrels?!”
Esther wished the earth would swallow her whole.
Charon approached then, calm despite the lingering horror in the air. She looked at Esther with a strange tenderness.
“You really are just like your mother.”
Esther blinked. “What… what do you mean? My mother didn’t reanimate rodents.”
Charon laughed softly, eyes filled with nostalgia. “Oh, she absolutely did. Squirrels, frogs, an entire flock of birds once. Estella’s magic was… unpredictable back then. Wild. Just like yours.”
Esther stared.
“She caused chaos wherever she tried to help,” Charon continued fondly. “But that’s how the Council noticed her. They took her in, trained her. Even then, she could barely keep her power from spilling out.”
Esther swallowed hard. “And the foresight? That wasn’t something she learned?”
“No,” Charon said quietly, eyes softening as memories swam behind them. “She didn’t see the future until she carried you. That magic had never appeared before—and hasn’t since.”
A strange warmth spread through Esther. Pride, fear, grief, awe, and confusion all tangled together.
“I miss her,” Esther whispered.
“I know,” Charon murmured. “But she would be proud. You’re beginning to see the world she tried to protect. When her visions first began, she tried to change the future. But along the way, she changed. She decided to lay the groundwork instead.”
Esther’s chest ached.
“So I’m following her path.”
Charon shook her head. “No. You’re walking beside it.”
Nythir found her later, sitting alone under the stars.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted, voice barely audible. “I want to help, but everything I touch feels like it could break.”
Nythir sat beside her without speaking for a long moment. Then he said, “You stayed.”
She looked at him.
“You could’ve left,” he continued. “You didn’t.”
That was all.
Esther looked down at the bracelet in her hands. The younger children were sleeping inside. In the shadows of a war she’d been sheltered from.
Esther exhaled slowly, the weight of the day settling into something steadier. Not certainty. Not confidence.
Resolve.
Tomorrow, she would wake sore and tired and unsure again.
But she would wake here.
And that, she realized, was the beginning.