Oh, gods. Seeing Claude's method of "tidying" was enough to cause Ethlyn physical pain. It wasn't that she didn't understand the impulse. Dealing with the medical records of half the people in town made it a tempting fantasy. But she couldn't help but wince nevertheless. "You are going to regret that later," she said.

Still, she picked out a tea--relieved that he had managed to locate something so normal as tea in this fairy's tomb of mysterious herbs--and clasped her hands around it. Claude had seen and heard what happened to her, but that didn't make this an easy subject to launch into. Yet after hiding from her own memories, her regrets, for so long... carefully stepping around the subject and backpedaling whenever a conversation came too near... it was a relief, in a strange way.

She had died. Maybe that was her own fault. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe she would never know for certain.

"I've been sentenced," she said, withdrawing the slip of parchment from her pocket. "Escorted by a soldier of the Council to face their judgment--but my atonement is not what I'd expected."

She unrolled it so that Claude could see the words: the crimes of the Grannvale Empire.

"I have to reflect on this with someone I'm close to," she said, "and since we know so much about each other now--I decided to come to you."