Chapter 101 — What Cressida Confessed

I reached for Cressida the following morning, unable to carry the weight of Morrigan's revelation alone any longer, needing to understand whatever truth lived beneath the single devastating word that had passed between us the night before.

Cressida, I thought, the pendant warming slowly beneath my palm as I settled into the glasshouse's familiar quiet. I need to ask you something, and I think you already know what it is.

The silence that answered carried a different quality than any I'd experienced from her before — not the careful consideration of someone weighing how much truth to offer, but something closer to resignation, as though she had been waiting, perhaps for longer than I understood, for exactly this question to finally arrive.

You spoke with her, Cressida said, not quite a question. Morrigan.

Yes. She mentioned a friend. Someone who sounds exactly like you, Cressida. Is it true? Did you know her, before she became what she is now?

The pause that followed stretched long enough that I began to fear the connection itself had failed, until finally, haltingly, Cressida began to speak.

We grew up together, she said, old grief threading through every word. In the village you now know as Hollowmere, though it carried a different name then, before the tragedy that claimed it. Morrigan and I were inseparable as children. Sisters in every sense but blood. I was there, Liora, the night the gate first opened. I watched her reach into that terrible wound, screaming her daughter's name, and I was too frightened, too young, too utterly unprepared to help her in any meaningful way.

You never told me this.

I couldn't, Cressida admitted, raw pain evident even across the strange distance of our connection. Every time I've tried to speak of it, across however many lives I've carried this grief forward, the words have failed me. It's easier to describe her as simply an enemy, a danger to be stopped, than to admit that the enemy I've spent centuries fighting was once the person I loved most in all the world.

I sat with that revelation a long moment, the full shape of this ancient tragedy settling into something far more complicated than I had understood even after Hollowmere's terrible well revealed Morrigan's own grief. Two friends, inseparable as children, one losing everything to a catastrophe neither could prevent, the other carrying the guilt of her own helplessness across broken lifetime after broken lifetime.

What happened to you, I asked gently, after that night? How did you become a Reweaver, carrying memory across lives the way I do now?

I died trying to help her close the gate, Cressida said quietly. That first time, in that first life. I gave everything I had to seal the wound she'd torn open in her desperate grief, and the effort killed me, though it did, eventually, succeed in closing what she'd opened. I woke again, later, in a different life entirely, carrying memory of what had happened and understanding, slowly, that I'd been given another chance — not simply to live again, but to try, somehow, to save her from whatever she was becoming.

How many times have you tried? I asked, almost afraid of the answer.

I've lost count, Cressida admitted, weariness threading through every word. Each life, I find her eventually, or she finds me. Each time, I try a different approach — reasoning, pleading, sometimes simply standing against her with whatever strength I can gather. Each time, I fail to reach whatever remains of the girl I once loved as a sister, and the cycle begins again, in whatever new life circumstance grants me next.

Why didn't it work? Any of those times?

I don't fully know, Cressida said. Perhaps I approached her wrong, carrying too much of my own guilt into every attempt, making the conversation about my own failure to save her rather than about her genuine grief. Perhaps the timing was never right, her pain still too raw, too recently reopened by whatever triggered our confrontation in each particular life. A pause, heavy with old sorrow. Or perhaps I simply wasn't the right person to reach her at all, however much I've wanted to be.

The admission settled heavy in my chest, understanding dawning slowly as I turned over everything Cressida had just confessed. "You think I might succeed where you've failed," I said softly. "Because I'm not carrying your particular guilt. Because to her, I'm simply a stranger offering understanding, rather than an old friend whose presence might only deepen whatever pain she's already carrying."

Perhaps, Cressida said. I don't know for certain. I only know that your conversation with her already achieved something I've never once managed across all my own attempts — genuine uncertainty, rather than immediate rejection. That has to mean something, Liora, however small a victory it might initially seem.

I sat with that a long while, turning over the strange, aching weight of Cressida's confession. Two childhood friends, torn apart by a single catastrophic night, one transformed by grief into a hunter spanning centuries, the other carrying guilt across broken lifetime after broken lifetime, each believing herself responsible for failing the other.

Does Kael know? I asked. About everything you've just told me?

Not yet, Cressida admitted. I wanted you to understand first, since you're the one who's actually spoken with her directly. But I don't intend to keep this hidden from the others who've helped carry this burden alongside you. I think, after everything, I've finally learned the cost of silence carried too long.

Thank you, I said softly. For trusting me with this. I know how much it must have cost you to finally speak it aloud.

You've earned that trust, Cressida said, warmth threading through her weary voice. Many times over, across everything you've already risked on behalf of a war that was never truly yours to begin with, until circumstance made it so.

I withdrew from the connection slowly afterward, the glasshouse's familiar quiet settling around me as I processed everything Cressida had just confided. Two centuries of guilt, carried silently across broken lifetime after broken lifetime, finally spoken aloud to someone who might actually understand its full weight. I found myself, sitting alone among my mother's moon-lilies, grateful beyond measure that this strange, doubled second life had given me the chance to witness such a profound unburdening, however much uncertainty still remained about what would ultimately come of it. The night settled quiet and cool around me, and I stayed there a long while longer, simply breathing in the garden's familiar peace before finally making my way back toward whatever rest the evening still offered.