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Chapter Forty-One: The Cost

Author: Hayford A. Elizabeth
last update publish date: 2026-07-24 16:56:36

That night, in the quarters Dessa had given us, I told Jasper what she had said.

He had been there. He had heard every word. But I needed to say it again, out loud, in the specific private space of just the two of us, because that was how I processed the things that mattered by speaking them into existence in a space where I did not have to manage what saying them looked like.

He listened. When I finished, he was quiet for a long time. The Southern night around us was warm, dense, the oldest fo
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