"What are you doing here?" Beth demands. Selena doesn't respond. She takes a half step back, then crouches down to the floor, wraps her arms around herself, and starts to cry. I'm halfway to my feet. I don't understand. It's too much, too fast. What do I do?

"Is she really...?" The words leak from my mouth, drawing Beth's attention back to me. She turns halfway around to look at me, and I see the realization, when she remembers I'm not the one who needs protection. "Is Selena... really an enemy?"

"She's from Eschalle." Beth's confirmation makes my left hand twitch. I grab it with my right to stop myself.

"How do you know?" I can feel my thoughts slipping away. I have to fight enemies. Eschalle is an enemy.

Selena can't be...

"Her blue eyes," Beth says, pointing a hand at Selena as she sobs and shakes on the ground. "Eschallians have blue eyes. Aria, how do you know-" She cuts short when she glances back again and sees me.

"I- I... have to fight enemies," I stammer, staring up at Beth's horror as she realizes what I mean. When I step past her, she raises a hand, but doesn't stop me. My feet scrape across the cellar's rough stone floor until I stand before Selena. My left hand clenches and unclenches around the tiny manastone. But I don't activate my divine gear. I can't believe she's one of them. Not her.

Then she looks up at me with those brilliant blue eyes.

I can't-

Not Selena.

It's too much.

Her breath catches when she sees me, eye level with her sitting sprawled, hands and knees on the floor in her blue-frilled servant uniform. Reminding me that she works for Eryk.

She lives here, in the city.

So I should protect her.

But she's an enemy?

So I should fight her?

She's human.

As I keep failing to understand, it's all just too much. I can't let myself feel this right now.

I continue to stare, watching pure terror spread over Selena's face. The tears stop. She's panting, blue eyes wide and staring at my face.

"Are you an enemy?" I ask, my voice flat and emotionless.

"I- I," Selena sputters, and just the word has her entire body shaking. Why won't she deny it? Just say you aren't. I would believe you.

We laughed, and cried, and slept together. Played together. It wasn't for long, but we spent whole days together while I stayed here. She cooked for me, showed me around the house, gave me baths, let me nap in her lap throughout the quiet afternoons.

"Selena, please." She opens her mouth, and for a moment, just a tiny moment, there's a flicker of hope. She'll say it. Then everything will be fine. Until her face falls in resignation.

Why do I always let myself hope? Haven't I learned?

My hand comes up, divine gear glowing to life. Huge, eerie shadows stretching over the cellar floor behind Selena's huddled form. She isn't a rail unit, it won't even be hard.

Why does my first real enemy have to be human?

I don't want to do this.

But I'm a rail unit.

I don't want to do this.

I touch her head, silky soft strands of her black hair slipping through my fingers.

I don't want to do this.

My mana stretches inside. She has a lot of space in here, her mana affinity must be almost as high as Eryk's. Not that it matters, she's still just human, and I reach her well in moments.

I don't want to do this.

Selena's well is churning, the motions of her soul fast and panicked.

I have to know.

When I connect to her soul, it all comes at once. The barrage of sights and sounds flooding into me. All of her thoughts and memories as they pour through her mind in her dying moments.

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Why did Mom and Dad bring me here? I know the desert was hot, and I know there was never anything to eat or drink, but was it really that bad? Even when uncle was killed by the sand beasts, things might have gotten better, right? I had a friend there! Her name has long faded from my memories, only flashes of her crying face remain, from when her mother died in childbirth.

They said we had to cross the burning desert, and we lost auntie and brother and grandpa on the way. They said we would reach a place with grass and food and work. And I believed them! Only Mom, Dad, and I made it.

Why did they ever think we could stay here with these people? We're enemies! They hate us!

With death staring me in the face, the memories all flash past. The blurry images of my relatives collapsing one by one, still too young to truly understand. Arriving in Melphira as a tiny child, my parents somehow slipping us into the service of a family in the city. Training me to be a servant.

"Just keep your head down and keep your master's house in order, and there will be food on the table," they said. "You'll never have to go hungry again," they said.

That didn't keep them from being found out and fleeing the city. They said it was to keep people from noticing me too, but who knows? They never came back. I was ten, and at the time, I think I still believed them.

They said Master Jason's house would be safe. Even though he knew about my lineage, he was so sweet when I was little. Until I grew up. Until he started telling me how beautiful I was.

"Your eyes are so blue."

I'll never forget those words, or the exact way he said them.

I was only fourteen.

The fear never really goes away.

He must have thought I would stay because I didn't have a choice, but I couldn't. I would rather die. I fled the moment he fell asleep, running clear across the city in the dead of night. It was Laura who found me when I collapsed behind Eryk's house. She only needed one look to know what happened. She told me Eryk's house would be better. That he was eccentric, not interested in women. And again, I believed her. Even though everyone is always wrong.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

But... she wasn't. Eryk didn't pay me any mind. I don't know how he would react if he saw my eyes, but it's been three years and he's never even approached me. So I thought things would be alright this time.

It figures, when I finally found a truly safe place, that tiny, wonderful, wounded little child Eryk brought in, practically off the streets - that she would actually be a monster. A human weapon designed to kill me in particular.

All because of where I come from.

Because I just happened to be born somewhere else.

I only wanted a place to call home.

Was that really too much to hope for in this miserable life?

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I barely manage to regain my senses as I tear myself back from Selena's soul. My head is swimming with it all. Seventeen years of clipped, chopped up, stitched together memories, all dumped on me at once. Years of suffering that aren't mine, that don't hurt as much as mine.

But it still hurts.

And even if it's not the same, it's impossible to miss the similarities. As I stand here, about to kill her for being who she is. For how she was born.

I don't want to do this!

But as a rail unit, I don't have a choice. There is no option here. She is an enemy, we fight enemies.

This is what rail units do.

The fingers of my free hand ball into a fist.

I hate this.

Can't there be another way? Can't I see her as something other than an enemy?

But she's from Eschalle.

So what? She was born there, but she doesn't live there!

She's still from Eschalle. That makes her an enemy.

I grit my teeth, raging at myself.

I don't want to do this!

"Mmrgghh!" I scream deep in my throat, whole body shaking as I clash with myself. Knowing what I have to do, but rebelling against it anyway.

Selena's lived here longer, that makes her more Melphiran than Eschallian! That cancels out her being an enemy! I reason frantically. It's the most flimsy, thrown together excuse, but I don't care! She's the opposite of those kidnappers! They were enemies because they harmed people in the city. Selena doesn't! She's wonderful and nice and she's been hurt too much already!

"I won't do it!" I growl out, squeezing my eyes shut. Emily and Beth did as much for me already. Saw past what I am to who I am. "I won't see you as an enemy."

I drop my hand from her head, my divine gear flickering out and the tiny manastone dropping from my palm to bounce a short distance away across the hard floor.

"A-Aria?" Beth stammers quietly behind me. But I'm not finished yet. I gently lift Selena's quivering face with a hand under her chin. I lean in close and get her to meet my eyes.

"Selena." She flinches when I say her name. "I understand why you're afraid of me, but I won't hurt you." There's a flicker of hope in her eyes before she visibly pushes it down. The same way I do. "I refuse to hate you, just for where you were born," I tell her. "I understand how you feel. I hide my identity because I don't want people to hate and fear me, just like you. We're the same."

"We... are...?" she mumbles, still stunned and disbelieving.

"Yes," I assure her. "I'm really sorry for scaring you. I... You know how it is." I hold up my left wrist for her to see, where my now invisible divine gear was glowing just moments ago. "We have to fight enemies. But you are not my enemy. I love you too much." A small, teary smile crosses her lips when I say that.

"U-umm, Aria?" Beth speaks again, her hand coming down hesitantly on my shoulder from behind. "I'm not following. How do you know this woman?"

"Mm?" I frown a little. "She's Eryk's servant, she always takes care of me whenever I'm over Eryk's house." Even as I speak to Beth, I keep my eyes on Selena, seeing when her face falls in response to my words.

"I've... never seen her before though..." Beth replies uncertainly.

Huh?

"I... hide..." I can barely hear her, but it doesn't take long to figure out Selena's meaning.

"You hide whenever other people come over? Like how you're hiding now?" I ask, and she nods, face full of shame.

"If anyone saw me..." she mumbles under her breath again. So that's how it is. No wonder why she's always staring at the floor, doing her absolute best to avoid people seeing her eyes...

That's why she was absolutely terrified the first time we met. When I saw her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Selena," I apologize again. "I'm sorry for lying to you, and for scaring you." It's only beginning to sink in that another person just found out about my secret, and my heart is starting to race like crazy. "Please, I won't hurt you, and I won't tell anyone about you, alright? Could you... keep this a secret for me too?"

There are a few long moments, Selena staring at me uncertainly. "I... don't know," she mumbles. "This is too much. How are you even..." Her words slowly trail off, eyes searching mine.

My shoulders sag with a small sigh. I guess I have to explain this now. Not what I should be dealing with today, but I don't have a choice now. "I'm a broken rail unit," I tell her. "I'm living on my own, away from the rail unit program, because being there was terrible. I... don't really want to think about it..." I finally break eye contact when the thoughts send a shudder through my chest and fresh tears down my cheeks. "I'm still working through all of it. I've been hiding that I'm a rail unit so people don't hate and fear me. You understand what that's like, don't you?"

Selena gives a tiny nod. Then, after some hesitation, asks, "If you're a... rail unit... why are you so..."

"Because I'm broken," I answer the question she was working up to. "I'm nothing like the others because I was broken in an accident when I was younger. So instead of being like them, I'm... like this." With a sad look, I vaguely gesture to all of me.

"Hey..." Beth finally speaks up again as she moves in behind me. "I think you're a good kid," she assures me softly, giving my shoulder a squeeze. That's kind of missing the point, but it makes me feel a little better anyway.

"I see..." Selena breathes out. "I... like you like this too."

We finally share a little smile between us, even though we're both obviously really nervous. We did just find each other's biggest secrets, and could destroy the other's lives, so it's not that surprising...

But no matter what, I care about Selena. I move in slowly, not to startle her, and give her a hug. I'm surprised when she doesn't even hesitate before hugging me back, and finally relax against her.

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Eventually, we all calm down again. When that finally happens, Beth turns me around and sits me in Selena's lap. "So, Aria," she begins, "putting aside all that, could you tell me about what happened earlier? Why did you start crying all of a sudden?"

"Oh, that..." My face falls a little. I almost managed to forget with everything else. "So..." I take deep breath, then sigh it back out. "The mana I got from that ore was like the type I got one time before, by destroying the soul of a hobin."

"...Oh..." she mutters. I feel a small shift from Selena behind me, but she doesn't say anything. She's probably lost with this conversation, but I have nothing to hide from either of them anymore.

"So, I was out of ideas for how to develop my magic," I try to explain. "The way souls work gave me something I could work with to try and learn more, and I... I told myself I had to, to survive. And that I'd be killing the hobins anyway. They were excuses, but they were true. What I made from those hobins did eventually save my life. But that ore..."

I swallow hard, wiping away the trickle of tears from my eyes, before I find my voice again. "If I could have gotten that mana out of a rock all along, then what was the point in doing something so terrible? I should have thought about it more. I should have tried harder to find another way..."

"Aria," Beth calls my name softly so I'll look back up at her. "I'll admit, I don't know enough about this to really understand what you did, but it does sound like something bad. And you know what?" She levels me with a look I can't read for a moment. "Other children do bad things all the time. You're smart and you're mature for your age, but you're still a child. You're going to make mistakes. When you do, do you know what you have to do?"

With a weak shake of my head, she tells me. "You apologize, and you learn. Then, you do better next time." Beth leans in closer. "So, Aria, are you sorry for what you did?"

"Yes..."

"Are you going to do it again?"

"No..."

"Then that's it," she tells me. "You've learned from your mistake. That's how you grow." Then she gives me a gentle hug, and a few more tears squeeze out as my chest shudders.

Is that really it? Can the things I did really be brushed off just like that?

"Is that really ok?" I ask her weakly. "If that's all, why do I still feel so guilty?"

Both Beth and Selena continue to hold me close as Beth responds. "It's normal to feel guilty when you do something wrong, but you can't let that consume you. You can try to fix your mistakes, or make up for them. Ask for forgiveness if possible; from those you've wronged, or from the gods. If not, then you just have to keep going."

Beth brings a hand up to her chest. "Some regrets will stay with you. Days, years, or your entire life. Things you wish you didn't do, and some where you missed an opportunity. But no matter what happens, life always has to move on eventually. Do you understand?"

I pause for a long moment to consider that, before nodding. "Yeah." So, it doesn't matter what I did or how unforgivable it is, I have to keep going.

"You may not be like other children, but this is all part of growing up," Beth tells me with a sad smile.