After that conversation, Neera found herself telling Davina about her life in the harem, entrusting her with the secret of her outings to steal potatoes from the kitchen and cooking them on the dilapidated fireplace inside her room every time the maids forgot to bring her supper. She narrated how both her and Alea would remain silent inside the harem's dining hall to avoid the ire of the more respectable ladies, who tended to strike them with their spoons when they thought their voices were too loud.
She couldn't help but laugh remembering how frustrated Alea would become after she requested her help in learning how to read, only to struggle immensely in even holding the pencil.
Davina was an avid listener. Prompting her to go into more detail when she noticed Neera's pace falling as her mind drifted away. The child was unburdening herself for what appeared to be the first time. Her squinting eyes shone when she spoke about happy moments, and her cheeks flushed when her lips pulled apart to reveal her teeth in a smile. Her words began small and slow, uncertain, but with time and under Davina's empathetic gaze they became an unstoppable torrent where the Ronna didn't even have to interject anymore.
Eventually her stories drifted into darker times.
The cold floor of the basement. The grinding of the chains around her wrists when she pulled on them. The taste of her blood on her mouth. A crimson river flowing out of Maule's chest. The Duke's elegant fingers wrapped around the handle of a whip. The Viscountess' eyes on her bare skin.
Her breathing by now was heavy, she couldn't see what was in front of her, but Davina did not interrupt her trembling lips.
She went even further back.
Agena's cold body tied to a pole. Rolan with his eyes still open laying in the alleyway. The disgust in the gaze of the people in the market. The smile of the orphan who taught her to pickpocket who's name she could not remember. The first winter where she woke up to the unmoving body of a friend who was playing with her the day before, and all the times it happened after that.
She didn't know when the tears started, but by the time she noticed them flowing down her cheeks it was already too late to stop them. A warm hand lay softly on her uninjured shoulder, pushing everything she had held inside outwards.
Davina held the broken child in her arms while caressing her hair. She still mumbled unfinished sentences amidst choking breaths.
"I didn't... I just... He always..."
The Ronna did her best to contain the trembling body, trying to stabilize Neera's shoulders as they moved to portray everything her words could not. In the end she barely mumbled.
"Why?"
Sobs turned into hiccups and Neera, exhausted, fell asleep in Davina's arms. The last thing she remembered was the feeling of cold fingers running through her hair.
For as long as Davina had known the girl, she presented herself as an iron fortress. Her expressions were barely distinguishable, and the only traces of joy she had seen in her features appeared when she made progress in her training sessions. It unnerved Davina, making her subconsciously distance herself from the child.
Why had she helped her? Why was she so emotionless? Would she leave her behind as well if it came down to it? Did she see her as nothing more than a tool? All these doubts made her weary of Neera, whom she barely felt she knew. She was suspicious of her as she would have been of anyone else who presented a helping hand in such a situation. It was normal to be cautious of other people, but now, seeing her break down like that had finally reminded her of the fact that the girl was nothing more than a child.
She understood the lengths one had to go to at times in order to survive. She knew the feeling of just shutting down and doing what you need to do when you need to do it, she just couldn't assimilate that attitude coming from someone so young. When she came to this realization, she finally understood that Neera didn't act like a child not because she wanted to, but because she had never been given the chance to do so.
Watching her sleeping face now she looked much younger. Or maybe she just acted older that she actually was, and she finally looked her age. Her heart went out to this small creature who had fought tooth and nail to get here, not even getting the opportunity to be a kid.
Davina was unsure of what to do to help her, but she decided she would not leave her behind.
"Don't worry, Neera. We are both here together now."
The next morning, Neera was barely able to open her eyes. Her throat ached and her face burned when her gaze fell on the woman in front of her after remembering the unsightly outburst the day before.
"Oh, are you awake? Do you want some breakfast?"
Davina stopped twirling what appeared to be a rabbit leg over the fire and reached out to pull some hairs that had stuck to Neera's cheeks. Her eyes were warm, and her voice was soft. Neera looked at her strangely before slowly nodding.
'Well, I guess it is understandable she feels it is odd for me to act like this now,' Davina thought.
It would take time to make the girl understand she was on her side after all she had been through.
While Neera gnawed at the bones, Davina finally asked her what she had been thinking about since yesterday.
"It is not your fault."
The girl froze, lifting her widened eyes to stare at the woman before her.
"Huh?"
Davina wiped her fingers on her trousers and scooted closer to Neera.
"None of it was your fault. The Duke, Alea, those guards, the... The children. You didn't do anything wrong."
Neera felt her chest constrict once more. She wanted to interject, but before the words left her lips Davina lifter her hand to stop her.
"I'm not saying you can just forget about it. You are still responsible for everything you have done. We all are. I'm just trying to tell you that you don't need to blame yourself for it. You did what you could with what you had. Some will resent you, yes, but you should not resent yourself."
The girl held a half eaten rabbit thigh mid air as her gaze stayed stuck to Davina's warm eyes. There was no blame nor scorn in them. Just honesty.
"For there to have been a sin there is the need for intention. God will never-"
"There is no God."
Neera's gaze grew cold in an instant, her palpable emotions retracting back inside and leaving her face as the blank slate she had before. Her tone was harsh and her lips trembled, but her eyes didn't waver.
"I've read about 'God', how he loves us all equally and unconditionally, but love accounts for nothing if we can't see it. What does it matter that there is an incomprehensible being out there loving us? Will that feed us? Will that take our pain away? What has 'He' done to be deserving of such worship? If 'He' created everything and knows everything then 'He' willingly created wars, murder, sickness, rape; even our bodies that can feel pain and shed tears, and our minds that become corrupted. This 'God' created the Duke, the nobles, the ideas in their heads of seeing us as objects and abusing us. If something created all that, can they really be called a benevolent God?"
Davina pondered for a while. The religion of the Ronna was different from the one preached in the duchy, being one of the justifications for the persecution of her people, but most of what the girl was saying also resonated with the flaws in her beliefs.
"Even if our lives are painful, at least we are still alive."
"We never asked to be brought into existence."
Davina smiled.
"And yet, you are still trying so hard just to keep existing."
Neera could not refute that. Not even she understood why.
Neither of them continued the conversation, instead focusing on finishing their food and packing up. By the time they were ready to go noon was almost upon them, with the sun glaring on Neera's eyes. She lifted her fingers above her eyebrows to shield her pupils, staring silently at the wide expanse of sky above them.
The Ronna brought her out of her reverie by asking:
"Are you ready?"
"Yes."
"Alright then, let's go."
They had been traveling further away from Singre, trying to avoid the most concurred roads to escape the persecution of the knights looking for Davina. With her skin's tone being vastly different to the duchy's residents it was easy to recognize her as a foreigner, and since they were still far from the border with the Ronna territory her appearance couldn't be explained due to the syncretism between the two cultures that gave birth to mixed race people. More often than not these were the children of war slaves captured after the endless confrontations in the mountains, but their population was few, and they tended to stay in their places of birth given the discrimination they faced from the rest of the citizens.
This left Neera and Davina with no other option than to take the longer road, splitting once they reached a town so that Neera could gather information while Davina stayed out of sight, often hunting to provide them food. They had been heading towards the coast and the border with the Ronna, deeper into the territory and further away from the capitals of the kingdom and the duchy, which were closer to each other.
Once they reached another fork in the road Neera called out to her companion.
"Davina."
The woman stopped and turned to look at her.
"This is where we go our separate ways."