‘He doesn’t know you?’ Zhira felt her heart lighten. Vesta hadn’t been forced into selling her body? She was relieved on behalf of her friend.
‘I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to go home,’ Vesta insisted.
‘You don’t have to…’ Zhira looked at her friend, confused.
‘To Taren.’ Vesta moved her hand along the wooden rail. Zhira had known Vesta for most of her whole life, yet now felt that she didn’t know her at all. She only saw the likeness of Vesta; an effigy of the girl she had known before, with the world flowing away beneath her boots. Maybe that’s who everyone was. A being caught between the past and the person they could be.
‘I never sold myself…we were both left at the Temple as babies, right?’ Vesta let out a sigh that seemed to rise from her feet. ‘He recognised me as soon
