Since Esmera was abandoned on a stranger's doorstep as a baby, the only person who has looked out for her is herself.
Until a lark starts visiting her, leaving behind exotic flowers and iridescent pebbles that the internet doesn't recognise.
Esmera...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"I'm so sorry that you endured that all alone." Tauram's arms wrapped Esmera tighter.
If it was anyone else's embrace, it might've been suffocating, but it was his. His closeness brought a certain comfort, a familiar security even though Esmera couldn't recall where she knew it from.
Maybe it was from those days preceding her conscious memories, the first few months of her life she spent in Milatanur. Had she met Tauram then? Had she been in his presence long enough to learn how it felt?
The heaviness in Tauram's eyes brought Esmera back to the present, where she was finally facing those parts of the past she had fled from.
"Was that the first time he hurt you?" The overhead fairy lights shadowed Tauram's face. Maybe that was why the angles of his jaw seemed so harsh, why his mouth appeared so tense.
Yes, Esmera wanted to say, but Tauram's eyes studied her so intently, seemed to look into the core of her being, that they forced the truth from her at the last moment.
"No." The word stuck in Esmera's throat, the first time she hadn't lied when asked this question.
Facing Stephan with a family or anyone else behind her wouldn't have made any difference because Esmera had lied to everyone who asked if everything between the two of them was fine, if she was in trouble.
Esmera had lied to anyone who could help her to save face, to protect Stephan from the law and the judgment he deserved from everyone who knew him. She had worn long sleeves to hide her bruises and covered them with foundation if they could still be seen.
Stephan may be the culprit, but Esmera was his accomplice.
Tauram's eyes went wide even as his mouth hardened, like a stick that Esmera could snap. "How many times were there before that?"
Esmera looked over Tauram's shoulder at the bookshelf behind him because she couldn't bear to look into those eyes that had her spilling all her secrets from within herself, that would surely judge her.
"I lost count. It was a few times a month, probably." It didn't sound like a lot, definitely not enough to wound a woman stronger than Esmera, to scar her with fear, but it was an ongoing, exhausting cycle.
Tension, hurt, repair, decline. Rinse and repeat. Stephan may not have hit her every day, but she was always afraid that he would.
"Esmera...that's awful." Tauram's fingers stroked over her spine, and in that moment, he was the only thing holding her together.
She couldn't help but sigh at his touch. He made everything better, even the worst of her, of her life. Maybe this was the closest a broken woman could be to being fixed.
"That was wrong of him, you know." Tauram rested his lips on Esmera's hair.
She would say anything to make him keep touching her, to keep him telling her things that made her feel better, but she also wanted to be honest. She owed Tauram that after every secret she had kept from him.
