Ridahne gave Ravi an anguished laugh as she looked up at the bright sky from where she still knelt. But she turned to look up at him, and her honey eyes were on fire. She was a creature of passion, and whatever she felt she felt it deeply. Joy, hate, fear, anger, sorrow. "If I had no sorrow, would I feel sorrow now?" She snorted. "No, I dare say I wouldn't. But it's more than my black deeds that mar my history. My murder of Khaltira-Sol and her successor, and my partner, that is merely the worst thing I have done, second perhaps only to the people who are now dead by my hand for reasons that may or may not have been true. No, my failure goes back farther than that, Ravi. I was supposed to be a fisherman--my entire family has been fishermen for ages. But I got into too much trouble. Fought too much. Drifted off too much. Argued too much. I wanted to be a tattooer, but I wasn't skilled enough. I watched my mother succumb to illness and die. My father drowned at sea. I was sixteen and orphaned, and it showed. I was uncouth, unladylike, uneducated, unwashed, and poor. I was told I would never find a husband because I was too tall, or too loud, or too fiery, or too dirty and ugly, or too unruly. I became an Eija and it  was the one thing I ever did right. I was good at it. So I dedicated myself to my training, and you know where that got me? I became an Eija-alihn, a hand of death, and every time I thought I was doing what was right and good, I was really just doing it all wrong. Always wrong. And now I am here with this chance to redeem myself and to help in the saving of Astra, to do the most good and decent thing I will ever do in my entire life, and still somehow I manage to screw that up too, in some small way." 

Ridahne hung her head, her fire spent. "And now, instead of being compelled by love and loyalty and purpose, I am bound by sharp command. A slave with some fragment of honor. A willing slave. But a slave all the same, and all because I am a study in bitter inadequacy. No, Ravi. To erase my sorrow would be to erase everything that I am. If I did not have the burdens and cares I do now, I would not be Ridahne Torzinei. I would not be here."  There was an odd mix of defeat and defiance in her tone, like she was both lamenting her hand in life and yet she knew with some measure of defiant pride that she was born of strife. And despite her bitter ramblings, she was still determined to come out the other side. Tax had a point. No potential guardian in all of Astra was more motivated to see this through than she. 

"As for Darin..." She breathed a long sigh. "We do not understand each other. Every attempt to do so has ended in disaster. I want to. I don't want to be bound to a person who loathes me, and I don't want to resent her. I'd venture to say she wants the same. But neither of us know how to get there, I think. I don't know what she wants from me. Nor do I understand fully why I was chosen to do this task." And then, in a very small voice as though it was hard for her to admit it, she said, "I don't know where to go from here." And she did not mean geographically.