That night, Golana came into the room quietly.
Two children shared the small bed, Lina, whose legs had been frostbitten badly enough to leave her half-paralyzed, and Evelyn.
A crack ran along the bottom of the window frame, and the cold came through it without stopping, the kind that found the joints first and worked inward from there.
Winter had only just begun and the temperature had already reached a dangerous threshold.
Every morning, the two adults woke and their first act was to check the children's warmth with hands that dreaded what they might find.
Sometimes what they found was already cold.
The two small girls were curled together against the chill, their hands interlaced, sharing whatever heat their bodies could still produce.
The thin blanket covered them both and did very little. In the corner, a small fire burned down toward its last.
Golana stood over the bed holding a pillow. Flat, nearly cotton-less, the grey fabric covered in patches that had been mended and remended over years.
She looked at Lina. The child's face was white in the firelight, her breathing shallow, her body barely holding temperature.
She'd always struggled with the cold even before the famine.
Whether she would still be here in the morning was a question Golana couldn't answer.
"Baron Jeffrey comes back tomorrow. I have no more time. For everyone else to live..." Her voice came out as a whisper. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
She looked at Lina's face as though trying to fix it permanently in her mind. Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold what she was holding.
Then she knelt beside the bed. Her forehead touched the floor.
Once. Again.
"Forgive me. I'm sorry. Forgive me. I'm sorry."
The tears fell quietly, dropping onto the floorboards, and she kept her sobs small because she could not bear to wake them.
"I'll make sure you don't suffer. I promise you that much. Lina, my Lina, I've kept you for seven years. You've been mine for seven years. But I..."
She couldn't say what came next. She tried to find the words that would make it bearable and found nothing.
Just the cold, and the dying fire, and what she had already decided to do.
"I have no choice. For the others to live, I have to."
She stood.
Her hands trembled around the pillow as she positioned it over Lina's face and pressed down.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. God forgive me. God forgive me."
The tears kept falling, soaking into the fabric. She couldn't watch and she couldn't look away and she couldn't stop.
She waited for movement that would have broken her completely.
It never came.
Five minutes. Perhaps ten. Lina hadn't stirred at all.
Golana lifted the pillow. Touched the child's face.
No breath.
Lina had been too weak to wake. Too weak to struggle.
The cold had already done most of the work, and Golana's hands had only finished what the winter had started, that was what she told herself, because it was the only version of events she could survive believing.
In the cruelest of times, perhaps that qualified as a gentle end.
She would carry this until the famine passed. She would carry it until the day she could set it down properly, whether that meant a courtroom or something worse.
For these children she had raised from infancy, any price was worth paying. She had decided that already.
Her vision had gone blurry and she was still lost in the rationalizations she needed to keep breathing when she finally noticed that Evelyn was awake.
Had been awake. Was watching her with the still, pale face of a child whose emotions had been taken away before any of this began.
"You... you saw all of it? When did you wake up?"
Her voice shook badly.
"When you came in," Evelyn said. "It's too cold to sleep."
She looked at Golana without expression.
Golana made a sound that wasn't language. And then whatever had been holding her together stopped holding, all at once.
Crack. Rebuild.
The long table again, but the room had been rearranged for a guest.
The baron sat at the head of it alone, dressed well, everything about him indicating a man accustomed to having his preferences accommodated.
The children had been placed in the far corner and told to stay there.
Two bodyguards stood near the entrance and made no effort to conceal their disdain for the surroundings, their polished boots already ruined by the state of the floor.
Baron Jeffrey was a middle-aged man with thinning hair and a full beard, the beard maintained with the care of a man who considered it part of his presentation.
A round stomach. Two meticulously groomed side-whiskers that curled upward at the ends.
He opened the wine he'd brought himself, poured a glass, swirled it, and drank.
Then he took his cutlery and looked at what had been placed in front of him.
A portion of meat, coarsely prepared, roasted over an open fire without any technique behind it, the kind of cooking that would have been laughed out of any kitchen he regularly patronized.
He cut a piece. Held it near his face and breathed it in before placing it in his mouth.
"Hm."
A cold sound of mild dissatisfaction. The preparation was beneath his standards. He made sure everyone in the room understood this before continuing.
"Terrible technique. The quality of the ingredient compensates for it, however." He chewed slowly.
"Fresh. Very fresh." He paused, with an expression of someone arriving at a joke only they fully understand. "Prepared personally?"
The implication sat in the room.
Golana looked ten years older than she had that morning. She kept her eyes on the floor.
The other children didn't understand what they were watching.
A man eating meat while they stood hungry in the corner, some of them stared at his plate with undisguised longing, one or two swallowing involuntarily at the smell that filled the room.
Except Evelyn.
Maria stood among the children with her eyes shut. She'd been standing that way since before the baron arrived.
One of the smaller children tugged her sleeve.
"That smells really different, Sister Maria. What kind of meat is it? Do we get any? That man looks like he's really enjoying it."
Maria shook her head. The smile she produced was barely functional.
"Venison. Director Golana found a deer unexpectedly last night. It was prepared for our guest. He's taking all of it, but..." She stopped. Steadied herself.
"He's promised us money in exchange. Enough to buy proper food."
At the table, Jeffrey finished the last of it at his own pace, wiped his mouth, and set down his cutlery. He drank the end of his wine.
Then he reached into his coat and produced an envelope, thick with notes.
Golana looked at it.
"This much?"
He nodded at the envelope and she picked it up. Her hands trembled as she counted it. Tens of thousands.
The baron watched her reaction with visible satisfaction.
"Have the rest packaged for me to take. And I'll return on this same date every year. You keep me well-hosted and I'll bring the same amount each time." He stood and smoothed his jacket.
"I should mention, I have a discerning palate. Don't attempt to pass off something inferior. I would know."
He allowed himself one final remark, delivered with the air of someone naming a dish on a menu.
"Let's call it... charcoal-roasted lamb, shall we?"
Lamb.
Golana turned the word over in her mouth.
Then she lowered her head.
"Yes, sir."