Beorn looked at Lewin.

The look was enough. Lewin took in the room, the five girls, and what was about to be said there. He gave one small nod.

"I’ll take the door," Lewin said.

He stepped out, pulling it almost shut behind him. His footsteps faded into the passage. Through the narrow gap, a thin line of daylight remained, and nothing more.

Hild watched him go, then looked back at Beorn.

He took a moment to watch the room.

Hild stood in the center with her arms still folded. Mod was against the far wall, in the place she had been since they came in, watching without seeming to watch. Beadu stood near the left wall with the braced posture that she was ready to move fast.

In the corner were the two children. Leof had her knees drawn up and her arms around them. Mab sat unnaturally, in an odd stiffness to try and abate the pain.

He looked at Tam.

"Would you show them?" he said.

Tam glanced at him, her head tipping a little. "Are you sure, my lord?"

"Yes," he said.

She looked around the room. Then she reached into the front pocket of her work apron and brought out two small iron trinkets, a bent nail and a ring the size of her thumb that she had taken from the foundry floor a while ago. She laid them flat on her palm. Then she opened her fingers.

They did not fall.

Instead, they rose from her hand slowly, one at a time, then drifted in a loose orbit around her palm. She kept them there for a few seconds, her expression focused, as if she was being evaluated by her powers, then drew them back and closed her fist.

The silence changed.

Beadu made a noise that was not quite a laugh and not quite disbelief.

Hild’s eyes quivered under the demonstration, and whatever passed behind them disappeared fast.

Mod moved up a bit against the far wall, just a little, the first clear obvious reaction she had show ever since they entered the building.

In the corner, Leof let her arms drop a little from around her knees and watched Tam’s closed hand.

Mab looked at Tam’s face and asked, in a voice that strained to stay steady, "D-Does it stop hurting?"

Tam looked at her, little droplets of water appearing at the corners of her yes, "Yes," she said. "It does, you won’t have to feel the pain ever again."

Hild’s attention snapped back.

"What was that supposed to prove," she said.

It was not a rhetorical challenge. She wanted an answer.

"That we can help."

Beorn gave her one, "By denying and attempting to suppress these abilities, these powers gathers inside the body. The body was never built to hold it forever, and the longer it goes without release, the worse the release becomes when it finally happens. It is not a matter of if."

He looked at Mab.

He did not say that Hild had been hurting her. He did not turn it into an accusation. He simply continued, "In the early stages the pain and symptoms are more noticeable, the body doesn’t know how to handle this... energy, and tries to resist it."

He let the words settle.

Hild said nothing. Her arms stayed closed, her eyes frowned, angry at herself, angry at Beorn, angry at everything in this world, the realization the little control she had was a fluke.

Beadu them quipped in anxiously, "That can’t be right."

The words came out quickly, like she desperately wished for them to be true. "We’ve done our best, we kept them from using it, kept them hidden, done everything we could to avoid attention." She glanced at Mab. "W-Was that all for nothing?"

Mod snorted, still against the wall and still not looking at anyone, "Worse than nothing. We’ve only made things worse. If we never met her, maybe she wouldn’t be in so much pain."

No one answered that.

Tam began to speak, her voice with the slight roughness of someone saying something she had not said out loud before.

"I was in the same place not long ago," she said.

She was looking at Hild. "My sister thought I was sick, and I didn’t know what it was either. I couldn’t get out of bed in the mornings, and I kept dropping things. I didn’t tell anyone because I was scared, scared what would happen to me, scared what they would say or do."

She paused, because the next part was harder. "Someone came for me too, and I didn’t want to accept the help either. I had good reasons for that, you have good reasons. I know that."

She looked at the oldest one. "I can see what you have been doing, how you were trying to help, how you only wished for the best. Don’t blame yourself for caring about them."

Hild had not looked away from her once.

Beadu let the silence remain for a few seconds, then said, "We have accepted help before."

She kept her eyes on Beorn. "More than once, too. Different people, different places. Someone says they want to help, and then whatever they had in mind changes when they realize what we are worth, how much they can gain by selling us out."

Mod said, still speaking to no one in particular, "We have done this enough times to have a very good idea there isn’t free lunch in this world."

Beadu looked at her, then at Beorn.

"He wants something from us too."

"That is true," Beorn said.

Beadu lifted her gaze.

"Those powers are a gift, not a curse or a sin. I want to use them to better society."

He did not hurry the next part. "In return, the users are not hunted. They are not enslaved. They are permitted to enjoy their lives like any other person."

He said it simply, as the next fact in the chain.

"That is what I want."

Leof unfolded her legs.

She stretched them out in front of her, pressed her back to the corner wall, and looked at Beorn with wide eyes. Whatever conclusion she reached, she kept to herself, but her gaze now had a flame to it, an ember of hope.

Mab was still staring at Tam.

Hild looked down at her own hands for a moment. Then she looked back at Beorn, and it was the final kind of look, the one that had already taken everything it could reach.

"We aren’t going to agree with anything without knowing exactly what this is."

She said with far more authority than she ever had. "What you are offering, what it means, what happens if we decide we don’t want anything to do with it."

"Fair enough," Beorn said. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

She locked gazes with him for another. There was no warmth in it and no trust, and he was not expecting either.

"Fine," she said.

She drew a slow breath.

"Explain how it works for us."

"I will, but not here." Beorn gestured to the door.