Fallen Embers by P.G. Forte

even have chosen for yourself. Perhaps I am wrong about you—or maybe I was right in my initial assessment. Perhaps I should have made an end of you that first night.”
    His distrust hurt—even more than the insults, or the threats. Georgia hid the sentiment behind a disinterested expression. “Perhaps you should have done so—but you did not, and now we both know you won’t. However, if your distaste for me has become so great you wish to quit my company, you are more than welcome to do so.”
    Quintano shook his head. “ Would you have chosen it?”
    Again Georgia shrugged. “Did I choose to become Invitus ? No. Do I think it was worth what I had to go through? I cannot answer that question, for in truth I do not know.”
    â€œI cannot accept that answer!”
    Georgia glared at him. “Why? And how dare you presume to judge me—after I took pity on you in your ignorance, after I’ve spent weeks attempting to assist you? I am doing you the courtesy of answering your questions as honestly as I can. The least you might do to show your gratitude is to keep the sneer from your lips when you speak to me.”
    Quintano nodded. “You are right. And, for what it is worth, I am sorry. It is just… I cannot bear it, Georgia. Whenever I recall the horror of that process…it sickens me. I go a little mad, I think, and wish to lay waste to everyone and everything involved, to wipe them from the earth—myself included. To know that you’ve experienced some of the same horrors and yet can speak of them so lightly…”
    â€œThe process…” Georgia shook her head, unable to keep from shuddering at the memory. “No, it is not something to be taken lightly—and I assure you, I do not. Unlike you, however, I try not to dwell on it overmuch.”
    Getting up, she began to pace, feeling for a moment as though she were back in that cursed cage where her very soul had been ripped apart, broken and then reformed. “What good does it do us to always be looking backward, or to think about what went before, what might have been, what once we were? We cannot change the past. No more than we can alter our destiny. In truth I find there’s very little in this world that is truly ours to decide—naught beyond the present moment—and not always that. I do not know what I’d have done had I been given a choice. I don’t think I could have chosen, freely, to walk that dark path, not had I known even a fraction of what it would entail. Indeed, there were times when I knew such despair, times when the thought of what I’d become, the depths to which I’d been forced to sink, filled me with guilt and disgust. Until I sounded quite like yourself, in fact.”
    Quintano snorted quietly. A reluctant spark of humor touched his eyes. “Very distressing, to be sure. Almost as distressing as it must have been for your victims.”
    â€œNow who’s speaking lightly of it? You laugh, but that is no way to live. There is nothing to be gained from endless speculation, endless reproach. What’s done is done. I will take what good I can find in it and rejoice. I am not dead. And my life now is, in many ways, far better than it was at any time previously. So I cannot truly say, with any certainty, that I know what I’d have chosen had I known everything , the good as well as the bad. Had I been able to see the entirety of what would transpire…? No. I cannot answer. I do not know.”
    She gazed at him sadly. “It is so very easy for the strong to say, ‘I would never choose to be so weak.’ But for those of us who were born powerless, who knew nothing but fear in our mortal form, it’s a grievous temptation to be offered salvation. To be granted a measure of security very often seems to be paradise, no matter the heinous price one must sometimes pay for safety’s sake. Perhaps it’s just as