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My throat tightened as I swallowed, my eyes finding their way back to the ceiling.

And for the next hour, I told him everything.

I told him of the men that I’d killed, their names, every detail of how I killed them and where I had scattered their bodies as if I were finally confessing all of my sins. I told him of the women I’d hidden and the money I’d won from my fights that I made sure got to them every month, of the poison and the beatings and the assault.

He listened silently to every word as he packed my wounds, occasionally nodding as some scars wholly disappeared from my skin. He never recoiled from me, never pulled away as the story—the truth of what I had become—was laid before him.

Silence fell between us and I waited for Andrues to say something, anything. To tell me that he was disgusted with me, that I was a disgrace, but it didn’t come.

“I am finished,” he said softly, pulling his hands away from my skin and wiping the excess balm on a wet cloth. “You will be sore for some time where the brand punctured between your ribs and I will need to reexamine you in a few days, but you should be well enough to leave here.”

“That’s all you have to say?” I snapped, watching as a soft smile slid onto his mouth.

My eyes lingered on his lips. The breath I tried to inhale caught in my throat as that beautiful smile widened and I pulled my eyes away from it.

I couldn’t even remember why I was scolding him.

“You are looking for discipline—think you deserve some kind of punishment for the things you have done.” He leaned backin his chair as he said the words, his thumb catching on the necklaces hanging from his scarred neck as he continued. “But you will not find it from me. You will only find gratitude for caring about the women who could not protect themselves. For caring enough to shoulder the weight of choices they could not bring themselves to make.”

I stared at him, my brows furrowing as I clutched the sheets between my fingers and tried to quell whatever emotion he had just stirred in me. He was my friend, maybe even my best friend at the moment, so this urge, this overwhelming need to kiss him—needed to be suffocated.

I was just confusing longing with gratitude.

“Everything okay?” Andrues asked, the chuckle vibrating from his throat snapping me out of the trance he had me in and sending an army of butterflies down my spine. My body shivered against them.

That was not fucking helping.

“I’m fine,” I clipped, clearing my throat as I pushed from the bed and turned away from him, pulling at the sheet and blanket to busy myself. “I would like to be at the next council meeting, when is it?”

“Tonight.” I could feel as he stood and stepped up behind me, the air that pulsed between us bringing his scent flowing over my shoulder.

He smelled of cedar and sage and maybe even—somewhere between notes of herbs I couldn’t quite place—a little bit like home.

He took another step, closing the distance between my back and his chest as his hands began to drift down my arms. The touch was so light, so gentle it could have been the ghost of him. His fingers trailed over my hands, intertwining with mine before wrapping our arms together around my middle, coiling me into his warmth.

We had never been this close, he had never held me like this.

“This was not your fault, Ataliia,” he whispered, his head dipping as his lips brushed against my ear. “I know inside that beautifully twisted mind of yours, you are telling yourself that it is.” His arms tightened, his body flexing as he said the words. “Your scars are your trophies, your medals of honor from the battles you have faced and won.”

In the next breath he twisted me to face him, one hand sliding to my waist, the other catching on my chin and pulling it to meet the fire in his gaze. His lips were achingly close to mine.

“Wear them with pride, so when the men of these five realms face you, they will understand that the day of their reckoning is upon them.”

My chest heaved as silence fell between us and I looked back into eyes that fiercely believed in me, that saw me as the lethal creature I was.

A fire ignited in my veins. But this flame was not born of shame or hate like it so often kindled from. It was birthed from the knowledge that I was power and I was fury—that I was pure, unbridled wrath. I would polish my anger, my pain, into a weapon so sharp, that even the winds would bleed as I wielded it.

Therewasastaleodor clinging to the damp air inside the mines of Nethkar. This seemed like the last place I should be with wounds that were still healing, but I needed to be here. Notonly did I need to start making an effort to help in whatever way I could, I needed my friends, my family, to know that I was trying. Trying to fix whatever was still salvageable.

I pulled my daggers from my belt, dropping them into the chest placed outside the first set of doors down the mines corridor as I lifted a brow toward Wren.

“Have these meetings become so violent we are no longer trusted with our weapons?” I asked as he stepped beside me and removed his sword, a smirk sliding over his lips.

“That would be a much easier problem to fix than the one at hand I assure you.” Wren sighed as he opened the wooden doors before us, their panels splintered and flaking with age. He slid an arm around my shoulders as we stepped through and I wrapped my fingers around his forearm. “I’m glad you’re here, sister, you’ve been missed.”

I glanced at him from the corner of my eye as we approached the second door leading to the mine shafts, but I stayed quiet. He knew about the attack, I could tell in the gentle way he let his arm rest over my shoulder, careful not to put too much weight on me. But I appreciated that he didn’t bring it up, that he didn’t look at me like I was wounded.

Wren reached to open the second set of doors.