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“Those kids were innocent, ordinary kids before the saints got hold of them,” was her response, which was not what he’d been expecting. He wondered how closely that paralleled her own story. “Now they work for Enryr.”

“They took you to him,” he guessed, forcing his voice even and calm. It came out flat and harsh, but at least he didn’t growl.

“And he took me to Eosantha,” she replied, her voice cracking on thesanof Eosantha. An itch began under Bryon’s skin; he flexed his hands to dispel it.

“What did he want in Eosantha?” he pressed, ignoring his power throwing itself against the cuff, seeking a release.

“Nothing.” Her face didn’t change, but her voice flattened. “He wiped it off the map. Sucked all the life out of the place from what I could sense. All that’s left are ruins.”

“Saints,” he breathed, his stomach knotted. They’d been there just last week. The inn where they’d stayed was in fuckingruinsnow? Isak’s shitty little apothecary. The house where Bryon had jumped into the mirror like a damn fool when Maia disappeared into it. Chills raked their claws down his arm when he remembered that other place, the vultures, the way it had felt to have his power and strength and life sucked out of him by a giant fucking leech of a creature.

“What about the people?” he asked tentatively, knowing that was what put that emptiness in her eyes. She’d watched the saintsuck all their life from them. She’d witnessed a massacre. “Enryr killed them too, didn’t he?”

“No.” Her response was a mangled laugh, a sharp burst of sound. “I’m done talking now. Fuck off, Bryon.”

Maia angled herself away from him, facing the corner, her head bowed. She looked especially small curled up like that, and an unwanted emotion plucked at his chest.Piss off,he mentally snarled at it.

He sighed, his whole chest heaving with the sound of it. The last thing he wanted was for her to shut down and become a ghost again. This comforting shit didn’t come naturally, though, and he was inclined to ignore the compulsion to comfort her altogether.

“It wasn’t your fault, princess.”

Her laugh was an explosion this time, echoing sharply off the stone around them. “I killed them, Bryon. Every last living soul in that city—man, woman, and child. All of them. Every. Last. One. And you know what? It waseasy.”

He rocked back in surprise, revulsion and horror automatic. They were shredded apart when he remembered the way she’d sat like a statue, stared like an unseeing ghost, and the raw unhappiness in the first words she’d spoken in hours. He wiped his expression clear in the next moment, refusing to let a broken woman see any horror in him. Saints knew he’d committed enough crimes and killed enough people to warrant horror himself.

“Any chance you’ve still got access to that power?” he asked, mastering his shock so quickly that she’d never notice the blip. The look she whipped in his direction threatened to hurt that blasted organ that lived in his chest and tried to call itself a heart. Surprise glossed her eyes, tears lining them in silver, and her lips were parted, face relaxed in an expression he tentatively labelled hope. Well, great, now he felt like total shit. Clearly,she’d expected an asshole like him to judge her. “It’d come in pretty handy right now.”

“That’s your response?” she asked in disbelief and a tinge of outrage.

“That’s my response,” he agreed. “I’d rather not get knocked out by those kids again, and being locked up for this long doesn’t agree with my delicate constitution.”

Maia just stared at him.

“Is it because I used the wordsdelicate constitution?”

“Yes,” she exclaimed, staring. “Who the hell are you?”

“Bryon Aegis Erithian, soldier and, according to an eternal pain in my backside, a right grumpy bastard.”

Maia’s mouth was hanging open. Oh, for fuck’s sake, he’d done it again.

“Erithian,” Maia repeated, turning to face him fully. She came alive right in front of him. “As in, the noble family of Erithian. The family that ruled Felis for generations, who held the city of Lisille even during the revolt of seventy-five and the siege of the second century. The Erithians who ferried the books that made the very first libraries from their stronghold, to Jakahr, Sainsa, Venhaus, Vassal, and all the way to the Crooked City in Lower Aether?ThatErithian?”

“Trust you to bring everything back to books,” he huffed, avoiding her bright-eyed stare. “And I didn’t do any of that shit; my ancestors did.”

“Yeah, but you’re… descended from the people who made the Saintlands what it is now.”

“A shithole.”

“Civilised. Educated. Worth living in.”

“The only thing I’ve ever done is beat the shit out of people, drive my sword through whoever I was ordered to, and kill people. Don’t expect any sort of goodness from me. I’m not civilisedoreducated.”

Maia sighed quietly, her brightness fading, and Bryon contemplated breaking his own nose. Only the fact that the princess could break it herself if she wished kept his hand at his side. “I don’t want you to drop dead,” she admitted quietly, reluctantly. “I know I said that earlier, but it was a shitty thing to say.”

Bryon shrugged. “We’re not exactly nice to each other. You didn’t hurt my feelings, don’t worry, princess.”

Maia rolled her eyes. She hadn’t cried once, he realised. Not when they woke up locked in this place, not even after what happened at Eosantha.