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Fox was still staring into the fire when he heard her, words whispered so long, he wondered if she meant for him to hear.

“Everyone in the resistance has a story like mine. If you weren’t so busy murdering us, maybe we’d share them.”

The words didn’t ask for an answer and he bit his tongue. When he finally fell asleep, those words still sat heavy on his chest.

CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR

SOFIA

Sofia woke sometime in the night, her body wracked with shivers. The fire had died out, the last of their wood gone, leaving her with nothing but her shawl and the thin, cool leaves beneath her. The moons were glowing bright in the sky and the light reflected down through the ceiling and across the lake. It gave a magical luminescence to the cavern, but the lake and wind whistling across it softly did nothing to warm her.

“I can literally hear your teeth chattering.” Ocon’s grumbled voice sounded from a couple feet away.

“Sorry to wake you,” she said, pushing all the vitriol into her voice she could manage, but he wasn’t exaggerating and it was difficult to talk through the shudders.

“Why don’t you have a cloak, anyway?” he said, as if the thought had just occurred to him.

“I was too busy chasing after my escaped prisoner to take time getting dressed. These are the leggings I sleep in. They aren’t even double layered.” She wondered after that admission if it was awkward to acknowledge she’d been running through the rainforest the last two days in her sleepwear.

“Kings help me,” he said and she thought he might be thinking the same thing, but then she heard a shuffling. “Get over here.”

“Excuse me?”

“We can share my cloak,” he said, sounding as if the idea were absolutely vile to him despite offering. “I need to sleep and I don’t need you freezing to death or keeping me awake with your chattering.”

“No.” She rolled over, hugging herself tightly and trying to still her shaking.

“Have you always been this stubborn?”

“I’m not stubborn. I just don’t feel like cozying up with a murderer.”

“Why do you assume I’m a murderer?”

“I’m not assuming, I know,” she said. “I was in the crowd when you executed Pedro.”

She didn’t expect him to speak and she definitely didn’t expect the vaguest crack in his voice when he did.

“Do you know how many people a single bomb can kill? The damage black powder can do?”

“Do you know how many Dragonborn die daily—not from bombs but hunger? Or how many die every blink on those scales’ damned death farms?”

“Criminals,” he said, voice low. “Thelaborfarms are worked by criminals, and it’s a fairer sentence than most of them deserve.”

“People who stole food to survive or used forbidden magic to heal a child who was dying. Dragonborn who dared read. Those are the criminals you speak of.”

Ocon’s eyes sparkled in the dark, drilling into her. “And the ones that do murder? The ones that set off bombs that kill dozens?”

“We are trying to free our people.”

“Innocents are getting caught up in the fighting, whether or not you admit it.”

“Do you know how many innocent Dragonborn are killed every cycle in the city?” she asked.

“I don’t want innocents on either side to die. I joined the king’s men to stop the death.”

“Do you want me to praise you for your benevolence?” Her voice echoed in the cavern and she heard the shrill pitch of it—the emotion and the weakness behind the words.

“I don’t need praise. I thought it might help you to know I’m not pure evil.”