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His eyes went rigid. "And leave you behind? To thosemonsters?" He nearly shot up from his chair, rage flickering across his features.

"It's better than starting whatever is going to happen next. The Umbra can't fight two wars at the same time." I looked down at my hands. "I would have found a way to escape, eventually..." Even I didn't believe the words.

"We will find a way to handle it," Aether said, taking another deep breath.

"What will the Council think?" I asked, a lump forming in my throat.

"Draxon will need time to make their plans," he said. "They're not going to attack outright. And he's already lost most of their support."

"But what we did," I whispered, "it was an act of war."

"And I'd do it again," Aether growled, and my eyes found his once more. Heat rushed through me at his stare—dark and desperate. Longing. I found myself taking a shallow breath.

"They will come for all of us."

"They will. At some point."

Another silence fell, heavy with the weight of what we'd started. What we couldn't take back.

"How did you escape them?" The question had been nagging at me. "After the Vördr ran off?"

His jaw tightened slightly. "About twenty of them surrounded me in that clearing when I finally returned. I told Tryggar and Nihr to go—I didn't want his men to try and harm them." A shadow of something crossed his face. "I figured you'd already been taken, since you were gone and Valkan was nowhere in sight."

"You let them capture you?" My voice was laced with quiet shock.

"Seemed the quickest way to find you." His voice was carefully neutral. "Though I hadn't counted on them forcing that sleeping tonic down my throat."

My stomach turned at the memory of metallic liquid. "How long were you out?"

"Hard to say. Woke up in their dungeons." His eyes fixed on some distant point through the window. "Found my way out." He cleared his throat and tilted his head to the side as if digesting a thought. Whatever he'd done to escape that cell, he clearly didn't want to discuss it.

"They tortured you," I said softly, noting the purple patches had disappeared from his neck.

"I’d hardly call it that." His lips quirked into something that wasn't quite a smile. “As soon as the drugs wore off, they found their branding irons lodged in their throats.”

Fire rushed through me, followed by a surge of rage that caught me off guard. My shadows responded instantly, pulsing outward as my vision tinged with darkness.

"Careful," Aether said, but there was something else in his voice now—something almost like wonder as he watched my shadows coil through the air. "Conserve your energy."

"They hurt you." The words came out like steel.

"They're dead now," he said it simply, but his eyes had turned sharp again. "All of them."

I forced my shadows back, trying to understand why his pain affected me so viscerally. Why the thought of them hurting him while he was defenseless made me want to tear the castle apart all over again.

"What exactly did you do to them?" The question had been burning in my mind since I woke. Even through the haze of what had happened, the memory was so vivid that it made dread settle in my gut. How the very air had cracked, how their bodies had twisted and broken without him laying a hand on them.

Aether's shoulders tensed, but he didn't turn to face me. "Does it matter?"

"You ripped them apart from the inside." The words were soft on my tongue. "I didn't even know that was possible."

His jaw tightened. "You're wondering why I never used it before." It wasn't a question. "In Sídhe."

"The thought crossed my mind."

He shifted in his chair, and for a moment I thought he wouldn't answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was strained. "Whatever I did... it's not something I can control. Not really." His fingers curled slightly against the armrest. "Once I start using it that way, it's hard to stop. And despite what you think about me, I don’t want to murder hundreds in the blink of an eye."

I studied his profile, noting how carefully still he held himself. Like he was containing something that wanted to break loose.