Page 100 of Esperance

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

“No.”

She could feel his resoluteness. A boulder in a river, unmovable. He wouldn't change his mind.

He was frayed, and so was she. This was more extreme than any of the nights he was up pacing and she distracted him with stories from her childhood.

This nightmare had left him shredded, vulnerable, and haunted.

She owed him nothing. But she couldn’t bear for him to sit in silence, shrouded by darkness. Not after the torture he’d just endured.

“My mother was murdered,” she whispered.

Carver stopped breathing.

Her stomach twisted, and she didn’t know why she was telling him this. His nightmare had been ugly—he didn’t needmoreugliness.

But she couldn’t stop now.

“I was there,” she said. “I saw it happen.”

“Amryn . . .” Horror, sorrow, and a fierce desire to protect swam around her.

“I'd come to her bed that night, after a bad dream. She let me sleep beside her.” Her fingernails dug into her palms. “Men burst into the bedroom without warning. They dragged her from the bed.”

She could still hear her mother’s screams. Her pleas for mercy. Her begging Amryn to run, to look away.

She’d been frozen.

“They stabbed her. So many times, and . . . all I could do was sit on that bed and scream. I didn’t help her. I just watched her die.”

“You were a child,” Carver said, his voice edged with a fury she knew wasn’t directed at her. “There was nothing you could have done. Saints, you never should have had to witness that. I’m sorry.”

“They tried to kill me, too.”

He stiffened.

She absently rubbed her arms. “After they killed her, they grabbed me. I can still feel their hands on me, dragging me from the bed.”

She didn’t realize he’d taken her hand, to stop her nervous motion, until he squeezed her fingers. It was a silent reminder that she wasn’t alone. That she washere,notthere.

That she was safe.

Her eyes peeled open. Even though his expression was shadowed by the filtered moonlight, she could feel that he was wholly attuned to her, and despite all sanity . . . in this moment, she felt completely safe with Carver Vincetti.

“What stopped them?” he asked.

A face materialized in her mind. One she’d tried so hard to forget, but never could. “Someone saved me. He took me to my uncle. He . . . made sure I was safe.”

“Were the murderers caught?”

“Yes.” Not by the law, because no law in Craethen would condemn them. The knights had killed an empath; they’d done nothing wrong.

No, they’d been condemned by something else entirely.

The knights had been distracted when her savior tore into the room. When he saw the dead body on the floor, and Amryn in their hands . . . The knights hadn’t realized they were going to die. They’d laughed, mocking him as he squared off in front of them.

He hadn’t stopped until they were in pieces. The carnage had painted every surface in the bedroom—includingher.