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She should be on edge.

Because I sure as hell was.

“Tell me,” I said, my voice quiet now. “Where have you been, Lia? What happened to you all those years ago?”

She hesitated just long enough for me to notice.

“After you left me behind,” she said softly, “I stayed with the humans in the mountains for a while. They taught me how to survive, how to hunt, how to fight.”

Her voice was steady, but there was something underneath it, something I wasn’t sure even she realized was there.

A wound.

A scar.

One I had given her.

I exhaled through my nose and said nothing, just let her continue.

“For a few years, that was my life,” she said, gaze flitting past me, like she was looking backward. “I foraged, set traps, learned the land better than the back of my own hand. One day, when I was twelve, I went too far from camp.”

My stomach twisted.

“I was out in the woods, focused on tracking a deer,” she went on, voice flat now. “Didn’t even hear them coming. A wolf patrol caught me. Dragged me out of the mountains and straight back to the city.”

“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry, Lia.”

Lia’s jaw tightened, her shoulders squaring as if she was bracing for a fight. “The city was hell,” she said, voice sharp now, like broken glass. “I thought the mountains were dangerous, but at least out there, you had a chance. At least there, you could fight. In the city, you were nothing. Just another body. Just another human girl waiting to be bred.”

My back stiffened, but I stayed silent, letting her talk.

“When they first brought me back to the city, they dumped me at a holding center—basically a glorified cage for orphaned kids. No records, no family? They don’t waste time trying to find someone for you. You either get folded into a state dorm, or you slip through the cracks. Guess which one I did?” She laughed bitterly, shaking her head again. “I ran. Thought I’d rather be on my own than stuck in some overcrowded facility just waiting for my number to be called.”

She exhaled through her nose, shaking her head slightly, like she was shaking off the weight of old ghosts. “I didn’t last long on my own. I was barely thirteen, fresh out of the woods, and I didn’t know the rules yet. Didn’t know which streets were safe, and which ones were not. Didn’t know how to keep my head down when the wolves came through.”

She paused, her eyes closing for a moment. “The first time I got caught stealing food, they broke two of my ribs. Didn’t even ask questions. Just beat the shit out of me in the middle of the street and left me there.”

A low growl rumbled in my throat. Her eyes flicked to mine, calm and assessing, but she didn’t comment on it.

“I should’ve died right then and there. I sometimes wish I had. The Black Sickness was spreading through the lower sectors. I must’ve caught it a few days after that. At first, I thought it was just hunger, but then the fever came. The shakes. The—” She swallowed hard. “The coughing. Couldn’t even stand up without my vision going black. By the time I collapsed and couldn’t get up again, I figured that was it. I was done.”

My jaw clenched and I ground my teeth together to stay in control. The image of her—thirteen years old, burning up with fever, ribs cracked from a beating—clawed through my brain like a cruel wildfire.

Lia lifted her chin slightly. “But I wasn’t alone. Two girls found me. Dragged me out of the street, hid me, fought for me when I couldn’t fight for myself. They begged, bartered, and stole to get me medicine. The kind you could only find in the underground.” Her lips quirked into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “They nearly got themselves killed for it, and I wasn’t even conscious to thank them.”

I exhaled slowly, forcing my voice steady. “But they saved you.”

Her gaze darkened. “Yeah,” she said. “They did. And for the first time since I lost everything, I had people who gave a damn. People who didn’t just look at me like I was another lost cause.”

I didn’t miss the unspoken part of that sentence.

Not like you did.

The words weren’t said, but they might as well have been carved into my goddamn skin.

“You weren’t there, Silas,” she said, quieter this time, her voice holding the weight of every year we had been apart. “You didn’t see what it was like.”

I swallowed hard, the lump in my throat making it difficult to speak. “No,” I said, the admission rough on my tongue. “I didn’t.”