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“What makes you think Riley did something?”

“Don’t dance around me, Mika. Eryn was hoping to see you because he’s worried. The fact you didn’t come has him even more worried.” She pauses briefly in contemplation. “He genuinely cares about you, you know?”

My heart somersaults into my throat for a second before I realize who she means. “Eryn? He’s a sweet kid,” I say quietly.

Tovi, not missing a thing, narrows her eyes at me. “You thought I meant Riley!” she growls. “Has he stuck his dick where it doesn’t belong? Because that dickhead has a really good habit of drunk fucking women, and then blowing them off like they’re nothing. Most of the time because he can’t remember, but sometimes it’s just because he’s a fucking asshole.”

Her voice is aggressive, but she crouches in front of me where I’ve slumped into a sofa seat. Face full of concern, she grabs one of my hands and refuses to let go. What is it with these people and their forced affections?

“No. He…It wasn’t…I mean, I—” I’m the asshole here.

An ugly mess of words start tumbling out of me.

First, I tell her what happened in the cave. Then I backtrack and tell her about the night I confronted Riley with the rumor, and the things we said to each other. I mention how I had seen the two of them sneak off together quite a few times before that, and I’d seen him go into at least two women’s rooms. I choke when I tell her about the beautiful Erduborn woman whose cheek he kissed after being alone in her room for hours.

She lets me take my hand out of hers so I can use it to wipe the tears betraying me as they slide down my cheeks. She’s studying me, but she hasn’t said a word.

I tell her about the conflicting feelings and emotions and signals. I’m starting to get angry, so I stand up to pace. The affection, the way he looks at me, the secrets and the lies. I can’t help but let out a sob when I tell her about how he held me after I woke up from the kidnapping.

“It was the first time I’d cried since I was seven, and it all came flooding out.” I let out a bark of laughter. “And now I can’t seem to stop,” I say as I angrily wipe the tears from my cheeks. “The kidnapping and feeling helpless. So close to being raped, again—” Tovi flinches, but I continue without pause. “—Being saved, only to watch Beans take an axe to the fucking head!” I’m breathing hard, trying not to yell.

“Fortunately, once an assassin, always an assassin,” my scathing voice spits out. “But then…” I growl at myself so I don’t cry. “Sweet Girl. I promised her. I fucking promised I’d save her, Tovi, and instead, she sacrificed her life for my pitiful existence!”

I know I’ve started to yell so I pace, clenching and unclenching my fists, grateful that Tovi hasn’t once tried to say anything since I started.

“Tovi, when I saw you with the rescue, I thought they’d lied. That they’d spun another rumor. I was so relieved. But then you ran. And it was as though it was the last thing holding me together because…” I gesture, unable to find the words. “Then Riley just held me as I broke apart.”

It split me open, and all the ugly and vile things trapped safely inside violently spilled out. All the darkness within me, the disgusting shards of my soul, everything dripping in fury and rage. But I can’t tell Tovi that part. Especially when I know that I shoved it all back within me again. So, I pause to catch my breath instead.

Tovi nods to me, gesturing at me to keep going, to tell her the rest.

Tentatively, I explain to her what happened after that, how Riley wouldn’t let me sleep alone ever again. But it kept flipping from me pushing him away, to him trying to give me space, to me being angry at him, to him looking at me like I was crazy. Rinse and repeat.

I take a deep breath and explain how I used him back at the nighthouse, that I tried to play it off like it was nothing but admitting that it might be the opposite. And then the kiss, the one right before I was captured, where I asked him to promise not to kiss me again, and he wouldn’t.

“You know everything that happens after that because I got caught in the castle and sent to the dungeons.”

“Except for what happened last night,” she says wryly, one eyebrow raised.

“Yes. Except for that.”

I pace some more, deciding how much to tell her. For some reason, it’s not the part where we fuck that I can’t say. It’s the awful things I said and how I said them. Holding my breath in an attempt to calm myself, I watch the flurry of sand and dust battering our window and am reminded of being in the windcaves with him. Where I dared to think life could be different. That I could be different.

I blurt it out in a jumble. Not in order, I miss bits and then have to jump back to explain. I don’t go into full explicit details, but enough. I relay some of the things I said to him and some of what he said to me. Then with tears in my eyes and shame coloring my face, I tell her what I said to him before Eryn interrupted us. How I said it, and how I looked at him. All while my rage is like a snake wrapping around my airways.

“It was hateful, Tovi. I was vicious. I was trying to be. But still, all he said was ‘no’ like he didn’t understand. Fuck, I didn’t understand, so how was he supposed to?” I ask, not truly expecting an answer.

I’m trying to catch my breath. I’ve said it all. Tovi probably thinks I’m a monster. A coward. Useless. Nothing but a heartless assassin.

And it would all be true.

I can’t look her in the eye, not even briefly. I know it’s because I can’t bear to see the truth in her eyes. She’s still crouching where I’d been sitting, watching me pace. The silence stretches out before us.

“He was sober?” Tovi’s question breaks the silence, catching me off guard.

“What? Yes, why?”

She shakes her head, looking confused. “Last night, when you had sex, he was sober?”