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Then, she did something I never thought I’d see. Pulling her hands from mine, she unclasped the ivy-carved cuffs she wore every day. They clattered to the wood. And what was beneath?—

Scars, but so much worse than those peppering the rest of her skin or even my own. Ridges from restraints, and twisted flesh so mangled, the magic of our mountains had barely been able to heal it.

I swallowed thickly, forcing the lump in my throat down. “How?”

“Fire. Repeatedly.” She didn’t elaborate—didn’t need to. I could imagine the agony of burning ropes tied around your wrists.

“And how…how did you end up there?” I probably should have shut up. Should have stopped making her talk about it. But that help me stare echoed, and I needed to know everything she was willing to share. How she’d endured and how she continued on so I could help her find that strength again.

And I think she needed to say it.

“Raid gone wrong.” Her eyes dropped to her wrists. “I wasn’t quick enough. They killed most, but kept me. Probably thought I was the easiest because I was the smallest.”

“And being in the Labyrinth cave-in brought those memories back?” I held one of her hands in my own again and rubbed circles between her shoulder blades with the other. She didn’t recoil from the touch this time, instead relaxing into it.

“Yes, because of that damn drip, drip, drip.” The tears had stopped flowing, her glassy, red-rimmed eyes heating. “Water dripped through the roof of the pit every night I was trapped there. From the edges of the ferns they covered it with, to the rocks I had as a bed. For nearly one hundred days, all I saw was a puddle that would dry up each afternoon only to replenish itself overnight. All I heard was drip, drip, drip. I’d gone so long, healed so much, and then that had to ruin it.”

She shrank into herself, reliving her pain.

“Just because you had a setback doesn’t mean you haven’t still healed, Mila,” I said. “It doesn’t mean you won’t heal again.”

Her isolated stare as she dragged a finger over her scars as if they were disgraceful and must be erased wrenched my gut. So I reminded her she wasn’t alone anymore and told her something of my own experience.

“I counted,” I said. Finally, she turned inquisitive, wet eyes on me. “When I was in my cell. I counted things. The drops of blood on the walls, the days passing, the splinters in my skin. I counted when I thought I was spiraling. Eventually, the repetition numbed my brain enough that I didn’t feel anything.”

“I couldn’t count,” she responded softly, sniffing. “The number would have been too high. It would have driven me crazy even faster, knowing how much that water dripped.” There was no judgment in her voice. No indication that either of our experiences were worse than the other. Nothing but a shared understanding of doing whatever it was you had to do in order to survive.

The fact that she still stood each day was astounding. Never mind the fact that she had eagerly rejoined the war force. I told her she didn’t have to come, Lyria had said. She wanted to be our Angel-damned general.

Her breath shuddered again. Moving in front of her, I ducked to catch her eye. “You’re not there anymore, Mila. You’re out. You’re safe.”

“Am I?” she asked, and it was the most doubt I’d ever seen her show. “Look at what we’re facing. What if it happens again?”

“It won’t,” I growled, stopping myself from gripping her hands too tightly. “I won’t allow it.”

“You can’t protect me.” She shook her head, another tear escaping. “The odds are against us.”

“Fuck the odds.” I wiped the tears from beneath her eyes, grateful she was allowing me to touch her now. “The odds were against you surviving what you did. The odds were against me ever making it out of my own horrors, and here I am. I’d say we’re good at defying them.”

She sighed, shoulders slackening, but I couldn’t tell if it was relief or exhaustion weighing her down. She turned to watch her reflection in the mirror. “I think I’d take my own life before I ended up there again.”

My heart lurched into my throat. “It will never come to that, Mila. I promise. I will protect you.”

And somehow, in the span of a sentence, my life switched from my own mere survival to centering around her. To protecting her. To bringing back her light and nurturing it. Because Mila…she was a survivor.

She wasn’t a fortress as I’d thought her to be, impenetrable walls towering to keep everything out. There was a gate—one she opened sparingly. Cautiously.

She hadn’t locked her problems out like I had. Her scars were in the mortar, holding the bricks together. Her past and present, her fears and dreams, formed those bricks. It was obvious based on the anger she expressed at her progress being knocked back. Those scars built her, but they did not control her. She allowed them to retain their strength—enough to melt her down again—because it forged her.

And I didn’t want to break those walls down as I once thought I did. I wanted to wait until the day she opened that gate for me. She’d given an inch, but I’d wait for her to throw it wide. Until then, I’d take what she gave and set up guard outside. When she was ready for me and my fucked-up past to venture within those walls and help her secure the foundation, I would.

“We make quite a pair, don’t we?” Mila asked with a forced half-smile.

I swallowed. “Yeah, we do.”

Her eyes flitted to the door. “Can we stay here for a little longer?”

“As long as you need,” I promised.