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Severath remained quiet, sitting there on his knees. This was not how he expected to pry the information out of her, and not at all how he thought he’d hear it, with a veil of grief hanging over the words. “Ember, you don’t?—”

“It wasn’t easy, and I didn’t want to, but I had to.

I couldn’t let him hurt her again, and I knew he was going to because he was just like Lord Warwick.

” There was hatred that came with that name, a seething fire that Severath felt crackle under his own flesh as it burned away the despair in her voice.

He leaned forward, the question difficult with such a tight jaw. “Who is Lord Warwick?”

She took a deep, leveling breath, and it would have filled the room with smoke had she been a fire breather.

“He owned the estate that my mother and I worked on when we first came to Ankerick. That’s where I learned to scrub floors.

He was obsessed with polished marble— white polished marble.

It’s so hard to keep clean. You have to use special soap, and it’s not as good, so it takes forever. ”

Severath mused an understanding sound, watching as she sneered down at the blankets twisting in her hands. “It sounds like a decadent way to live. But worthy of bloodshed?”

“Maybe,” she said a little quieter, her grip loosening.

“ Lord Warwick’s study was covered in the stuff, so I had to spend extra time in there.

Sometimes he watched us, made us do things over and over.

But one day he actually complimented my work.

I was”—she snorted, ire flaring briefly—“I was proud .”

There was no shame in a job well done, Severath thought, but he wasn’t quite so daft to think the simmering anger she contained was truly about cleaning.

“He told me I did good, but I was filthy too. And I was—I always was—but that was expected, so when he told me to change my clothes, I didn’t think he meant”—she swallowed, and her voice cracked—“right there in front of him.”

Jagged pieces fell into place, pieces that would have been smooth and easy to fit together if Severath had simply stopped and thought—really thought—for one damn moment.

“It was confusing because I always had to do what he said, so I took off my apron, but then he made me take everything else off too, and he…and I never…and it hurt so much.”

Severath’s claws grew as he gripped the edge of the bed, wanting to maim, to kill.

She wiped at her face, nails blunt, fingers curled feebly.

“I couldn’t find my mother after, even though I looked and looked.

I never got lost on the estate before, but I did then, and everything still hurt, and I didn’t know what else to do, but Lady Warwick found me in the garden.

She was always so nice to me, but not then, not when I told her.

She locked me in a closet and called me a whore, and I tried to explain I didn’t want to, but she was so angry—angrier than I’d ever seen anybody ever.

” Ember’s next breath was ragged, but she swallowed back the shaking.

“When my mother found me that night, she was angry too. She wouldn’t listen—she’d already heard that I’d embarrassed the Warwicks, and I was being sent to their mill on the other side of the city.

That was the last time she ever spoke to me. ”

“You said you haven’t seen your mother since you were…”

Ember was already nodding because Severath couldn’t say thirteen . The world fell out from under him, grief and disgust battling for supremacy in his gut.

“I couldn’t make clothes like the other girls at the mill,” she whispered and then took a deep breath as if she wanted to talk about anything else. “No one would show me, they just made me clean, and I just got…angry. It’s why I’m mean.”

“You’re not?—”

“I am,” she said, refusal steadying her voice as the words came quicker.

“I kept it in, and when Lady Adine bought my contract, I thought things might get better, but then she died, and her son, Sulien, inherited all of us. When he cornered Maribel in his library, I knocked over one of his precious vases to let him know he was being watched. But then I found her crying in the pantry, and when she told me he’d had his hand up her skirt, I just wasn’t in control of my body anymore.

I don’t remember how I got the knife, I don’t remember hunting him through the halls, I don’t even remember finding him.

I just remember the blood after.” She held her palms out like she could see it again coating her skin, turning it red because that was what human blood looked like, and it was what Severath looked like too.

“You were exacting justice,” he said with a firmness, reminded of Balran’s words. “Just like when we killed those slavers.”

Ember looked up, eyes glassy and dark. “I was only doing what I wished I’d done to Lord Warwick.”

“You were protecting that woman. It is honorable.”

“Maribel? She was just a little girl. She was even younger than…” Ember’s voice cracked, and she caved in on herself.

Severath watched her crumple and did not know what to do.

He upturned empty hands and froze, unable to touch her, but his soldierly instinct to respond with violence won out.

“I know you do not wish to return to Ankerick, but if you told me how to find this Lord Warwick, I would do it for you. Would gut him and bring you back a piece of his precious marble to prove he was dead.”

She blinked back up at him, the glassiness in her eyes catching the red firelight as if it burned in their black middles. “He’s already dead.”

“Good.” Though the news didn’t quell his desire to act. “Then I can?—”

Ember threw herself at him, and she would have struck him dead if that had been her intention. Instead, she only wrapped arms around his neck and squeezed—weakly, an important detail for the report that was growing in his mind by the second.

Severath allowed his arms to descend slowly toward her sides, ever aware he would soon be pushed away.

Every inch was a risk, every breath that brought them closer a blunder, but then he had his arms around her.

It was exactly what he shouldn’t have done, he knew, not with the duty he’d been given and the evidence she had just laid so plainly at his feet, and yet as he dragged her into his chest, her body fit into his as if it were meant to be there.

She buried her face into his shoulder and heaved with a silent sob. His grip tightened, afraid she would break apart if he didn’t hold her together. “It’s all right,” he said, surprised by the softness of his own voice.

Ember’s next sob came with the scream she’d been holding back since he’d woken her.

It was muffled against his body, but there was fury in the voice that shrieked into his chest as she tried to burrow deeper.

He wanted nothing more than to take it away, to bear the pain and anger instead, but all he could do was stand from the ground while keeping her in his arms and kneel on the bed to pull her fully into himself.

The fear she would throw him off was gone, and as he leaned back into the pillows, his tail wrapped around her middle and held her even closer.

She tried to form words, but they were a jumble of wails and growls, so he slid a hand up the back of her neck into her hair and ran claws gently over her scalp.

“I know,” he said into the top of her head even though it was a lie—he didn’t know, he couldn’t, and yet there was a familiar twitch in his chest that said it would be worth spending a lifetime in pursuit of understanding.

Ember’s body exhausted itself after some uncountable time, howls devolving into whimpers, heaves into trembles.

Her grip weakened, but she still held on, fists balled into his tunic as her arms sagged.

She was easily kept, though, her body small as she sat in his lap, digging into him like a creature rooting for refuge.

He settled back, and Ember wilted against his chest. It was the closest he had been to another being in some time, perhaps ever if he really allowed himself to dwell on what it meant to listen and to know.

If she sank into him any further, the burning fury inside her might meet the spark within him, and then what?

Utter engulfment? And what if…what if that was what he wanted?

Panic seared through his body, but then Ember sighed, and it was the first sound she’d made that teetered on contentment. Her eyes closed, her face pressed to his shoulder, and sleep found them both.