Safire’s throat burned. Of course they mattered to her. How could he ask her that?
Because if they mattered,she realized,I would put them first. Above Eris.
People were starving to death. Roa’sfamilywas starving to death. And here Safire was, compromising the very alliance that would save their lives.
She suddenly wanted to rise from the table and leave. Not just the grand ballroom. Not just the citadel. But Axis itself. This city, these islands, they were was twisting her into someone she wasn’t.
Sensing her agitation, Dax said, “What is really going on here?”
Safire couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t look at any of them. So she stared down at the dead fish on her plate and said, “I killed a man I hated once. That decision haunts me. I won’t kill a girl I—” She stopped herself, afraid to say the words aloud.
Dax turned to her a little more, casually resting his elbow on the top of his chair as he reached for his goblet—but he didn’t drink. He was trying very hard not to draw attention to their conversation. But his gaze was sword sharp.
“Saf,” he said gently. “This is the same thief who ran you ragged back in Firgaard. All you wanted was to lock her up.”
Safire studied the fish’s blackened scales and limp fins as she thought,Things have changed since then.
“She tortured you on Jemsin’s ship.”
“Actually,” Safire said, knowing she was grasping, “she had other people do the torturing.”
She thought of Eris watching as Jemsin’s men dunked her head again and again into the water. Trying to break her. To force information out of her.
Dax threw her a strange look.“Safire.”
She was losing him. She could hear it in his voice. And the awful thing was, he was right. Eris wasn’t some innocent; she was a criminal.
But she was also the one who held back Safire’s hair while she was seasick. The one who stopped that sea monster from eating her alive. Eris had saved her from Caspian and the other Lumina soldiers in that alley.
They would have beaten that woman to death,she thought. But that didn’t prove anything. Every barrel had a few bad apples. And not so long ago, a few of Safire’s own soldats had plotted against Roa—their queen. There were always going to be a few corrupt soldiers in a sea full of loyal ones.
“You yourself believe she’s planning to hand Asha over to a deadly pirate,” Dax reminded her.
Safire sagged under the weight of those words.
All these things were true.
And yet.
“She saved my life,” Safire whispered. “More than once.”
Dax roughly rubbed his stubbled cheeks. “And if she’s manipulating you?”
Safire looked away, across the room, to the balcony. The curtains were thrown back and the mist from earlier had receded, leaving a clear sky full of stars.
“I’ve heard of things like this before,” said Dax.
Safire glanced back. “What things?”
“A kind of... illness,” he said, almost gently. “An illness of the mind.”
Safire frowned. What was he talking about?
“Sometimes, when a person is kidnapped and abused, the mind becomes warped—to protect itself. The person becomes convinced that she and her kidnapper are... in love. That herkidnapper isn’t a villain, but rather, a kind of hero.”
The words chilled Safire. She searched Dax’s face. “You’re accusing me of such a thing?”
He said nothing. Only watched her.
