I had. Gods, I had.
Inside, something gave, the soundless shatter of bone under unbearable weight.
I dragged the knife down into his thigh.
The man howled. Blood poured.
“Erindor!” someone barked. Alaric, maybe.
I didn’t stop.
Not yet.
“You’re one of his,” I hissed. “He trained you like he trained me. Bleed out the weakness. Stitch in the rage.”
The man smiled through broken teeth. “You were always his favorite. He said if anyone could be worse than him, it’d be you.”
I grabbed the merc’s tunic and yanked him up enough to meet my eyes.
“You think this is pain?” I growled. “Try starving under a butcher’s tent. Try watching your mother die for a sack of coin because the man who led us said mercy was for the weak.”
His breath caught.
“You think you know Riven?” My voice barely stirred the air. “Because I do. I know the way he smiled after a kill. The way he told me I’d be nothing more than a shadow. You think I won’t gut you like he taught me to?”
I drove the knife into his shoulder, not deep enough to kill, but deep enough to make him scream again.
“Do it.” He gasped. “You’ve done worse.”
I reached for his other arm.
“Erindor.”
Her voice.
Wyn.
Soft but firm. Cutting through the noise like a bell in a blizzard.
My hand trembled. The blade hovered, slick and shaking.
Then I felt her fingers on my wrist.
To remind me.
Of who I am now, of who she saw when she looked at me.
I blinked.
The blood blurred.
I stood still.
The merc was sobbing now. Quietly. His mouth was red; his body slumped.
I turned away from him, meeting Wyn’s eyes. They were wide and worried but not afraid.
Not of me.
