“The Keepers assigned to my conditioning. Sister Maret sometimes, when I was especially resistant.” She draws a line on the map like we’re still discussing strategy. Like she’s not describing horrors that make execution blocks look merciful. “They wanted to demonstrate control. Make me understand thatthey decided what I felt and when I felt it. That resisting only made the sensations worse.”
I stand. The movement is sudden enough that she flinches—an instinctive response she immediately tries to hide. I force myself to stop. To breathe. To not cross the distance between us and do something that will frighten her more than comfort her.
“The Keepers.” I name them because naming them makes them real. Makes them targets. “Maret. Anyone else?”
“Zrynok—”
“I need to know.” The Bloom pounds behind my eyes. Every nerve in my body screams for action, for violence, for blood. “I need to know who participated in what happened to you.”
She looks up at me. Those gray-blue eyes hold something I can’t read—surprise, maybe, or calculation. Maybe both.
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to kill them.” The words come out before I can stop them. Before I can consider whether they’re wise or useful or strategically sound. “The Abbot. The Keepers. Anyone who participated in what happened in those pools. I’m going to kill every single one of them.”
The silence stretches between us. She doesn’t look away. Doesn’t flinch from the violence in my voice. If anything, her expression sharpens—assessing, measuring, deciding something.
“That’s not what you agreed to. The mission was to burn the monastery and execute the leaders. Standard work, you said. Nothing personal.”
“It’s personal now.”
She rises slowly. Sets down the charcoal. Steps toward me with the careful deliberation of someone approaching a predator that hasn’t yet decided whether to attack.
I should step back. Maintain distance. Keep this professional, tactical, clean.
I don’t move.
“An executioner with a personal stake.” She stops an arm’s length away. Close enough that I can smell her beneath the Bloom’s perfumed rot. “That’s dangerous. Personal makes you careless. Makes you vulnerable. Makes you do stupid things that get people killed.”
“I’ve been killing for two and a half centuries. I don’t get careless.”
“You’ve been killing for orders. For duty. For the efficiency of a system you stopped believing in decades ago.” Her head tilts. Studying me. Seeing things I don’t want seen. “This is different. This is wanting someone dead because of what they did to me specifically. That’s not justice. That’s revenge.”
“Is there a difference?”
She doesn’t answer immediately. The candlelight catches her face, the hollows under her eyes, the tension she carries in her jaw.
“Maybe not. Maybe the only difference is whether you survive it.”
The Bloom surges. The pull that never goes away, that lives in my blood now, permanent and patient. It wants her closer. Wants to cross the remaining distance between us. Wants things I have no right to expect from a woman who was touched without consent for nine years.
I hold myself still. Make myself stay where I am. Fight the infection’s demands the way I’ve been fighting them for days.
“So is wanting you this badly while we’re surrounded by enemies.” The words escape before I can stop them. The Bloom strips away filters, makes honesty as involuntary as breathing. “I’m already dangerous, Arwen. Might as well make it useful.”
Her breath catches. Just for a moment. Just enough that I see her chest still, see her eyes widen fractionally before the control slams back into place.
“You think I don’t know that?” She doesn’t retreat. Doesn’t step back. If anything, she moves closer—half a step, less than that, enough to make the distance between us feel charged. “You think I can’t feel the same thing?”
SEVENTEEN
ZRYNOK
She crosses the last of the space between us.
Slowly. Deliberately. Giving me time to pull away, to retreat, to maintain whatever professional distance we’ve been pretending exists. Her footsteps are silent on the stone floor. Her breathing is controlled. Her hands are steady now, the trembling gone.
She stops close enough to touch. Doesn’t touch. Just stands there, looking up at me with those eyes that have seen too much and somehow still hold fire beneath the ash.
