"My lord, we're collecting on behalf of?—"
"I know who you collect for." He moves to stand beside me without looking at me, his focus entirely on the men across the alley. "And I know what hour it is. Release her."
The broad-shouldered one drops the woman's arm. She backs toward the older men immediately, and the three of them move quickly away down the lane.
The overseers look at Nyrius for a long moment. Then the one with the paper folds it, poorly, and shoves it inside his coat. They leave without another word.
I let go of the knife handle.
Sorella took my advice to go inside. I can't even blame her.
"Are you injured?" Nyrius asks.
"No." I roll my shoulders back. "I had it."
"You had a knife and three large men." He glances at me sideways. "You had part of it."
I don't argue, mostly because he's not wrong. He falls into step beside me when I start toward home.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“I’m escorting you home.”
“How do you know I’m going home?” I arch an eyebrow and glanced in his direction.
Nyrius laughs. “Lucky guess.”
“I do know my way around Oxwood. There’s no need for an escort.”
“Those men are too drunk to see reason and might try to follow you, get retribution,” he says.
I couldn’t argue with that, so I stop trying to make good arguments.
We walk in quiet for half a block before he speaks.
"Men who use authority to frighten people with nothing left to lose." He says it to the road ahead. "I have little patience for it."
I look at him from the corner of my eye. "You're a dark elf lord."
"Yes."
"Your kind built the system that makes those men possible."
He doesn't answer immediately. His jaw moves slightly, like he's turning something over, choosing what to set down and what to keep.
"That's not untrue," he finally says.
"It's not a partial truth, either."
We reach my door. He stops when I do, standing in the narrow lamplight from the window above.
"Get some sleep," he says. "You look like you haven't had enough of it."
I study him for a moment—the exhaustion around his eyes that mirrors what I see in my own reflection, the way he said what he said about the overseers like it cost him something to admit it.
I go inside without answering.
I don't hear him leave right away, and I don't look out the window to check. But I stand in the dark hallway for longer thanI should before I take off my boots, and I'm still turning his non-answer over when I finally fall asleep.
