"Where is he now?"
She turns her head, just enough to see my face. Whatever she finds there makes her breath catch.
"You can't kill him," she says. "He's—there would be political consequences—"
"I don't give a fuck about–"
"Koshin."
"I'm going to peel the skin from his back strip by strip. I'm going to make him count each one. And when he's screaming, I'm going to ask him if he thinks that's sufficient discipline."
She's quiet for a long moment.
"You can't."
"Watch me."
"I'm asking you not to."
…
I stare at the back of her head. My hands are still on the laces, still pressed against the ridges of scar tissue her father carved into her skin, and she's asking me not to kill him for it.
"Why?"
"Because I don't want to owe anyone his death. Not even you." She pauses. "If anyone kills him, it's going to be me."
Something hot and vicious unfurls in my chest. Not pride. Something darker. The image of her standing over her father's body with blood on her hands, and me behind her, watching, already planning where to put my mouth when she's done.
"I'll hold him down for you," I say.
She chuckles.
I finish lacing her dress, my knuckles dragging against her back, against the scars her father left on her skin. He's still alive. He won't be for long.
I tie the final knot and don't step back.
"There," I say, my mouth an inch from her ear. "Dressed."
She moves away immediately. I let her. For now.
Renan is waiting in the adjoining chamber, sprawled across a chair with one leg hooked over the arm, tossing a knife into the air and catching it. When we enter his gaze flicks between us—me first, then Iowyn, then back to me. His mouth curves.
"You look like you slept well," he says to me. Then, to Iowyn: "Did he behave?"
"Define behave."
Renan's grin sharpens. "Better than yesterday. Yesterday you couldn't even look at me."
"Yesterday you walked in without knocking."
"I never knock." He catches the knife without looking. "You'll get used to it. Or you won't. Either way, I'm not changing."
"I could lock the door."
"You could try."
She doesn't back down.
