I feel the words land like acid rain.
My breath catches. “You slaughtered them.”
He nods, face blanching. “They put scare pulses around your car, Aria. Nano-darts rigged to explode if you got too close. They sent it to kill you.”
Tremors whisper through me. Fury ignites, white-hot.
He continues, voice cracking but steady: “It wasn’t just self-defense. It was payback. For every person they stuffed, every system they corrupted—all of it.”
My fists tighten at my sides. “That’s not justice. That’s vengeance.”
His jaw clenches. “You asked me to end this.”
I bite back so many replies I feel parched.
His voice cracks like cottonwood. “You said if they came for you again… you wanted it done.”
I open my mouth. No words.
He steps forward, lifting a hand as if to brush my cheek. I flinch back.
He grips his own wrist, his hand stained red with my memory. “I?—“
I close the distance in two strides. Press my palm to his chest, over the bone’s curve.
“He’s covered in blood,” I whisper. “Not just theirs.Yours.”
He looks down at my hand, at the stain beneath it, then back at me.
“My hands are clean?” he rasps. “If they spilled someone else’s? I’d wash them in district waters.”
“No,” I say. “They’re dirty.”
He swallows hard. For a moment, his mask cracks. I glimpse the wreckage beneath the godfather persona—fear, guilt, love.
“You think the world’s better now?” he asks. “Because I murdered twelve people who should’ve deserved killing?”
My heart pounds against ribs that still ache from when he held me in the wreckage.
“Would you sleep easier tonight if it were twenty? Or fifty?”
Aebon’s eyes gloss. He steps back.
“I can’t…” His voice trembles, not with anger, but terror. “I can’t—I can’t lose you. If this goes on… you’ll hate me. Leave me. And I… I need to know you still want me.”
Tears flare in me. Rage. Relief. Grief all tangled in one coil.
I step forward, lift his hand.
“My god…” I stare at the blood. “You can’t burn the whole world just because it tried to kill you.”
He meets my gaze. Vulnerable. Broken.
I brush my thumb along his palm—eliminate one smear, but not the rest.
“If you keep going down this path… I can’t follow.”
We stand, foreheads against one another. Blood and tears and thunder against the pane.
