The fire had burned down to embers. He stared into their red glow, seeing images from a past he’d tried so hard to forget.
“I found out what Varian was really using them for.”
She went very still.
“He modified a respiratory treatment I developed. He changed the dosage and altered the delivery method, turning it into a weapon.” His claws extended, scraping against the arm of the chair. “He used it on his enemies, filling their homes with it while they slept. He watched them suffocate, their lungs burning from the inside out.”
“Tarek…”
“The pain reliever I created for warriors recovering from battle wounds? He gave it to prisoners. Just enough to keep them conscious while he—” He stopped, unable to continue. Unable to describe the horrors he’d witnessed when he finally discovered the truth.
“It wasn’t your fault.” Her hand found his, her fingers twining through his own. “You didn’t know what he was doing.”
“I should have known,” he said savagely. “I was blind. Willfully, deliberately blind. I didn’t want to see what was right in front of me because it would have meant accepting that everything I’d built, everything I’d sacrificed, had been turned into instruments of torture and death.”
“What did you do? When you found out?”
“I confronted him.” A broken laugh scraped from his throat. “I demanded that he stop, and threatened to expose him to the Council of Houses. He laughed at me. He told me that I was naive and that healing was simply a pleasant side effect of developing more efficient methods of killing.”
“And then?”
“Then I destroyed my research.” The memory still burned. All those years of work. All that knowledge. All gone in a single nightof fire and rage. “Every formula, every prototype, every scrap of documentation. I burned it all. And when the guards came to stop me, I?—”
He broke off, his whole body trembling with the force of suppressed emotion.
“You fought them,” she said quietly. “You killed them.”
“Yes.” The admission felt like a confession. Like absolution would never be enough. “I killed twelve of them before they brought me down. Twelve soldiers who were just following orders. Twelve deaths on my conscience to add to all the others.”
“They would have killed you.”
“I wish they had.”
The words hung in the air between them, heavy and terrible.
“The Council exiled me instead,” he continued. “Death would have been too clean. Too merciful. They stripped me of my rank, my name, my family connections. They sent me to the farthest edge of known space with orders never to return.” He laughed again, the sound hollow. “They thought it was a punishment. They didn’t understand that it was exactly what I wanted.”
“And the vow?”
“I made it to myself.” He turned to look at her, finally, and saw nothing but compassion in her eyes. No judgment. Just… understanding. “I swore that I would never practice medicine again. Never create anything that could be twisted and used to harm innocents.”
“But you broke that vow.” She reached up to touch his face, her fingers gentle against the rough stubble of his jaw. “For Dani.”
“For both of you.” He caught her hand, pressed a kiss to her palm. “I would break a thousand vows for you. Burn a thousand worlds. Become the monster they said I was, if that’s what it took to keep you safe.”
“You’re not a monster.”
“You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“I know exactly what you’re capable of.” She smiled, soft and sure. “You’re capable of love. You choose to help even when it costs you everything.” Her thumb brushed across his cheekbone. “That’s not what makes a monster.”
He wanted to believe her, wanted it more than he’d wanted anything in years.
“My name,” he said, the words coming before he could stop them. “My true name, before the exile, was Tarek’val Koronis. Healer of the Third House. Keeper of the Sacred Remedies.”
“Tarek’val.” She tested the name on her tongue, and hearing it from her lips made something crack open in his chest. “It suits you.”
“It was a different person. A different life.”
