Not metaphorically. Not gently. His fingers punch through skin and muscle and bone like they're paper, burying themselves in Darian's ribcage.
Darian convulses. Blood fountains from his mouth, his nose, the wounds covering his ruined body.
Lorenth's expression doesn't change. Doesn't soften. He just watches, clinical and cold, as he slowly closes his fist around what has to be Darian's heart.
"This is what happens," he says quietly, though his voice carries across the silent square, "when you touch what's mine."
He squeezes.
Darian's eyes go wide. Then empty.
Lorenth rips his hand free in a spray of blood and viscera, letting Darian's corpse collapse into the dirt. The heart—still clutched in his fist—continues to beat weakly for several seconds before finally going still.
He drops it beside the body.
Then he turns to me.
19
LORENTH
The blood on my hands still steams in the cold air.
I drop to my knees beside her, reaching out but stopping short—terrified that I'll hurt her worse, that my magic is still too volatile, that I'm covered in gore and she's already been through enough. My hands shake. Actual fucking tremors running through fingers that just crushed a man's heart.
"Senna." Her name comes out rough. Broken. "Gods, I'm?—"
She crawls into my arms before I can finish.
The impact of her small body against mine nearly undoes me. She's trembling, tears cutting tracks through the blood and dirt on her face, and the bond is stillmuted. Just this faint whisper where there should be a roar. Like trying to hear through water. Through walls. Through whatever poison Darian forced down her throat.
My magic flares instinctively, reaching for her injuries. I've worked on this since my parents died—spent years honing the healing aspect that most xaphan ignore in favor of destruction. Never thought I'd need it like this. Never imagined I'd be kneeling in a village square, covered in another man's bloodwhile trying to piece together the woman who's supposed to bemine.
The cut on her cheekbone closes first. Then the bruises around her wrists where the rope bit deep. I can feel the broken rib—gods, hebroke her rib—and I pour more magic into it, knitting bone back together with shaking precision.
She gasps against my chest as the healing takes hold. Not pain. Just the strange sensation of flesh mending too fast, of damage being reversed in seconds instead of weeks.
"I was so fucking scared." The confession rips out of me while my magic works, hands pressed to her sides where the worst of the bruising darkens her skin. "When the bond went silent, I thought—I didn't know what happened. Couldn't find you. Couldn'tfeelyou."
The bruises on her ribs fade from purple to yellow to nothing. Her split lip heals. The swelling around her eye recedes until I can see storm-gray clearly again.
"I'm sorry." My forehead drops to hers, magic still crackling between us as I search for any injury I might have missed. "I should have kept you safe. Should have made sure he could never?—"
"You're here now." Her voice is hoarse, wrecked from screaming or crying or both. "You found me."
Yeah. After she'd already been beaten. After she'd already been dragged through the village like a criminal. After every single person in this godsdamned square stood by andwatched.
The rage that's been simmering since I saw her kneeling in the dirt surges back. My head snaps up, eyes finding the crowd still frozen at the square's edges. They haven't moved. Haven't run. Just standing there like spectators at a fucking show.
A snarl tears from my throat.
"You watched." Magic pulses outward from my wings, making the air shimmer with heat. Several people stumblebackward. Good. They should be afraid. "You stood here andwatchedwhile he beat her."
The nearest man—old, weathered, probably thinks himself respectable—opens his mouth. Closes it. Smart.
"She was screaming." My voice drops lower, colder. The kind of tone that precedes violence. "Bleeding. And not one of you did a godsdamned thing."
A woman near the back clutches her child closer. The boy can't be more than six, eyes wide as he stares at Darian's corpse. At the blood. At me.
