“They’re afraid,” she said simply. “Afraid of what they don’t understand. You didn’t ask for this. You’re just using what you’ve got to keep us alive. That makes it a weapon, not a curse.”
“A weapon forged by gods who delight in ruin.”
Even if those gods were my blood relatives.
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But ruin can be useful, depending on where you point it.”
For some reason, her words made me think of what Rydian had said to me.I am a weapon aimed at your enemies. Wield me how you see fit.
I sank deeper into the water, letting her words settle. “You really don’t think it’s evil?”
“I think good and evil are stories we tell ourselves to sleepbetter at night,” she said. “What you did back there was survival. And survival’s not evil—it’s necessary.”
I studied her in the steam. “Spoken like a fellow survivor.”
Her expression flickered. For a moment, I thought she’d deflect. But she surprised me.
“I was born outside the wall,” she said. “Midnight’s borderlands. My parents were scouts—hunters, really. We lived close enough to Concordia that we could taste the frost in the air. One night, two Obsidians attacked our home. I was six.”
Her tone was flat, like she was reciting from a history book instead of her own life. “Back then, we didn’t even know what they were. Or how to kill them. My father tried to fight. My mother hid me in a hollow under the floorboards. I heard them die. It wasn’t quick.”
My heart ached as she went on.
“After they left, a snowstorm blew in, and early the next morning, the roof collapsed. Snow came down, and I couldn’t dig out. I remember thinking,so this is what it feels like to die a slow death.”
“Keres…”
She shook her head, not looking at me. “I managed to dig myself closer to the surface before I passed out from dehydration. A pack of glimfangs found me. Thought I was an easy meal at first. Then I bit one back, so they decided I was worth keeping.”
I blinked. “Youbita Glimfang?”
“They were going to eat me,” she said dryly. “It was self-defense.”
Despite the story, I smiled. “So, what, they took you in as one of their own?”
“For a while. Two years, maybe. They’re smarter than people think. Pack creatures. They fed me, protected me, taught me how to hunt. The only threat they feared wasObsidians, and the mountains were crawling with them by then. We migrated south into the Trolech, but eventually even that became overrun. The pack was attacked and forced to split up as we fled. I never found them again. Then Daegel found me.”
She went quiet.
“He brought you back to the cabin,” I guessed.
“Dragged me, more like. I was feral. Didn’t speak for weeks. The others didn’t know what to do with me. Thorne was the first one I trusted. Taught me how to speak properly again.” She smirked faintly. “He’s been regretting it ever since.”
“Is that how you got the scars? From the pack?”
“They taught me to fight like one of them,” she said. “And don’t worry, I gave as good as I got.”
I smiled, but it faded quickly. “You lost everything. And you still chose to fight for this realm.”
She shrugged. “What else am I going to do? Sit around, waiting for the world to fix itself? People like us don’t get to be soft. We just keep moving.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It’s the only way I know.”
The steam curled between us, hazing her scars until they almost disappeared.
“Sometimes I worry they’re not wrong,” I said quietly.
