The question caught me off guard. Most people either avoided the topic entirely or asked for gory details they could use to titillate themselves later. But Seris sounded genuinely curious, like she was trying to understand rather than judge.
“I don’t know,” I said after a moment. “After my first kill, I didn’t look back for a while. I simply accepted what I was at that point. If it hadn’t been for Kael, I would still be Shadow of the King.”
“Kael? The one with the daggers?”
“He was my combat instructor. He’s more of a brother to me than men born of the same father.” I poked at the fire with a stick, watching sparks spiral toward the ceiling. “He taught me that killing wasn’t about panic, anger, or cruelty. It was about precision. About ending threats efficiently so you could go home to the people who mattered.”
“Is that what you were doing tonight? Protecting people who matter?”
I looked at her across the flames, this girl who’d nearly killed me trying to save me, who carried enough power to reshape the world or destroy it entirely. She was beautiful in the firelight.
“Maybe,” I said finally. I couldn’t tell her that I was sick of the blood. Sick of the dying breaths. Sick of it all.
She shifted closer to the fire, and I caught the slight hiss of pain that escaped her lips. The sigils were still healing, the burns angry and inflamed despite the treatment they’d received.
“Let me see,” I said before I could stop myself.
“What?”
“Your wounds. You’re favoring your left side, and I can smell an infection starting.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re stubborn. There’s a difference.” I pulled medical supplies from my pack, clean cloth, healing salve, a bottle of something that would sterilize wounds and probably hurt like hell. “Turn around.”
She hesitated, and I realized what I was asking. Trust. Vulnerability. The chance to tend to injuries that required removing her shirt, leaving her exposed in ways that went beyond the physical.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said quietly. “I swear it.”
Something in my voice must have convinced her, because she slowly turned her back to me and began working at the ties of her torn shift. When she pulled the fabric away from her shoulders, I bit back a curse at what I saw.
The targeting sigils were worse than I’d thought. They were carved deep. The symbols formed intricate patterns across her back and shoulders, still red and angry despite the passage of time.
But it was the older scars that made my chest tighten. Whip marks. Burn scars. Evidence of years of systematic abuse that had nothing to do with the recent torture.
“Who did this to you?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Which scars?” she replied with bitter humor. “I’ve collected quite a few over the years.”
“The old ones. The ones that aren’t from the ritual chamber.”
She was quiet for a moment, and I thought she might not answer.
“When my parents died, I ran. I was only a child with no way to defend myself. I was caught by slave traders. I spent my childhood as a slave. I escaped when I was sixteen and went on the run. The older scars are from those days.”
I began cleaning the targeting sigils with movements that were probably gentler than necessary, trying to keep my touch clinical rather than intimate. But it was impossible to ignore the way she shivered when my fingers traced the edges of each burned symbol, impossible not to notice how soft her skin was beneath the scars.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it.
“For what?”
“For what my people did to you. For what my father’s kingdom has cost you.” I dabbed healing salve onto the worst of the burns, trying to ignore the way she tensed at the contact. “For the fact that saving my life is probably going to make yours considerably more complicated.”
She laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “My life has been complicated since the day I was born. At least now the complications are interesting.”
“Is that what you call nearly dying in a ritual chamber? Interesting?”
“I call it better than rotting in a cell for the rest of my life.” She turned to face me, pulling her shift back over her shoulders. “Besides, you saved me. That has to count for something.”
