"Where did you get all this?" she asks, though something in her voice suggests she already knows.
I meet her gaze directly, offering no apologies or justifications. "A tavern. About five miles south."
Understanding passes between us in the silence that follows. She knows what I am, what I've always been beneath the veneer of civilization. Tonight she's seeing the full cost of my protection, the price I'm willing to pay to keep her safe.
"How many?" she whispers.
"Six."
She nods, accepting this revelation with the same quiet strength that helped her survive the bone cathedral. No condemnation. No horror. Just acknowledgment of what love requires in a world that offers no easy choices.
"Thank you," she says finally, and the words carry more weight than any blessing or absolution.
I pull her against me, breathing in her scent now mixed with the cotton and wool of her borrowed clothing. Six people died tonight for the contents of a dress and some travel food. Tomorrow I'd kill sixty more if that's what keeping her alive required.
That's the difference between me and Kaerith. He's learned to kill for ideology, for grand visions of the future. I kill for much simpler reasons.
I kill for love.
