Page 68 of Crown of Thorns

"When I told you what happened to him," I tell her, "you didn't hear a man who suffered. You heard an interrogation. You heard information extraction. You heard the logic of it."

"Yes."

"And that doesn't horrify you."

"It horrifies me. But it also makes sense to me. And the fact that it makes sense terrifies me more than the violence does."

I reach out and I take her hand. Her skin is cold.

"I did that," I say. "I'm the reason you can hear about violence and understand it instead of reject it."

She doesn't deny it. She just holds my hand and we sit in the dark and we understand what we've actually been doing to each other. We've been trading pieces of ourselves. I've given her access to my world, and she's integrated it. She's become half-operative, half-veterinarian. She can administer care and violence with equal precision.

And I've changed too. I've let her soften something. I've let her into spaces I was trained to keep sealed. I've given her access to parts of myself that weren't supposed to be accessible.

We're not who we were.

"Come here," I tell her.

She moves to me. Not sexually. Not for comfort. Just to be close to someone who understands the enormity of what's happening.

I hold her and I think about Séan O'Donnell, about what I described to her an hour ago. I think about the interrogation that extracted information I didn't really need. I think about the punishment that was as much about making a point to Renny as it was about loyalty to the family.

I showed her what I am.

And instead of running, she walked deeper in.

The grief hits me then. Not for Séan. For her. For the woman she was. For the innocence I systematically destroyed because she was stronger than I expected and because I wanted her to be strong.

She can feel something shift in me. She pulls back enough to look at me.

"What?" she asks.

"I'm mourning you," I tell her. "I'm mourning the woman you were before I married you."

Her eyes fill with tears. She doesn't let them fall. She just holds them, suspended, and nods because she understands.

"I'm mourning her too," she says. "But I'm not sure I like that old woman anymore."

She's right. The woman she was couldn't have survived this. The woman she was couldn't have looked at systematic violence and understood it. The woman she was couldn't have been married to me.

So she destroyed her. Or I destroyed her. Or we destroyed her together through a series of choices that seemed smaller in the moment than they actually were.

And the woman she's becoming—ruthless and strategic and dangerous—is exactly what's necessary. Exactly what this world requires.

But she's not the woman I fell in love with.

The thought is sharp and unwanted.

I'm not sure I believe in love. I'm not sure I'm capable of it. But somewhere in the past months, something happened. Something that made me want to protect her and keep her safe and minimize her exposure to the worst of this world. And that thing is being systematically destroyed by the reality that she's stronger than protection. That she needs to be included instead of sheltered. That she can't be safe if she's not ruthless.

So I'm destroying the thing I felt for her, piece by piece, by teaching her how to survive.

It's necessary.

It's also a kind of grief that has no name in the language we speak.

Because I wanted her to stay soft. I wanted to be the only one who carried the weight of this world. I wanted her to remain the woman I married—curious and skilled and kind. I wanted that for her not because it was good for her, but because it was easier for me. Because a soft woman is easier to control. Because a woman who flinches at violence is less likely to make decisions that undermine mine.