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The woman who had held my life in her hands, who had tried to sell Sable to a brothel, who taught me that monsters could wear clean clothes and expensive perfume, is kneeling on the deck of our broken ship while Arlo lies dead beneath a torn sailcloth. I showed her mercy once because I was so desperate not to become what she was.

Recognition moves across her face—and fear follows.

It comes so quickly that a distant part of me wonders if she has spent all this time waiting for me to appear again, believing she would be protected by the Dragon King.

“Alessia,” she whispers, and the sound of my name in her mouth makes the storm above us tremble.

Kylian moves beside me.

“Little mage,” he says quietly.

Dahlia hears his voice and turns toward him at once, crawling forward on her knees, her remaining hand sliding across the wet deck while she shakes so hard the water drips from her in steady streams.

“My king,” she chokes, her eyes darting between us. “Please, please, I was on that ship against my will. Draven bought my contract. I had no choice, I told him what he wanted because he would have killed me.”

Eagan steps closer from the rail, his expression darkening when he sees her face properly.

Kylian’s voice turns deadly quiet.

“You told Draven about the spies.”

Dahlia nods her head violently, her breath hitching.

“I didn’t know what to do. He was going to torture me,” she cries.

The words are so perfectly her that something inside me snaps.

“I didn’t know he would attack. I didn’t know anyone would die. I didn’t know.”

There it is.

The same shield she held up in the courtyard, the same desperate little phrase she used when she begged me to save her, the same excuse she must have used a hundred times before, because not knowing has always been easier than caring.

A laugh slips out of me.

Wrong enough that several guards fall quiet.

Dahlia stops begging.

Her eyes lock on mine.

“You never know,” I say, and my voice sounds eerily calm. “You didn’t know what would happen when you tried to sell Sable to a brothel. You didn’t know what you were doing when you whipped me nearly to death. You didn’t know what Draven would do when you opened your mouth. Yet people keep getting hurt because of all the things you do not know.”

Her lips tremble.

“I was scared,” she whispers.

“So was I,” I say, taking one step toward her.

Kylian’s hand catches my wrist. I look down at his fingers wrapped around my blood-coated skin, then lift my gaze to his.

The fear in his eyes is not for Dahlia.

It is for me.

“Do not give her the last piece of you,” he says.

I look back at Arlo beneath the sailcloth, at the hand that has slipped free, at the blood dried on his fingers, and the last piece of me Kylian is trying to protect feels very far away.