**ROVAN ||**

The mossy river runs harshly beside us, slow and secretive, dragging leaves along its winding back like it’s hiding things beneath the surface.

I don’t like this place. It’s too quiet, too soft underfoot. Everything here is too easy to sink into.

Marya stands across from me, her hair tangled from the wind, her mouth calm despite the blade my mate holds at her throat. She doesn’t flinch or move, and her breath doesn’t even shake.

A twitch runs down my spine and I can’t help it, I move closer and press my own knife against the neck of the slow dying man at my feet. The one I found Marya running with.

“I trust you.” She says as his knife points to her throat.

Graxis presses the knife closer, not enough to draw blood, but enough to make her feel it. The tremble of steel where it meets skin draws me. It’s a bite of something she should fear.

“You shouldn’t.” I admit, sounding far too little like I used to.

I haven’t sounded like myself since Tharius broke. Since I held him in the dark, curled like a dying thing, mumbling her name like a curse, like a prayer. Since Graxis and I kissed his ruined mouth and promised vengeance he didn’t ask for. Promises he didn’t need to ask for because we’d already decided.

Marya ruined him. His own sister. And now she says she trusts us not to ruin her?

Gods. How dare she.

“How long did you lie to him?” I ask, my free hand curling into a fist at my side.

A branch cracks under her boot as she shifts her weight, slowly, deliberately. She doesn’t look away from me.

“Long enough to save him.”

I scoff. “Save him? You fed him to them. You handed him over—”

“To keep him alive,” she cuts in, louder now. Her eyes are the color of smoke and difficult to hold onto. “They wanted his blood. They wouldn’t have stopped at him, Rovan.”

I tighten my grip on the knife while her dying husband struggle to pull in another pathetic breath at my feet.

I hate how steady she sounds. How convinced.

“He begged for you,” Graxis says quietly. “When they broke his ribs. When they drugged him and ripped memories out of his mind. He cried your name.”

Her lips part. Finally something breaks in her. I like that crack, that fracture. She doesn’t cry or plead, but I like that small part of her that _does_ break.

I look at Graxis, at the way his wings twitch behind him. We could end this now. So easily. We’ve done it before. Marya and her traitorous husband wouldn’t be the first, and they damn well wouldn’t be the last.

But she has that look in her eye. The one Tharius used to wear before he stopped speaking altogether.

And I need the truth, some semblance of it before I contemplate ending her for good.

“I want to hear it,” I growl. “All of it. Why you did it. Why you left him there like meat to rot.”

She lowers her chin slightly, the knife still tucked just beneath the curve of her jaw.

“I made a deal,” she says. “One life for another. The Order had my daughter. She was only twelve. I couldn’t sacrifice myself, nor could my husband sacrifice himself… so we gave them a version of Tharius. He was the next best thing.”

“What does that even mean?” I snarl.

“I knew what they wanted. The one marked by our old blood. A weapon.” She pauses, her throat shifting slightly under the blade. “The Order thought it was my daughter because of her magic, but it wasn’t. The one of our bloodline that had the gifts they wanted was Tharius. But they didn’t know much about our bloodline, didn’t know how our magic worked. They thought his gift was in his blood, but it was in his soul. So, I poisoned him just enough to dull his connection to it. I made him useless in their eyes. They only kept him alive to study, and by the time they realized their mistake when they accessed those deeper parts of him—”

“It was too late,” I whisper, realization dawning like frost up my spine.

She nods. “He was already broken… by me.”

I want to hate her. Gods, I want to hate her, but I think I understand now.

And I hate that more. She broke him, destroyed him, damaged him just enough so they couldn’t use him, but kept enough there so they wouldn’t kill him.

“Do you know what it was like?” I ask, stepping closer, “watching him forget his own name for twenty one moons?”

Her eyes glisten. “No. I was selfish, I was just thinking about my daughter. Not what I’d done to my brother.”

Selfish. Yeah, that’s a good way to describe her actions.

“We had to carve a piece of his name into his wrist, just so he’d stop calling himself Number Four,” Graxis snarls. “Do you even understand what they did to him? What you _let_ them do?”

“No.”

Graxis growls and his knife presses deeper. A thin thread of red blooms across her throat. I grab his wrist to stop him from killing her.

“Why are you here?” I growl.

Her voice trembles now. “Because you won’t listen unless the blade’s in your hand.”

She’s right. Gods, that’s the worst part. She knows me. Even now.

“You should’ve come to us,” I say. “You should’ve let us help you. We could’ve burned them down together.”

“I didn’t want you near them,” She says, tears swimming in her eyes. “They had scent trackers, memory leashes, psychic thorns. They would’ve gotten to you through him. I did what I had to do.”

“You did what a coward would do!” I snap and she flinches. “You don’t get to come back here and act like this is some kind of absolution.”

“I’m not asking for forgiveness,” She sighs. “I’m asking for understanding.”

I release a bitter laugh. “I understand the fear of losing your daughter. I understand the frustration you must have felt, but then you sacrificed our mate because you refused to seek other help. Now you have your daughter, a dead husband… and nothing else. Any other understanding, you don’t deserve.”

Her lip curls faintly. “Neither do you.”

That stings. More than I expect. Because I know she’s not just talking about now. She’s talking about before. Before Tharius, before the fire, before the betrayal.

When she and I stood shoulder to shoulder in the rebellion. When I held her hand in the dark and whispered things I’ve never told Tharius or Graxis.

“You were my friend and you sacrificed me too.” She says softly.

That shouldn’t matter.It shouldn’t, but I feel the old wound pulse in my chest. The one I buried beneath loyalty and rage and the weight of Tharius’ broken body.

“You were my friend, but when Graxis was being held in that fire, you sacrificed my life to save him… and I don’t hold that against you… I would’ve followed you anywhere back then. I would have done anything for your happiness.” She whispers, closing her eyes. “I still would. Even if it meant sacrificing my own.”

And it’s that simple thing that finally breaks me. Us.

Graxis growls quietly and lowers the knife slowly. Like the tension in his shoulders is its own kind of weapon.

“You should leave.” I say, refusing to look at her again.

“I’m not running anymore.” She lifts her head and looks at me. Not like prey or a woman asking for redemption, but like a warrior ready to bleed for it. “Kill me, if it helps you. I deserve it.”

“Don’t tempt me.” Graxis scoffs. “Rovan may not, but I will. You ruined our mate, I won’t ever forgive you for that. Your life means nothing to me and I will find the Order and make them pay for what they did too. Vengeance will be ours soon enough.”

“If you two are going to keep my brother alive,” She continues, “you’re going to need more than vengeance. You’ll need the names of the ones who survived the fire. The ones still hunting him.”

My blood chills. She knows. Of course she knows… She was one of them once. Long before she left and decided to fight for the right side of the government. Our side.

“How many are there?” I ask.

“Sixteen.”

“Names.”

“I’ll give them, but not here.”

My eyes narrow. “You are not setting the terms.”

“No, but I am setting the fire.” A bitter smile curls her lips. “You two aren’t the only ones with weapons.”

For a moment, I remember the girl she used to be. Daggers strapped to her thighs. Smoke under her nails. Fury in her bones. As the oldest, she took care of Tharius after their parents died. She took care of him before I knew he was my mate. Before I could protect his good soul.

And she wanted to protect that goodness in the only way she knew how… By becoming monstrous in his place.

“I’ll take you to him.” I say, at last. Her breath catches. “No promises after that. Death may still come to you.”

She nods. “I just want to see that he’s alive.”

The wind moves through the trees above us, stirring the canopy with a sound like whispering.

I sheath the knife and force her to walk between us so I can keep an eye on her.

We walk in silence toward the river’s edge. The moss squelches beneath our boots, and the scent of wet earth clings to the air. I know this forest like the scars that litter Tharius’ body.

I know where it curves, where it hides. And I know the place where we left him this morning.

“I’ll kill you myself,” I say as we approach the bend, “if you try anything.”

She nods and steps into the clearing with me, eyes scanning the shaded hollow under the willow tree. And when she sees him sitting with his knees pulled to his chest, body shaking and staring blankly at the water, her breath cracks.

He doesn’t look up, he doesn’t see her, but something in the air shifts. A ripple. A thread of memory brushing against the edge of his broken mind. Graxis and I both feel it.

Marya steps forward, and I almost stop her, but then she says it again.

“I trust you.”

Tharius’ head lifts slowly, eyes dull at first. Then flickers of gold. There’s light beneath his usual ash.

Recognition. Pain. Hope.

And for the first time in months… our mate smiles.

Graxis’ hand rests over his blade as does mine while she slowly approaches Tharius.

Trust at a knife’s edge. That’s the only kind we’re offering now.