Page 91 of Rogue Elves of Ardani

She gasped and jerked away, letting go of him, but the man continued dragging the knife across his throat, opening a hideous line of red muscle and sinew, pouring blood down his front.

Patros grunted in annoyance. “The bastard’s gotten blood on my carpet,” he muttered as the man finally collapsed on the floor. He kicked at the edge of the rug, which he’d rolled out of the way and put to the side to avoid just this situation. The blood had made its way across the room and stained it anyway. “Go to the market tonight and buy a new one. One of the Ysuran imports, not the cheap local ones. Clean this up, first.”

The metallic, rotten smell of blood filled the air. Crow turned away, trying not to vomit. She choked on a sob.

“And get hold of yourself,” Patros said. “No one likes a hysterical woman.”

The vision faded. Crow tried to take a breath, but her throat felt too constricted to take in air. Recalling the memory, she’d felt it all anew, as if it had happened yesterday. She hadn’t counted on it affecting her so.

She had never shown the memory to anyone before.

“I have much in common with Alexei,” she said. “Everything I am is monstrous. I have become a weapon for raping minds and shattering the innocent. I know what it is to destroy another person. I know what it is to be a blight on the world. There is nothing empowering about it.”

“You... feel what other people feel,” Vaara said pensively. “You don’t just see what they’re feeling—you feel it, yourself. That’s why it’s called empathy?”

She pulled back. “You didn’t know?”

“No. I didn’t understand that part.”

There was a silence that was probably brief but felt very long. Her fingers twitched on his shoulder. His mind was a jumble of thoughts and emotions that she couldn’t quite decipher. She was sorely tempted to delve deeper and find out exactly what he was thinking. It took a lot of willpower to hold back. She couldn’t collect the courage to look him in the eye. She was still afraid he was about to condemn her—for all the evil she’d done, all the horrific things she was capable of, all the things that made her the corrupt, vile person she was.

An image surfaced in his thoughts. Himself, through her eyes, kneeling on the floor, his hands chained above him. The same image she’d shown him earlier. She felt a shiver of loathing go through him.

You should be repulsed,he thought.

She dropped the cloth in the bucket.No.

Another image appeared. His hands. His new hands, with their missing fingers, bloody and scarred.

No, Crow repeated firmly.

He took a breath. He thought of the bed again. He was tired.

Stay?he asked.

She closed her hand around his and nodded, then let him guide her to the bed and pull her down into it beside him. She was taken aback when he wrapped an arm around her, pulling her back tightly against the broad warmth of his chest.

She could not remember the last time she had felt this particular combination of comfort and tension. It felt a bit like she had somehow tamed a wild beast who might attack again at any moment—or maybe it was he who had tamed her. She hardly dared move, for fear of causing some disturbance that would remind both of them of their mutual dislike.

“You are not a blight,” he said, his words rumbling against her back. “And you are not monstrous.”

“I wish that were true.”

She held onto his hand, channeling tranquility into his head, until he fell asleep, and then she kept holding it until she fell asleep, too.

Chapter 25

He was still asleep when she awoke the next afternoon. And he remained asleep as she washed and dressed and combed her hair and lined her eyes—or, she suspected, he was awake but pretended to sleep. She went downstairs without him.

Alone in the bar were Nero, Aruna, and Aruna’s human companion, all talking around a table. They quieted as she entered.

She took a breath to steady herself. “Good morning.”

The other woman nodded to her. “I don’t think we’ve met,” she said, watching Crow carefully. “I’m Novikke.”

“Crow.”

“That’s your real name?”

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