Page 57 of Savage Reins
"I know."
"Then why are you looking at me as if you expect me to forgive you for killing him?" My own thoughts don’t make sense.I'm fighting myself, not him, and I can't think straight. I want to rationalize it away, but I can't.
Renat's hands grip the top rail of the fence, knuckles white against the wood. "Because I saw the way you looked at me afterward. And I've been seeing that look in people's faces my whole life."
His words make me feel guilty. I remember the moment after the gunshot, the way I stepped back from him without thinking. The way horror must have shown on my face before I could hide it.
"I'm not afraid of you," I say, and I let my head drop.
"You should be."
"Why? Because you're good at what you do?"
His laugh is bitter. "Good at killing, you mean."
I want to deny it, to find some softer way to describe what happened last night. But lies won't change what I saw. What he did.
"How many?" The question leaves my mouth before I can stop it.
Renat's eyes go flat. "How many what?"
"How many people have you killed?"
For a long moment, he doesn't answer. A crow calls from somewhere in the distance with a harsh, mocking shrill. Rusalka snorts and shakes her mane, impatient to run.
"Enough," he says finally.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer you're going to get."
I study his face, looking for some trace of the man who kissed me in the moonlight. Who told me I was beautiful. Who made me believe in futures that didn't end in ash and ruin.
"Do you regret it?" I ask. "Any of it?"
There's another pause, longer this time. When he speaks, his voice is so quiet I have to strain to hear him.
"I regret that you had to see it."
Not that he did it. That I saw it. The distinction makes me shudder.
"My father was right," I whisper.
Renat's expression doesn't change, but something shifts in his posture. A tightening around his eyes. A subtle straightening of his shoulders.
"What did he tell you?"
"That men like you take everything. That you don't know how to build, only how to destroy."
"He's not wrong."
The admission shouldn't surprise me, but it does. I expected denial. Arguments. Some attempt to convince me that I'm seeing him wrongly.
Instead, he gives me honesty that tastes like blood.
"Then why are you here?" I ask.
"You know why."
