Page 66 of Savage Reins
"You hurt everything you touch." She sets the bucket down with unnecessary force, water sloshing over the rim. "That's what you do. That's what you are."
I grit my teeth at her words but I don't react. "You think I wanted this? You think I chose to become what I am?"
"I don't know what you chose." She moves to Rusalka's other side, putting the horse between us. "I don't know anything about you anymore."
"You know everything that's important."
"Do I?" She snorts and her laugh sounds bitter, broken. "Because the man I thought I knew wouldn't have killed someone that easily. Wouldn't have stood there afterward looking bored."
"That man was going to sabotage the race. He was going to make sure you lost."
"So you executed him." She's crying now, tears tracking silver down her cheeks. "Without trial, without question. You pulled the trigger."
"Yes." The word comes out flat, honest. "Because that's what needed to happen."
"God." She presses her face against Rusalka's neck, shoulders shaking. "Listen to yourself. Listen to how you talk about taking a life."
I want to tell her about the first man I killed. How I threw up afterward, shaking so hard I couldn't hold a cup of water. How I didn't sleep for weeks, seeing his face every time I closed my eyes. I want to explain how the second kill was easier, and the third easier still, until death became just another tool in my arsenal—efficient, reliable, necessary.
I want to tell her how killing that saboteur felt different. Not easier, but more urgent. How the thought of his destroying her chance, her hope, her future filled me with a rage so pure it scared me. How if not for me he'd have continued to go on harming other people, and that I put a stop to that.
Instead, I say nothing. Because the truth is worse than her assumptions. The truth is that I didn't kill him to protect the race or follow orders or maintain family honor. I killed him because he threatened her, and somewhere along the way, her safety became more important to me than my own soul.
"You're right," I tell her instead. "I am what you think I am. I'm exactly the monster you see."
She looks up at me then, her face streaked with tears and moonlight. "I don't want you to be a monster, Renat. I want—" She stops herself, shaking her head. "It doesn't matter what I want."
"It matters to me," I tell her, reaching for her.
"No." She backs away, putting more distance between us. "It can't matter. Because in forty hours we race, and win or lose, you'll go back to your family. Back to being their weapon. And I'll either be dead or wishing I were."
The truth of it sits between us as cold and final as a gravestone. There's no future here, no happy ending for an enforcer and the woman whose life he holds in his hands. There's only the race and whatever comes after—blood or freedom, but never both.
"Mira—"
"Don't." She holds up a hand, stopping me mid-sentence. "Just don't. I can't—I won't let you make this harder than it already is."
She walks away, leaving me alone with the horse and the weight of everything I've destroyed by being born into the wrong family, trained in the wrong skills, marked by the wrong name.
Rusalka nuzzles my shoulder, and I rest my forehead against her neck, breathing in the clean smells of horse and hay and innocence I'll never possess.
"She's right, you know," I whisper to the animal. "I am a monster. But I'm her monster now, and that has to count for something."
Hours pass. Rusalka heads into the barn and I watch Mira lock her stall's outward facing door and flick the lights off. The track in the distance settles deeper into darkness, windows going black one by one until only the security lights remain. I should go back to the bunkhouse, should try to sleep before tomorrow'schaos begins. Instead, I find myself walking toward the main barn, drawn by instincts I don't fully understand.
I slip through the side door, moving quietly through the corridor between stalls. Most of the horses are dozing, but a few lift their heads to track my movement.
I find Mira's boots outside Rusalka's stall—leather worn smooth by years of hard use, still holding the shape of her feet. Inside the stall, she lies curled against the horse's flank, one arm draped over the animal's neck. Both of them sleep, woman and beast breathing in perfect synchronization.
Mira is so peaceful there, probably thinking she is protecting the mare by being present. She doesn't realize they’d just kill her too if they came for Rusalka tonight.
Rusalka's eyes open when she senses my presence, but she doesn't move. Doesn't shift away from the fragile human using her as a pillow. The horse's gaze meets mine across the stall, intelligent and questioning.
"You love her too, don't you?" I whisper to the animal. "You can feel how good she is. How pure."
The horse's ear flicks forward, listening.
"I love her." The words come out raw, torn from someplace deep in my chest that I thought had died years ago. "I love her, and I'm going to lose her. Because love isn't enough when you're what I am."
