Vows of Ashes
It was fear, curdled into something monstrous by nineteen years of practice, and she had just watched the one person she’d spent her whole life protecting nearly die because of the exact silence she’d kept.
Kai’s eyes opened.
Not far, not steady, but open, and they found me first, before Renata, before the wrecked room, before anything else, and something in his face when he saw me eased for a half second even through the pain, before it tightened again with the effort of speaking.
“Elias.” His voice was wrecked, barely a breath. “Did he. Are you.”
“I’m fine. You threw yourself in front of a bullet, you absolute idiot, I’m fine—”