“I wish you had!” Anji said, heat rising in her cheeks. She’d saved the woman’s life. She could have sat and watched the Ox cut into her, could have watched Kit’s feeble attempts at defending herself and not done a thing. “You want to lecture me about honor?” She held up the ruin of her hand, manacles clanking. “Look at what they did to me! They cut my fucking fingers off! They killed my—” Tears seared at her eyes. “They tortured—”

And every terrifying, agonizing aspect of the previous week, every feeling she’d ever felt rose in a churning mass, like a kettle boiling over. The frantic escape through the north, the Hawk snatching her away, the fight with the Scorphice, the Goat’s hand around her throat. The cathedral. The Bear.

Sharp metal clicking through bone.

Anji slammed her hands against the saddle, pain slicing through her wound. Then she screamed, her eyes shut tight. She let loose the knot that had been tightening inside her with each passing day, with every unfair hurt, every lonely second she’d spent running and fighting for her life.

“I can’t do this anymore!” she screeched, cradling her mangled fingers. “I wish you had poisoned me. I wish you’d just fucking kill me! That’s what you want, isn’t it? Why don’t you just do it, then?” Then her anger lifted its mask to reveal the sorrow beneath—the fear and confusion she’d borne and shoved down deep. Anji slumped against the horse’s mane and choked out a sob, then another, until the torrent of tears came. Snot bubbled from her nose as she sat up, and she wiped it away.

“Please,” she said, sniffling. “Please kill me. Just end it. I can’t—I can’t—” Her lungs were on fire, vision fogged over with tears. She slid off the horse, falling to her knees before the Hawk. The earth spun under her clutching fingers. A bead of blood dripped from her wound into the dirt. “Please, Kit, don’t let them cut me again! Please!”

Then the Hawk slid from her own horse, her boots thudding into the ground.

“Get up, you moronic—”

Anji grabbed at the Hawk’s boot, but the woman kicked her hand away with a snarl. The horse behind her nickered.

“You’re so selfish,” said Kit.

Anji’s eyes went wide, and the anger came back with a fury so deep it drowned the fear. She pushed herself to her knees, still sniveling. “I’m selfish?” she spat. “You’re about to trade my life, watch me get tortured, for some money! What could I possibly have done to—”

“Everything! Everything you’ve begged and cried about, killing Rolandrian, killing Ox—my damned horse is even dead because of you. Are you incapable of considering anyone but yourself?” Anji blinked up at her, mouth working.

“I didn’t—”