“So you would’ve gone on lying to me, letting me love you?” My voice croaked. Roark’s head snapped up, but the words would not stop. “I told you about how I feared the shadows, how I feared him, how I was drawn to him, and you said nothing.

It should never have meant anything. Roark took a step closer. I was supposed to despise you, hunt you. Instead, you’ve brought me to my knees, begging for more of you.

He towered over me, our chests touched, and I didn’t step back. We faced each other, a challenge, a desire.

Roark’s eyes softened, and he spoke close to my face. Break me, I no longer care, as long as it is you who wields the destruction.

“I don’t know what to think. Emi told me you could not control it, but now you can.” I closed my eyes for a heartbeat, trying to slow the noise in my thoughts. “After all that has happened, all the lies from everyone, I only want a bit of truth.”

Roark swallowed, and when I sat on a fallen log, he sat beside me.

Yesterday was the first time I commanded the divide within me. His gestures were slow and deliberate. He did not want me to misunderstand a word. I think that is why it erupted with such violence.

Roark gestured at his scar.

I lifted a hand and ran my trembling fingertips along the jagged scar over his throat. “You told me this was done to you.”

He nodded. It was done as punishment, cursing me to be the one forced to find you.

I blinked. “But why?”

Roark looked at me, eyes shadowed. I remember the raids now. Everything.

“You remember that night?” I swallowed. “You were the one who took me away…to the sea, weren’t you? I was placed on a longship.”

I was there.

I pressed my fists to my forehead, moments spinning, some felt like a dream, others real enough I could smell the sweat, the spray of the sea. “A tide wanderer brought me to Gammal. I…I think we met in a market and she took me to the young house.”

Roark nodded. The woman was from across the Night Ledges from one of the Unfettered clans and cared little about craft. She would not give you up.

“Why were you there, Roark?”

He bent his knees and let his forearms drape over the tops. I wanted to be one of the Dark Watch. I followed the prince’s raiders, got turned around in the wood, and stumbled down a knoll into the goat pen of a small house.

I closed my eyes. “I remember. My mother sent me to lock the goat pens. We didn’t know what was coming.” I blinked my gaze back to him. “Why didn’t you kill me when you saw the scars?”