Dain's jaw snapped shut with audible force, his nostrils flaring and ears pinning back, but he didn't say anything.

"What you did today was horrifying," I said in that same quiet voice. I'd thought I'd be angry, looking at him, but I was just... disappointed. I had thought he was better than that. "You're allowed to be passionate in your defense of me, and you're allowed to kill in self-defense and when the crime justifies execution, but that?"

I shook my head, watching him as his face went tight. He'd spent a century needing to leap to his own defense, because no one else would. Would he do it now, I wondered? Look at me, and see an enemy? But he only stood there, his tails on the ground, breathing hard and with pain etched into his face.

"That was revenge, plain and simple," I told him. "You tormented them, and then you killed them in anger. You made her watch you kill her soulmate." I could see his jaw tensing, the defense jumping to his lips—that they had committed a capital crime, that they had been legally executed. And then I watched him let it die, his lashes fluttering for a moment, his pulse visible in his throat.

Slowly, I took a breath, and exhaled through my nose. "To make it worse, you did it in my name," I said, the quiet disappointment soaking my words. "Surely you know me well enough by now to know how awful that was for me. I accept that sometimes you have to defend me with your sword and talons, but I have never, ever wanted something like this. I would never have asked that of you, and I'm sickened that you did it for me."

Dain stood there, his hands trembling where they hung at his sides. His eyes gleamed, and he didn't blink as he watched me.

"The Beast of Phazikai did something horrific to end a war." I saw Dain flinch when I said it, his wing-arms drawing in tight to his body. "He hated the pain and the suffering. He protected the soldiers that had been given to him to care for. And he was nowhere in that room today. That was all you, Dain." I took a deep breath. "I would rather have walked through the gory ruin of Phazikai to kiss the mouth of that blood-soaked Beast than to have stepped across the room to take the hand of the man I saw today."

"Leah," he whispered, his voice shaking.

I shook my head again, a tiny movement. "There is nothing that makes cold-blooded revenge acceptable. Become a man who believes that, or lose me forever. There's really not a middle ground." I watched him for another moment longer, the cold autumn air as sharp as the edge of a sword.