“Your effort’s enough.” He sounded so relieved. After a pause, Hal added, “Although if you’d allow me one more request, would you also fix what you did to me?”

“Why should I?” He deserved it, anyway. She couldn’t be certain how much internal damage she’d done, but even a strained hamstring would take weeks to heal on its own. “It’s my only guarantee you won’t attack me again.”

“I won’t.” Somehow, the weariness in his voice convinced her.

“Fine. I promise you a diagnosis for your illness and a functioning quadriceps femoris, for now. We renegotiate after that. Anything else?”

“That’s all.”

“Then it’s a deal.” Treason, sealed with four words.

While she’d always intended to cure him, saying it aloud made it all seem too real. Wren expected some rush of shame. An ominous parting of the storm clouds. But nothing happened. She supposed she should be more concerned with how easy betrayal was becoming.

“Just keep your hands to yourself this time,” she added.

Wren approached him as if he were a caged animal: one creeping, measured step at a time. As she slid into the bedside chair and the last of her adrenaline faded, it set in how much everything hurt. She guessed that her pectoral muscles were strained, if not torn. Mottled bruises, a deep goddessblood purple, were already beginning to bloom on her swollen wrists and creep toward her elbows.

That brute. He’d have torn her limb from limb had his own body not shut down. Hatred burned steady as a flame in her chest. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to sink into a hot bath and soothe away the ache, but a deal was a deal. One way or another, she would have answers about her missing comrades. First, she had to—

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Wren froze. “What?”

From the corner of her eye, she watched his gaze wander over her mangled arms. “I’m sorry for hurting you.”

Laughter bubbled within her stomach, and her eyes nearly watered at the effort to contain it. He was sorry? After all he’d done to her people, this was what he chose to apologize for? He had to be mocking her. “Why?”

“I see no point to senseless violence, or in making enemies of those who’re helping me.”

“You see no point in senseless violence,” she repeated slowly. With every word, her hatred sparked hotter. “Is that what you believed when you slaughtered my people in the Battle of the River Muri?”

Hal looked almost surprised.

“I saw you that day.” She clenched her fists into her skirt so tight they trembled. “I stood ten feet away as you struck down my comrades without even lifting a finger. Or have you already forgotten?”

“No.” He frowned, his eyes falling shut. If not for the eerie, distant tone of his voice, she might have mistaken him for remorseful. “I remember.”