When we stood over Jene’s body, Ascanio had said that Deputy Holland’s identity was wrapped up in being in law enforcement. But Holland didn’t grow up being a law enforcement officer. He likely had friends outside the sheriff’s office, family members, people he went to high school with. A whole net of people to catch him if he stumbled. Adora had no one. She grew up as sahanu. That was the only thing she knew. She’d lost her family and devoted her whole life to being the best assassin she could be because my father assured her she would get to heaven.

I would have to shatter that belief. I would have to explain to her that everything she had done, all the training she worked so hard on, all the lives she took were in the name of a lie. It would be like taking a lifelong devout Christian and showing them irrefutable proof that God didn’t exist. Her whole world would collapse. I spared her life and now I would have to dismantle everything she’d held as truth for the last seventeen years. It wasn’t just cruel. It would be devastating. It would crush her. It would’ve been kinder to kill her.

I looked at her and my insides churned. I hadn’t spared her because I was impressed with her skills or because I thought she was worth saving. I hadn’t saved her because I saw myself in her. I’d saved her because I wanted to send a big loud “Fuck You” to my father. Him sending her into my territory offended me. It made me angry in a way I hadn’t been angry for a very long time.

Deep down, if I listened to the voice inside me, I wanted to march into his castle, crush him, and take every scrap of land he owned. It wouldn’t be enough to win. I wanted to humiliate him and take his land. To hoard it like a dragon.

What the hell was happening to me?

“Are you well, Kate?” Adora asked.

I was a piece of shit. She was a person, an actual real human being, and I had decided to play God with her life. When I had a chance to turn her into a slave, I stopped because I recognized that Curran wouldn’t like it. I should’ve stopped because it was the wrong thing to do. Because I didn’t make slaves.

“Kate?”

How could I have gone so far? How do I fix this? If I went any further down this road, Adora would be the first of many.

“Kate? Are you sick?”

No. I had to find whatever it was that made me me and hold on to it. And I owed it to Adora to tell her the complete truth as gently as I could. I would need help. I would have to go very slowly. Baby steps.