“Because her existence made me so mad, my hands shook. I wasn’t mad because what was done to her was wrong. I was mad because my father dared to send her into my territory to take what was mine. I wanted to hurt him. If I’d had a knife and could’ve reached him in that moment, I would’ve sliced all the flesh off his bones. You have no idea how much I wanted to do it. I took her away from my father, because I wanted to send a big ‘Fuck You’ his way. Her life at that point didn’t matter to me. I didn’t care that she was a person. She was a thing. She was my father’s toy and I took her away so I could taunt him with her. I almost made her into a slave. I only stopped because some switch flipped in my brain and I realized you wouldn’t like it. Enslaving her goes against everything I stand for. That’s not me. That’s not who I am. I should’ve stopped because of that. I didn’t want to explain it to you. I didn’t want you to know this about me.”

I didn’t look at him. There. It was all out.

“Why didn’t you let her go on the bridge? Would’ve ended all the questions.”

I sighed. “Because it would be wrong. Everything that happened to her was wrong. It’s wrong to buy children, it’s wrong to stick them into a fortress and make them into killers, it’s wrong to promise them that they will get into paradise if they obey you, it’s wrong to order them to kill people, it’s wrong to bind them with your blood, which you told them is holy, and it’s wrong to break that binding because you’re engaged in a pissing contest with your father. She’s a person. She is me, Curran, or at least what Voron wanted me to be. My father didn’t come up with this idea out of the blue. He watched Voron teach Hugh and he simply improved on the concept and mass-produced it.”

He waited.