“Trinnie?”

Fingers lingering on the light switch, I looked over my shoulder at Peanut, who’d moved closer to the bathroom. “Yeah?”

He cocked his head, and when he looked at me, I felt stripped bare. “I know how much Misha meant to you. I know it has to hurt something bad.”

Ending Misha’s life hadn’t hurt me. It quite possibly had killed a part of me, replacing it with a seemingly bottomless pit of sour bitterness and raw anger.

But Peanut didn’t need to know that. No one did.

“Thank you,” I whispered, turning away and closing the door as the burn hit the back of my throat.

I will not cry. I will not cry.

In the shower, with its multiple jets and stall large enough to fit two fully grown Wardens, I used the minutes under the hot, stinging spray to get my head straight.

Or, in other words, compartmentalize.

I’d had my much-needed breakdown last night. I had given myself time to cry it all out, and now was the time to put it away, because I had a job to do. After years of waiting, it had finally happened.

My father had called on me to fulfill my duty.

Find the Harbinger and stop it.

So, there was a lot to sift through and file away in my mental cabinet so that I could do what I was born for. I started with the most critical. Misha. I shoved what he’d done and what I’d had to do all the way to the bottom of the cabinet, tucked under my mother’s death and my failure to stop that. That drawer was labeled EPIC FAIL. The next drawer was where I sent the cause of the blackish-blue bruises covering my left hip and the length of my thigh. Another bruise colored the right side of my ribs, where Misha had delivered a nasty kick. He’d kicked my butt and then some, but I’d still beaten him.

The usual feeling of smugness or pride over having bested someone who was well trained didn’t surge through me.

There was nothing good to feel about any of that.

The bruises, the aches and all the pain went into the drawer I called BUCKET FULL OF NIGHTMARES, because the reason Misha had managed to land so many brutal hits was because he knew I had limited peripheral vision. He’d used it against me. That was my one weakness when fighting, something I needed to improve on, like, yesterday, because if this Harbinger discovered just how poor my vision was, it would exploit it.

Just like I would if the shoes were on other feet.