This wasn’t the boy she’d left aboard the Mors Navis. That boy had been fighting for his life, eager and desperate and not a threat to anyone. This? This was a young man whom she’d seen bring a hundred Bullets to silence and stand boldly in the face of Sister. This was the Steelhand. “You should have told me.” She pulled her hand from his and stood back. She missed the contact immediately and chastised herself for the feeling. He was a former Fiveson, and more dangerous than she had time to parse.

Oran didn’t back away. His muscles flexed against the cold, and his skin was smeared with blood. A hundred tiny wounds. “Caledonia. I came to you because I needed help. And I’ve stayed with your crew because I need whatever is left of my life to be better than it was. But I won’t hide anything from you. Not ever. I will tell you anything you want to know. Just . . .” He pressed his lips together, the smallest hesitation urging him to stop. “Before you ask, make sure you want to know.”

She stared straight into his tree-ring eyes. Part of her wanted to demand he tell her everything—all the things that made Sledge loathe him, all the things that made the rest of the Blades cower from him, all the things she didn’t know. But another part? She was afraid.

Caledonia swallowed hard. Her eyes fell to the marks over his heart. Hers was one of several shallow cuts. She wondered if he knew which one. Without Silt in his blood they would scar in the natural brown of his skin. His own mark on her life wasn’t visible, but it was just as pronounced.

“I need you to know something about me,” she said. “Lir killed my family. I met him on a shore run in the Bone Mouth. Alone. And he asked me for mercy. He said he wanted a different life, and I believed him.” She paused, grinding her teeth at the memory. “That was the first time a Bullet lied to me, and I lost nearly everything because of it.”

Oran’s eyes widened in sudden understanding. “Of course. Of course that was you.”

Anger spiked in Caledonia’s veins. Lir’s words from the night she attacked him on his ship snaked through her memory. You gave me a great gift that night. And the gift she’d given Lir? That was his power. He’d risen to the rank of Fiveson on the bones of her slain family. Oran may not have known who they were, but he’d have heard about that night.

And he’d have done something just as horrible to become a Fiveson.

The realization forced her back a step.

“Caledonia?” Oran asked, concerned.

“What did you do?” she demanded. “To become a Fiveson?”