“I don’t think you’re fine,” Oran said. His gaze was so steady, she felt she could lean into it, let it support her for a moment or a turn.

She sighed, pulling away to rest her back against the windowsill, where the night breeze cooled the thin sheen of sweat now coating the back of her neck. “When I tell you I’m fine, your job is to believe me.”

“My job.”

“Oran,” she said, turning his name into both a protest and a request.

“I do believe you,” he said, voice low. “And I don’t.”

It was three words, but with them, he said so much. That he knew she was hurting. That he knew the fight had changed her as much as it had changed everything else. That even now, he wished she’d let him be the one to face Tassos. That he knew how her heart was shifting and twisting in on itself, struggling to keep its shape. But it was a useless battle. Where once her heart only needed to beat for herself and her crew, now it needed to beat for everyone.

“I would do it again,” she said. She pressed her lips between her teeth to stop herself from saying more. What more was there to say? She’d killed a man outside of battle, and there was no part of her that regretted the choice. It had been the right one even if it had been a terrible one.

Oran nodded mournfully. “You may have to.”

Caledonia had revisited the memory so many times already that it took very little to summon the image of Tassos kneeling before her, the firm pressure of his throat in her hands. She pressed her eyes closed, willing anything to take its place. Even blackness. But it played out in exquisite strokes. She felt the warm rush of blood over her fingers, saw the slump of his body, tasted the bile on her tongue. And she shuddered.

Oran stepped closer. “It will get easier.”

“Easier?” Horror elevated Caledonia’s voice. “I don’t want it to get easier, Oran, I want it to not be necessary.”

“If we do this right, it will be both.”

“I don’t want killing like that to be something I can do without feeling it!” she said, suddenly panicked. “And I should feel it more than I do, shouldn’t I? Have I changed so much that I can slit a man’s throat and hold court over his body for—for—”

Her breath came in short, pained gasps and she leaned forward, glad for the moment her hands met Oran’s chest and his arms encircled her back. He stroked her lightly, making soothing circles with his palm as the breeze grazed her bare shoulders. Soon her breathing was even and the vise around her throat loosened its hold.

“Oran,” she murmured, her forehead still pressed to his chest.