“Sticky silk,” I muttered as I brushed it from my hair. I thought Trent should get over his pixy paranoia and admit he had an eerie attraction to them, like every other pure-blood elf I’d met. So he liked pixies. I liked double-crunch ice cream, but you didn’t see me avoiding it in the grocery store. My thoughts drifted to Bis in the belfry and being able to hear and feel the city’s ley lines when he touched me. No, that wasn’t the same at all.

Arms wrapped about me in the chill, I watched the steam from my breath catch the sun. The light felt thin and the sky looked transparent. I could smell coffee somewhere, and I gingerly rubbed the soft beginnings of scarring on my neck. My hand dropping, I breathed deep and pressed my feet into the rough stone the patio was tiled with. Dampness soaked my socks, but I didn’t care. Last night had been awful. The stuff of nightmares and torture.

I honestly hadn’t expected Quen to survive. I still didn’t believe he had. After the third time Dr. Anders had stuck her long nose in, I had escorted her out with a twisted arm, telling her if she came back, I was going to break her toes off and jam them up her ass. Quen had gotten a kick out of that. It had kept him fighting for about a half hour. After that, it got really bad.

My eyes closed, and I felt a prickling in my nose from the hint of tears. He had suffered longer and harder than anyone I’d ever seen, endured more than I’d thought possible. He hadn’t wanted to give in, but the pain and fatigue had been so great…I shamed him into taking just one more breath, bullied him, coaxed him. Anything to keep him alive and tortured though his muscles ached and each breath tore my soul as it tore his body. I reminded him to breathe when he forgot or pretended to forget, disgracing his honor until he took one more. Then another, and another—enduring the torment and shunning the peace that death offered.

My stomach hurt, and my eyes opened. Quen would hate me. The things I said…Hatred had kept him alive. No wonder he hadn’t wanted Trent in the room. Quen could hate me if he wanted, but somehow…I didn’t think he would. He wasn’t stupid. If I had truly hated him and meant what I’d said, I could have walked out of the room and let him die.