The silence that fell was louder than the screams had been.
It was a thick, ringing quiet, broken only by the howl of the storm outside and the harsh, ragged sound of two people trying to remember how to breathe. The air was hot, metallic with the scent of fresh blood.
Arin's hand, the one still clutching the long steel pin, was slick and trembling. The man she had killed lay at her feet, his one good eye staring sightlessly at the beamed ceiling.
She felt nothing. A terrifying, hollow calm.
Then her gaze lifted and met Auren's.
He was staring, his chest heaving, his dagger dripping crimson onto the fine rug. But he wasn't looking at the bodies on the floor.
He was looking at her. At her legs. At the fact that she was standing.
The shock on his face was stark, a slow-dawning horror that had nothing to do with the violence and everything to do with her. The helpless girl he had rescued, the broken prisoner he had tended to, was a lie.
