"I know," Reidar said.
"Do you really?" Lena's eyes blazed. "Aaron stood beside me during training sessions. We fought monsters together. I trusted him to watch my back when everything started. And he sold us all to the Church for power."
Reidar let her breathe, giving her the silence she needed and the time to vent. There were no words to describe the rage she felt, and certainly, Reidar wasn't trying to describe it. But he understood.
He knew it well, although not as well as Lena did, what rage was, as he constantly felt rage because of his inability to be with his family. He barely reached Creamont. His mother had been in a coma since the start of the apocalypse. All of that made him rage at a world that had decided to betray him. When the woman finally relaxed, it was shaky, but her shoulders squared.
The fire in her eyes didn't dim, but it settled, banked into something colder.
Reidar nodded. This was the Lena who had led scouts through monster-infested ruins.
