Chapter 11
Only one person had ever called me that. A boy with ink-stained knuckles and dirt under his nails, who used to sit on the library balustrade of the Vance estate in the high summers, tossing plum stones into the courtyard while I copied ledgers. A boy who had supposedly died screaming in the fire that consumed my father’s house ten years ago.
Silas’s chest rose and fell, the smile dying, replaced by an expression so raw, so heavy with unspoken mourning, that it knocked the air from my lungs.
"Does it matter?" he whispered. "You're holding the knife."
"It matters," I hissed, leaning over him, gripping the edge of his torn shoulder with perhaps more force than was merciful. "Vane said you traded yourself. He said you begged for my life on the night of the Purge. He said you gave them the name *Lucian Vance* to put on the execution block."
I leaned closer, our faces inches apart in the flickering tallow light. I could see the flecks of amber in his dark eyes, the fine network of surgical scarring that ringed his cheeks and jawline—skin that looked as though it had been flayed, tailored, and sewn back together by a madman's needle.
"Who are you?" I demanded, my hands trembling against his wet skin. "Why are you wearing the butcher's face? Why have you spent ten years letting me hunt you?"
Silas looked up at me, his gaze never wavering. He didn't flinch from the anger in my eyes, nor the blade in my hand.
"If I told you," he murmured, his voice softening until it barely carried over the steady drip of water from the vault above, "you wouldn't cut the iron out. You’d drive it deeper."
"Try me."
"No." He reached up, his large, bloodied hand covering mine where it gripped his shoulder. His skin was burning hot, the fever already setting in, but his fingers were steady. "Save the questions for when we're dead, Lucian. Pull the bolt."
I stared at him, my heart hammering against my ribs like a caged beast. The sheer absurdity of it—the towering, scarred fugitive who had haunted my nightmares, whom I had sworn by the bones of my ancestors to slaughter, sitting before me, submitting his flesh to my hands with absolute, unquestioning surrender.
He trusted me completely. More than that: he was looking at me with the quiet, desperate hunger of a starving man looking at bread he was forbidden to touch.
"Bite down on your belt," I said coldly, breaking the gaze.
He shook his head. "Just do it."
I took a deep breath, setting my jaw. With my left hand, I pinned his uninjured shoulder to the dais. With my right, I gripped the jagged iron shaft.
"One," I whispered.
I didn't count to two.
I shoved the bolt forward, driving the barbed head through the thick muscle of his trapezius until the iron point burst through the skin at the back of his shoulder with a sickening wet pop.
Silas didn't scream.
He arched off the stone, a strangled, guttural sound tearing from his chest as every tendon in his neck snapped taut. His hands flew to my hips, fingers digging into my leather coat with crushing force, pulling me down against him as his body locked in agony.
I didn't hesitate. I drew my wire-cutters from my field pouch, snapped the barbed iron head off the shaft with a sharp crack, and pulled the remaining rod back out through the front of his shoulder in one smooth, agonizing pull.
A gush of hot, dark blood poured over my hands.
Silas collapsed forward, his forehead slamming into my shoulder. He was panting heavily, harsh, ragged sobs of breath shaking his entire frame. His grip on my waist didn't loosen; if anything, he pulled me closer, burying his face into the curve of my neck, his hot breath washing over my skin.
"It's out," I whispered, my own breath coming fast. "The iron is out."
He didn't pull away.
His body was a furnace against mine. In the freezing subterranean damp, the heat of him was intoxicating, terrifying. I could feel every shuddering rise and fall of his chest against mine, the slick friction of our soaked clothing, the terrible, magnetic gravity of his presence that I had spent ten years trying to obliterate.
"You're a terrible surgeon," he breathed against my skin. His lips moved against the sensitive hollow beneath my ear, sending an involuntary shiver down my spine.
"You're a terrible fugitive," I countered, my hands hovering over his bleeding shoulder, uncertain whether to shove him away or wrap my arms around his broad, broken back. "You keep getting caught."
"Only by you."
The words were so quiet, so devoid of defense, that they struck harder than any blow.
I pulled back slightly, forcing him to meet my eyes. He let me, though his hands remained anchored to my hips, large and possessive even in his weakness. His face was pale beneath the dirt and old scars, his dark hair plastered across his brow.
"Why?" I demanded, the anger draining from my voice, leaving only a hollow, aching bewilderment. "Why did you come for me at the Redoubt? Why didn't you let Vane take my head ten years ago? Why are you carrying this?"
I touched the scarred line along his jaw—the seam where flesh had been sliced and pulled.
Silas shuddered under my touch. His eyes closed for a fraction of a second, leaning infinitesimally into the cup of my hand, before opening again with an intensity that burned.
"Because they were going to kill you, Lucian," he said, each word carved from sheer exhaustion. "They had the forged manifests. They had your father's signet. They had twenty witnesses ready to swear you sold the northern garrisons to the border clans. You were twenty years old. You were a boy who loved books and ink, and they were going to hang your skin from the city gates."
"So you took the blame?" My voice cracked. "You became the Butcher of the Reach? You slaughtered forty men at the river crossing—"
"The men at the crossing were Vane’s death squad!" Silas snarled, a sudden flare of old, lethal iron flashing in his eyes. "They were sent to burn the Vance estate to the ground and erase every living witness! I didn't slaughter your family, Lucian! I bought your escape with their blood!"
The words echoed off the vaulted ceiling, bouncing off the faces of the stone saints.
I stared at him, the world tilting beneath my boots.
"No," I whispered. "No. Vane showed me the dispatch. He showed me the blood on your blade—"
"Vane used you," Silas said, his voice dropping, rough and thick with a decade of unspeakable agony. "He took the broken, grieving boy left behind, put a silver hound's collar around your neck, and handed you a leash. He turned you into the weapon that would hunt down the only man who knew the truth."
He lifted a hand, his calloused thumb gently, impossibly brushing the curve of my lower lip, wiping away a smear of river mud.
"And God help me," Silas whispered, his voice cracking, "even when you were hunting me, even when you drove a spear through my side at the Black Fens... every time I saw your face across the battlefield, I was glad you were still alive."
