The sight of it should have felt impossible.
It didn’t.
It felt correct.
I moved past her without speaking.
Torvin stood in the third cell, and that was where my steps slowed. His hands were bound in front of him, and for the first time since I had known him, he wasn’t the one holding the key. He looked smaller without purpose in his hands. Without the chain, without the gloves, without the permission to touch what could hurt me.
My ankle remembered him.
Not with pain now.
With truth.
The place where the wolfsbane chain had sat no longer burned, but memory still knew the shape of it. I remembered the click of metal, the gloves over his hands, the way he never looked at me like I was a person. He looked at me now.
He tried to hold my gaze.
He failed.
Vaela moved inside me, calm a
