Chapter 90 – Quinton
QUINTON
Ididn’t remember deciding to leave. One moment I was standing in the corridor outside the common room, Dain’s words still ringing in my skull like a hammer strike, and the next I was moving—boots pounding stone, breath coming too fast, chest tight enough it felt like my ribs might crack.
Seventeen.
The word wouldn’t let go.
I didn’t know where I was going. Didn’t care. I walked—then stalked—then nearly ran until the air outside hit my face and burned my lungs clean.
The training ring loomed ahead, empty at this hour, the torches guttering low around its edge. Sand darkened by old sweat and older blood. Familiar. The only place I knew how to come undone without anyone watching.
I stepped into the ring and stopped dead. My breath hitched. Then it broke.
I doubled forward, hands braced on my knees as my breathing turned ragged, sharp pulls of air that didn’t feel like enough. My heart slammed against my ribs, too fast, too loud, like it was trying to escape my chest.
“Fuck,” I rasped, voice torn raw. “Fuck?—”
Seventeen.
Bound. Used. Bleeding.
And me?
I slammed a fist into the wooden post beside the ring. The impact shuddered up my arm, pain flaring up to my spine.
Good.
I hit it again. And again. Skin split. Knuckles burned. I barely felt it.
“She couldn’t tell me,” I muttered hoarsely. “She couldn’t.”
The words weren’t an accusation. They were disbelief and horror.
I slid down until my back hit the post, legs giving out beneath me. I ended up sitting in the sand, forearms braced on my thighs, head hanging low as my hair fell into my eyes.
All those times. Every careful dodge. Every deflection. Every moment she’d gone still when I asked about the ball, about the man who’d pinned her, about the past she refused to name.
Stars above.
If she’d tried to tell me, it would’ve killed her.
A broken sound tore out of me, and I dragged a hand down my face, smearing blood across my cheek without noticing.
“I thought I was the danger,” I whispered. “I thought my blood magic was hurting you.”
My fingers curled, my hands shook. Turns out my magic had been brushing up against a shackle. Against a fracture that never healed. Against something owned by another man. My stomach twisted violently.
“And I was fighting for them,” I said, voice cracking now. “While he was doing that to you.”
Dravareth banners. Orders followed. Battles fought.
All that time, she was a child in a camp.
Forced to kill. Blood on her hands because a councilor decided she belonged to him.
Same war. Different sides of the same cage.
Because he owned her. I slammed my head back against the post, eyes squeezed shut.
She’d been seventeen. A child. And he’d used her like a blade he thought he owned—something to wield, stain, and return to its sheath.
“I would’ve burned the world for you,” I breathed. “If I’d known. If you could’ve told me.”
The worst part—the part that clawed deepest—was the knowing clarity settling in now.
Her distance hadn’t been rejection. It had been survival.
She hadn’t been afraid of me. She’d been afraid of what talking would cost.
A low, furious sound built in my chest, vibrating through my ribs. I pressed my palm flat to the sand, grounding myself as my blood magic stirred restlessly under my skin, responding to my turmoil.
“No more,” I said quietly, my voice steady despite the rage in it. “No more silence.”
My breathing slowed, fraction by fraction. The rage didn’t fade, but it sharpened.
Torven Kaelor had bound her with blood. Had owned her, used her, tried to break her. I would end him with it.
I pushed myself to my feet, shoulders squared despite the wreckage inside me, and stared across the empty ring as if I could already see the future written there.
“You’re not his, Azaria,” I murmured, voice steady now. “You never were.”
And this time?—
I would make damn sure she lived long enough to see that truth burn.