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With a moment left to his own devices, stood outside of the abandoned inn that Anca had made her temporary home and waiting to see what she had managed to make of his curious red herb, Coen had thought to test the weight of his new blade.
It had a different balance to the one he'd discarded, and as he brought it again and again against the tattered wood post he found himself overthinking it - every swing a little less natural than it ought to be.
Or perhaps he'd become too used to swinging at people, not posts.
He was building up a little sweat in the midday sun; this stop had felt too short to finish off any other business nearby, but Anca's work on this day was potent - something else she was brewing filling up the small, darkened room with sharp overwhelming scent, proving too much for his senses.
He wasn’t sure if perhaps this was some part of his change, certainly he’d become much more aware of scents when the moon was overhead, but … either way, he'd opted to wait outside.
He took another swing; an upward blow to the left side, before bringing the blade round, readying to make his next strike.
“Careful with your feet,” his now familiar presence spoke up, “or you will give away your next move too early. Keep them guessing.”
Coen pulled back, holding his form a moment longer.
“Keep a post guessing?”
“You are training, aren't you? Unless this is your taking up sculpting. Not sure it's your calling.”
Coen shifted.
“Sword swinging advice from the finest blade in Vale Sangora?” Coen asked, waving his blade as he spoke, adding, “or at least, the second.”
“Aha -” Ambrus gave an unamused laugh, “don't sprain a wrist patting yourself on the back there, Coen.”
Coen resisted the urge to dig at him a little harder for now, although the thought of doing so had some appeal, instead simply casting his eyes over himself, inviting Ambrus to take stock of his stance.
“Is this you asking for more of it?” Ambrus asked, a tiny bit of sourness to his voice; an understandably raw nerve Coen had touched there.
“Well, you were a soldier.”
“Even a good one, once,” Ambrus replied, “who trained you with a blade, anyway?”
“My father,” Coen said, “he was a mercenary.”
“Is,” Ambrus corrected, “that is not an occupation you get to leave behind, and he’s not dead yet.”
Coen felt something of a stone in his throat. He tried to swallow it down, and lifted the hilt of his sword again, prompting with a gesture - ‘well?’
“Shoulders up,” Ambrus said, and Coen followed as instructed, lifting his spine, “look down at your feet.”
Coen did so. His boots were filthy.
“You see?”
Coen didn't, particularly.
“See what?”
“Your right foot,” Ambrus supplied, “you are already taking your next step, a strike to the right flank. Not all of your opponents will be feckless bandits, relentless wolves or fearsome posts.”
“I trained my men,” Ambrus added, a little sterner and serious, “granted you've cut down a great deal of them, but you'll make yourself a harder target if you don't tell them where you intend to go.”
Coen considered that, and took a step back to reset, picturing an imaginary opponent and taking a swing at the air and a more deliberate step forward as he imagined it landing and drawing back the blade, adjusting his stance as his foot landed.
“Better,” Ambrus said.
“Hm,” Coen struck again at the post now, sending a fresh shard of wood into the air with a crack “you saw me coming when I tried to step through the shadows past you, too.”
He remembered how incredibly annoying that was - zipping through Ambrus to launch an attack from behind only to get an elbow to the face.
“You signal that too,” Ambrus said, “it's your expression, before you move.”
Coen pulled a face.
“Not that one, I don't think,” Ambrus said, “although you might have to show me in a reflection to be sure.”
Coen pulled another, frustrated. Now he was just being unhelpful.
“Well, I was unpredictable enough in the end,” he said.
“Because you hardly know what you're doing,” Ambrus countered, “and you kept throwing sand in my face, very dignified of you - that.”
“It worked,” Coen shot back.
“Yes,” Ambrus sighed, “it did.”
Coen raised his sword once more.
“Go on,” he said, “show -”
He corrected himself quickly.
“Tell me. How I might disguise my attacks.”
There was a pause, and then a small, contemplative sound from his passenger.
“It would be easier if I could,” Ambrus said, voice tilting a little, almost wistful, “show you. If I could adjust your grip…”
He trailed, and Coen's grip on his hilt tightened as the pause between them stretched perhaps a beat too long.
“How?”
“A little looser than that,” Ambrus said, “you're used to a heavier blade.”
He spoke slowly, now, instructive - firm, but patient.
“Lighten your fingers; think of the blade like a heavy rope, taut, not tied - with enough give to manoeuvre, now - tilt -”
Coen tried to follow the words, tried to imagine what Ambrus was describing, but it was difficult to picture. There was something else, too; a tension to him that went beyond the thrum in his limbs of putting them to practice.
His pulse had fallen out of step, somewhere. Shifting from its steady, determined beat like marching steps to something stumbling; missed footsteps on unsteady ground.
Coen slid his fingers about the hilt as Ambrus told him to tilt his grip, and felt compelled by this new feeling to speak. Perhaps because he feared that if he had noticed it, Ambrus would do too.
“Better?”
“Better,” Ambrus replied, “now - your shoulders, remember?”
“Shoulders up,” Coen repeated, straightening his stance, “like this?”
“Like what?”
Coen startled, thrown for a moment by the interruption of Anca's voice. Those unsteady stumbles in his chest coming to a jolting halt.
She leant against the doorframe, peering out at him from the dim light within, one hand shielding her eyes from the bright daylight with a bemused smile.
“Oh,” she said, “I thought there was-”
Her eyes cast around the space, looking for someone else.
“Just talking to myself,” Coen said quickly, regaining his composure, offering a smile back.
“Right,” Anca said, but her expression didn't quite shift, “here - I've finished your blend, come.”
He sheathed his blade once more, hilted at his side, and watched her disappear inside.
“Training for another time, perhaps,” Ambrus said, and almost, if Coen weren’t imagining it - sounded a little disappointed.
“Mm,” Coen gave a murmur of agreement, still feeling momentarily off balance, and wondering if he was, too.
That had been close, he thought, as he moved to follow Anca.
“Oh, don't worry Coen,” Ambrus chimed cheerily as he did, “you talk to yourself quite frequently. She probably believed you.”
–
Coen wiped the blood from his lips as the body of the bandit slumped to the floor, unconscious, the pulse of hunger rippling through him that he tried to ignore - he’d barely taken enough to sate himself for now, and the urge to go further was loud as his ears thudded with it.
Ambrus must have felt his hunger, and his gut churn with guilt, speaking up quietly as a few feet away Lacra finished up her kill - having made no similar pretense of restraint.
“They ambushed you,” Ambrus said, reasoning, “and you know the consequences of ignoring this, Coen, you saw what happened to-”
“I know,” Coen muttered quickly, cutting him off. Now wasn’t the time for such questions, not with Lacra only a step or two away, and rising to her feet.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve idly, and gestured with a hand to Coen - continuing their path back towards the ruins of the tower.
The night was past the small hours, headed towards the sunrise, which meant her time was getting shorter - a retreat to her temporary safety was necessary and her scouting would need to wait. Coen would continue on, he supposed, as the dawn rose. Whatever tools and instruments they could still gather against Brencis, now was the time to find them.
“Who is it, then?” Lacra asked, glancing at Coen sidelong as they walked up the mountainside.
“Mm?”
“Our invisible guest,” Lacra said, brow raising slightly.
Coen glanced in her direction, dubious. Did she mean-?
“I think perhaps this time we’ve been rumbled,” Ambrus said dryly.
Coen didn’t manage to stop himself from casting an eye upward as if he could glare at the voice in his own skull somehow, pulling a face to respond to Ambrus silently, yes, I’d worked that out, which made Lacra’s brow notch up a little higher.
“Not that you’d have had many opportunities,” she continued, “so an educated guess, given what you’ve been up to in your short time walking the night, would be…”
She stopped now, turning to him, fixing Coen with a scrutinising look, before giving a small, wry smile.
“Ah,” she said, tilting her head, “the young Boyar.”
Then she lifted a hand, giving a rather wan wave of greeting.
“Hello, Ambrus. I won’t say it’s a pleasure.”
“Ha!” Ambrus’s laugh in his head was sharp, blunt, “astute. She’s fun.”
“How did you know?” Coen asked, ignoring Ambrus as best he could.
Lacra’s expression was flat.
“You said you’d been to Anachora before, and when I refused Isbrand you looked less clueless than usual about what that meant,” her tone was just as flat as she continued, “I put a few things together.”
Coen shifted a little on the spot under her gaze, wondering if that expression came with some judgement. It felt perhaps like it did.
He didn’t know quite what to say, so he said nothing.
“Not a choice I would’ve made, but, I suppose you are new to this,” she said, adding with a voice of dripping sarcasm, “well, he must be thrilled. How fortunate for him, and unfortunate for you. What’s that like, then?”
She started walking again, so Coen fell back in step.
“You don’t know?” He asked, curious.
“No,” Lacra replied, “I’ve never done it, and as you saw, would not, even for someone …”
She trailed, gesturing, not keen - Coen supposed - to relive her choice to leave Isbrand back there, or anything else about that visit.
“I do understand what it entails, however,” she said, “so - what is it like, having our fellow fledgling in there - stewing in his failures and mourning the loss of his pretty hair?”
“A little less fun, now,” Ambrus supplied, sourly.
Coen’s lips quirked with a hint of an involuntary smile, he tried to banish it quickly.
“He thanks you for the compliment,” Coen said.
“I bloody didn’t,” Ambrus supplied, which made pushing down the smile harder.
“Did he now?” Lacra’s brow was raised again, eyes flicking across Coen’s face, “I can’t imagine he’s enjoying the show. It must stick in his teeth, having to watch us tear down our shared sire.”
Coen waited a beat for Ambrus to comment, but he didn’t.
“I suppose Brencis’s little pet is no threat to us now,” Lacra added, “at least he’s even more useless than he was before, but I doubt that stops the piss and vinegar. How is the endless complaining?”
Coen shrugged.
“He doesn’t complain,” he replied, “well, not much. He’s -”
Coen trailed.
It was odd, talking about this, knowing Ambrus was there to hear the conversation about him - but he did want to talk about it to someone; it had somehow started to feel like a secret, one he couldn’t divulge to Anca, and definitely not one he’d mention to Marat and the others - they already had troubles enough trusting him without his letting slip he had one of their enemies providing thoughts in his skull.
Lacra was waiting, her expression still skeptical.
“Quite helpful really,” Coen concluded.
“’Helpful’? Helpful how?” Lacra didn’t just seem skeptical, now disbelieving.
“Well, he spotted that ambush, for a start,” Coen said, the freshest example in a series of them that he’d find hard to deny, at this point, “that uh - that wasn’t me.”
“You’re welcome,” Ambrus chimed in unhelpfully.
Lacra kept walking, picking up her pace.
“Interesting,” she said, in a way Coen had no idea how to interpret.
When she was a few steps further ahead, Coen opened his mouth - wanting to speak, to address Ambrus - but stopped himself short.
Not here, and not now; but a thought had started to creep in.
A swallowing feeling growing inside of him, something that felt like trepidation - of fear - but wasn’t - as he followed her in silence, glancing up at the shifting sky turning red with dawn.
-
Coen barely broke his step, dipping to snatch a red berry from the ground as he went and bringing it to his lips - it was only small, barely a mouthful, but it snapped satisfyingly as he bit into it.
It was sweet, sharp; a wild strawberry.
The moment it hit his tongue he heard a sound - amplifying his own small murmur of appreciation but echoing in his skull.
“Oh-”
Coen swallowed down the bite, pursing his lips a moment for the juice.
Had Ambrus just tasted that?
He felt the presence in his mind ripple as it sometimes did, and he was growing to understand the different subtle sensations. Ambrus had been surprised again.
“I loved strawberries,” Ambrus said, and it almost sounded sheepish. He hadn't meant to react.
“Me too,” Coen said, “there weren't many around the village, but, there was a glade me and Mirto used to pick them - we had to move quickly to get to them before Lunka did -”
He trailed. For a moment he'd almost forgotten himself, forgotten everything about this situation, who he was talking to, even - the simple act of plucking a strawberry, of tasting it, transporting him to another life..
This was supposed to be a short diversion; his new blade had proved impressive but not impressive enough, and he'd been set on the path for the shards of one even greater - a sword of Mihai. Which was what had led him here to walking this hillside as the sun climbed overhead.
Thinking of Lunka, of his family, reminded him once more how little time there was left. Of decisions looming. Here he was wasting it eating strawberries and looking for bits of a sword.
“I hadn't had one for …” Ambrus disrupted his gloomy thoughts, “a while, before I was turned. Not since I'd last seen-”
Coen’s steps slowed a little. Had Ambrus, perhaps, lost himself in a memory too?
“Wouldnt have been far from here,” Ambrus continued in a mumble, trailing.
In all these days with this presence in his mind, Coen had asked him so little about himself, his past, even when Ambrus had witnessed his own first hand back in the tower of a madman.
“Who?” Coen asked.
He felt something there, too; a little tilt within his mind that wasn't his own. Not quite a feeling, but something.
“... Coen,” Ambrus’s voice was different, now, “there is somewhere I'd like to go - but -”
Coen dropped the stem of the strawberry, and sucked his fingertips clean.
“Not leading me into a trap are you?” He asked idly. Was it trepidation he sensed from Ambrus?
“...and trap myself, again?” Ambrus replied, “although there would be some danger involved, I expect.”
“What sort of danger?” Coen asked, curious.
He was starting to pin down what it was he could hear in Ambrus's voice now; more like he'd sounded back in Anachora. Something desperate.
“Less than the sort you usually manage to get yourself into on your own, and nothing you can't handle,” Ambrus said, adding, “and … that I am asking you to handle.”
“Ambrus,” Coen shifted, “what's this about? I .. don't have much time for …”
“I know,” Ambrus replied, somewhat somber.
Another shift.
“It doesn't matter. Carry on as you were, Coen.”
Those last few words were perhaps the most he'd ever sounded like the soldier he'd once been. Just earlier that day this same man had helped him train the strikes of his blade; he'd been someone, before he was the Kynaz's right hand, and the longer he stayed in Coen's head the more Coen was starting to understand who that might be.
“Alright,” Coen said with some resignation, reasoning that he'd helped creatures and spirits of all sorts with their woes whilst the spectre of time loomed over him, he could help another. This was no different to that.
“Tell me where.”
-
In his hands, Coen held a letter. A murohn lay defeated at his feet, face down in the mud, and a strange feeling lurched around in his gut.
Why had Ambrus brought him here?
“Long time no see,” Ambrus had said, a tone of something bitter in his voice, but now the one who had guided him to this place had gone quiet once more.
He unfolded the letter, and immediately, he understood why.
The letter was addressed to Ambrus.
As his eyes trailed across the words, realising he was reading the words of a lover and feeling a great sense of intrusion, he tore his eyes away.
“I know what they say, Coen,” Ambrus said.
Coen swallowed.
“Do you want me to read it?” He asked.
There was a pause.
“You'll understand this if you do,” Ambrus replied.
Coen began reading again. This woman, Rozalia - sounded truly heartbroken, waiting for her soldier to reply.
“Ambrus,” Coen looked down at the body of the murohn once more, confused. Why had this letter been on this body?
“There will be other letters here,” Ambrus said, “if -”
Coen had done this much for him; he'd not stop now. So, he searched about this small, long abandoned hut in the marshes, and the long dead bodies littered about it.
Ambrus, as he often proved to be, was right.
Two more letters. Another from Rozalia, and one written in a familiar slant that Coen recognised without needing to see its signature, although more steadily and carefully written than the hasty, furious notes from Ambrus he'd seen before.
‘My love-’
-
Coen's eyes trailed over the words, and as he read them, so too did Ambrus - unable to look away - trapped in Coen's eyes to see what he saw. This particular torture, however, was one well deserved.
What delusions I had, he thought as he read his own words to the woman he'd loved, how sure I had been she would share them.
“Be ready, my heart, for I shall not endure eternity without you, always and forever…” Coen read those last words aloud, a final twist of the blade into Ambrus's soul that he wished couldn't hurt him anymore.
“Ambrus-” Coen started, and he could feel it - the tension in the dawnwalker’s neck and shoulders, the rising temperature of his blood, the confusion and latent anger at what he was coming to understand of the situation mingling in a way Ambrus appreciated - these bodily sensations, this horror, was how he should feel.
“What did you do to her, Ambrus?” Coen asked quietly.
“Offered her eternity, with me,” he said, “an offer she refused.”
“So you made her into a monster?” Coen bristled, and Ambrus felt it.
“You assume the worst of me, right away?” Ambrus replied, unable to stop himself bristling back.
As if this wound were not raw enough - Coen - Coen of Laslea, who had never given him any sort of chance to reason with him first before he'd made him his obstacle to destroy and kill, of course would see half of this picture and condemn him, even -
“Then tell me what I'm supposed to see, here, Ambrus,” Coen replied, his fist gripped tightly.
Ambrus had seen Coen’s shame; in this moment he wished he could see his own. Perhaps if he could see his face, at least, he would believe him.
“I loved her, Coen,” Ambrus said, “and I thought finally I could give her a life worth having - I wanted her to see - to understand what I'd become, what I could be now that I was finally free -”
“What happened, Ambrus?”
“She was horrified. Not… not that I was a vrakhir, not that I served Brencis, by…”
He remembered it. He remembered it so horribly clearly. The look of horror in those wide eyes, how her rose cheeks had drained to white.
“My face.”
He felt Coen's body shift - his anger faltering.
“Your scars,” Coen realised.
“What they'd done to me, she said,” Ambrus replied.
How could he still hear her voice? An echo in an echo - you said you were healed, but your face, Ambrus - what did they do to your -
“She could hardly look at me,” Ambrus said, “I was reborn, better than I'd ever been, but all she could see was something dead. I shouted at her. I was furious, I was … hurt, how dare she see me as a victim when I was finally anything but?”
She'd been so afraid. He'd been so angry, so hurt, that at the time he couldn't apologise or comfort her fear.
“I terrified her, screamed at her - but, it wasn't me that killed her.”
Coen took in a deep breath. He was frustrated, but Ambrus could feel a bit of relief at that.
“How did she end up like this?”
“You heard Lacra's story. You know your own. Surely, Coen, you can guess?”
“...Brencis.”
Coen guessed correctly.
“I should have known he'd followed me,” Ambrus explained, winding this sorry tale of woe to its end, “he'd even blessed me to make the offer to her - a reward for my loyalty. He told me how I would make her just as he'd made me - but when she refused me, he …”
“He suggested a different reward,” Ambrus said, reliving it now with the clarity of being dead again, with no body to cloud his mind with rage and panic, “he told me that I would be her hero. I would prove nothing had changed, and I was everything I'd told her I had become.”
Coen was looking down at the body of what hadn't been Rozalia for a long, long time, and Ambrus could feel his stomach lurching. He didn't blame him.
“Brencis slashed her side, and then watched me do it - watched me save her exactly as he'd instructed.”
“Then he waited with me all night as she changed… and changed again.”
“‘It is a blessing’ he told me, ‘that she was not strong enough to survive the change, as you are. She did not love what you have become’.”
Ambrus sighed.
“‘Now nothing holds you back from who you can be, not even the ties of your past. You can be whoever you want, do whatever you want.’”
He knew the truth of that, now. He'd witnessed all the same memories Coen had back in Anachora. He'd seen exactly where those words had come from.
“...and I let myself believe that.”
Coen looked away from the body, abruptly, starting to walk with some determination from the sight, but he said nothing.
Ambrus didn't know how Coen felt now. The feelings in his body were too jumbled, mixed up, and he didn't know why he was leaving, either.
“Coen?”
“I finished your business,” Coen said sharply, “that's why you asked me to come here, isn't it? So I could finally do what you should have done for her already.”
Ambrus hesitated.
“You aren't the only one who couldn't face their guilt,” he said.
Coen took in a breath.
“I know,” he replied, “which is why we're leaving. We've been punished enough.”
-
Coen held a new blade in his hand once more; a sword of Mihai, and he brought it through the air, feeling it glide and slice. It was a fine weapon; he hoped one that had been worth the considerable trouble of crafting it.
He held it aloft a moment, turning it over, and caught his own reflection in its edge, bathed in the deep coral of dusk.
“A beautiful bit of work,” Ambrus said quietly. Coen agreed; not that he expected he knew as much about swordcraft as Ambrus likely did.
There were more things than ever to talk about between them; and yet Coen had pushed through to focus upon this task, this blade, and buried thoughts of Rozalia and Catalin Skender and the choices that laid ahead.
In a day he'd need to return to Marat and reckon with their plans, and he felt no more at ease about what would transpire when he did than he had two dusks before.
Coen turned the blade, banishing his reflection.
“Let’s hope it's enough,” he said, turning to sit atop a half crumbled wall and take in the view of the valley below instead, the sword resting at his side.
Ambrus was quiet, and Coen supposed he didn’t blame him. Soon enough Coen would make his journey to face Brencis, and given what he'd learnt about Ambrus's history with him, he could see that picture was more complicated than it had seemed. He'd said nothing further of Rozalia or the letters since they'd walked away from that place. Coen still had questions, however.
“Ambrus. In her letters - Rozalia said it was Skender who did that to you,” Coen said, breaching the topic at last without much tact, “who burnt you.”
“Long may he rot,” Ambrus replied, tone cold and darkened, “in the shame and disgrace he deserved.”
“... why did you do it - you were one of his men - why did you defy him?” Coen asked.
“Why?” Ambrus sounded bemused, surprised it was even a question, “why did I fight back, after a lifetime with a heel pressed to my jaw for the service of Skender and his ‘noble’ men? The ones who grew fat whilst we starved, ordered me to skewer my neighbours for not having enough to pay? To butcher sick, dying children so the plague would spare the heirs of our lords? That man deserved his death.”
“You of all people should understand," Ambrus added, a small sound in his voice, like bitter amusement, “you were there when he got it.”
Coen swallowed.
“I remember,” Coen replied. He’d never forget; cradling Lunka, desperately shielding her frail body as Skender and his men came for them, and he’d been sure they would both die.
The first night he’d laid eyes on a vrakhir, and when he’d first met the man to whom he spoke now.
“But you defied him before that,” Coen asked, “before Brencis.”
“Quite reckless, you'll agree. There might've been enough of us to take him had the others not been such cowards,” Ambrus said, bitterly, “Skender told me I'd never speak a word against him again - that he’d make sure I never could.”
Coen didn't know what to say to him.
Well, he knew something he wanted to say - and felt a little flicker of anger fresh in his gut - thinking of this same man collecting their tithes as the golden right hand of Brencis two years after that night.
How could a man who had stood against Skender’s cruelty turn around and deliver it in the name of another? Couldn’t he see it was the same thing?
“Oh, you don't need to tell me, Coen,” Ambrus said, as if he’d heard the questions he hadn’t asked, “that I simply traded my masters for the chance to live. That I paid the freedom of others for my own.”
“I … don't understand how you could,” Coen said.
There was a long pause, and when Ambrus spoke again, his voice was almost soft.
“... and still you doubt you are a good man, Coen?”
Coen shook his head.
“All those grim displays, those nobles you hunted and butchered,” he said, “your ‘fitting’ punishments for their treatment of us - did … did you think you were changing something?”
“Do you?” Ambrus asked quietly, "Aren’t you killing your oppressors? Siding with the rebels to install Skender's son, instead?”
“Or is this still just about saving your family, Coen?”
That last question stuck in his side, piercing any anger he felt at the ones before it.
But he's right.
Ruler after ruler, for people like us, nothing changes. We end up paying in blood either way.
Everything just gets worse, and now my family -
“I'll kill Brencis for what he's done to us and what he intends to do, I'll stop him at any cost,” he said, “you know that, don't you?”
Ambrus didn't reply for a moment.
“You keep helping me. Training me, warning me, talking to me,” Coen added, “like it's more than just keeping me alive or keeping yourself out of Anachora…”
“Coen,” Ambrus spoke up, something tentative in his voice. Something careful.
Coen waited. He needed to understand.
Eventually Ambrus spoke again.
“You killed me, then you saved me. You offered me mercy without any cost, and without any reason. You did it again today.”
He sighed.
“I was dying when Brencis offered me power,” he said, “in more pain than you could know and filled with so much hate I could've torn down the walls with my bare hands. That's why he chose me, and why I think he tried to choose you.”
“I made a choice that night that cost more than just my life, that cost Rozalia hers, and, still I called it a blessing. I kept making that same choice over and over because I didn't want to die again.”
He hesitated.
“... and it didn't save me from dying to you, did it?”
“Now I don't have a body to hurt any more, no blade to meter justice, nothing to prove, and nothing to protect but…”
Another pause.
“You.”
Coen exhaled, and didn’t realise he’d been holding in breath for so long.
In the confines of his skull, Ambrus gave a small, grim laugh.
“The only person to offer me real kindness for nothing in my life is the man that ended it. That’s a rather cruel story, isn't it?”
Coen's gut twisted. Like someone had tied it up into a knot, and was pulling it tight.
“You really are just helping me, aren't you? Even if it means killing him?” He asked.
“For my considerable sins,” Ambrus replied, trying to sound lighter again, and failing.
“You were there to see me kill the man who destroyed my life,” he added, “and it seems I will get the honor of the same. If your plan is to plunge this blade through Brencis's heart then…”
“I’ll be here, making sure you don't fuck it up.”
Coen looked up; felt the breeze on his face, the hilt of the blade under his fingertips, and watched the sky turning indigo like a bruise.
“Just like that?” He asked.
“Just like that,” Ambrus replied.