Page 50 of Guardian of Exile

“Because to me, it is.”

“And the other people I’ve killed?”

She could tell he either didn’t believe her, or she just hadn’t given him what he needed to hear. So she steered the conversation toward the only thing she knew to try to convince him. “Were those other killings in self defense?”

“Yes.”

“And did you enjoy it?”

“What?”

“Killing them. Did you enjoy it?”

“No.”

“Then you’re doing better than I am. I killed my uncle. It was not in self defense. I hunted him across the universe, and when I gave him his end, I enjoyed it immensely. I’d like to say I killed him because he was a terrible person, and he was. For a very long time. He did untold amounts of damage to an untold number of people, and he was in a position of privilege that guaranteed no one else was going to get rid of him.”

“But that’s not why you killed him?”

“No. I knew he was a terrible person long before I decided to risk my life to end his. I killed him because he took something from me. Something precious, that I loved, and I wanted to make him pay for it. I wanted to make sure that he could never do that to anyone else again, and I sleep better at night knowing he’s not in the universe anymore.”

“What did he take?”

Instead of answering him, she asked, “How did you survive, when you lost the Congregation?”

He hesitated, and she thought he was going to push her on Kiev, but in the end, he answered what she’d asked. “I almost didn’t. I certainly never expected to. You can’t grow up with the Congregation in your head and not understand the consequences of what I did. But I just…didn’t care anymore. I wanted him dead more than I wanted to live, because I’d rather have died on my terms than kept living on his.

“So I killed him, and the Congregation cast me out. It was…I don’t know how to describe it. Like having my soul ripped out, I guess? Or my foundation pulled out from under me? They were the one steady thing that was always a part of me.

“You slept better, after you killed your uncle? I hardly slept for weeks, after I killed Caruthers. Because my tether was gone. The Congregation was all I had left. They were the one connection I’d had to my former life, the one place I could go and feel completely safe and accepted, where it felt like someone understood everything about me and loved me anyway.

“And then in a blink they were gone. There was no goodbye, no chance of them coming back. I couldn’t chase after them and beg them to change their mind. I was just alone and half of me was gone and it fucking hurt.” He met her gaze. “Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

Nyx’s chest constricted. “Yes,” she said hoarsely. “I know exactly what that’s like.”

He must have caught the strain in her voice because understanding lit his eyes. “You lost someone.”

“Yes.”

“Is that what your uncle took from you?”

She didn’t want to answer him—it still felt too personal, too raw, like Seth was something too hers to share—but she made herself respond. “Yes.”

“Who?”

Her throat constricted. She never said his name anymore, and no one else did either. At the Station, that had felt like a kindness. An unspoken rule they all observed not to invoke his memory, to remind them all of what they had lost. Now…now it felt wrong, that they’d refused for so long to reference him aloud. “His name was Seth. Seth Connor Hawthorne.”

“Boyfriend?” he asked.

She nodded. And because she wanted him to understand—felt like she owed it to him to understand—that her horror when she’d first seen him had had nothing to do with his physical condition, she pulled her necklace chain from beneath her shirt. The Harvester and Jevryn’s ring were Hidden, but the third item on the chain was not—an archive stone she’d added to it after returning to the Station. It only contained only one thing: a picture that she couldn’t actually bring herself to look at anymore.

She pulled that picture up now showing it to Tristen. “And this is what he looked like.

Tristen stopped with his latte halfway to his mouth. “Shit.” He set the mug back down, staring at the photo. “Then when we met, that’s why you…?”

“Yeah.” She tucked the archive stone back behind her shirt and took a fortifying drink of her breve. “Turns out you’re a dead ringer for my dead boyfriend.” He looked like he had no idea what to say, which she understood, because there wasn’t really much to say to that. “Anyway, you were telling me a story.”

He’d told her how much losing the Congregation had hurt. He hadn’t told her how he’d survived.