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I saved him...from himself.
But even as the desperate thought echoes, we're passing into the smoky shadows of the great hall. I blink, my eyes adjusting to the dimness, so different from the soaring stone and firelight of Grok's war room, his throne.
Focus, I castigate myself, shaking off the comparison with a surge of irritation. This is what matters now. This room, these people...not some fevered dream of forbidden lust.
You are Lily Thornwood, the Red Blade. Act like it.
Squaring my shoulders, I step into the circle of elders and councilors, feeling the weight of their expectations settling like a yoke across my shoulders, my soul.
"I have returned," I say formally, my voice steady despite the hammering of my heart. "I have seen and learned, and now I come to share what I know. To offer up the secrets of our enemy, the keys to their defeat, and the salvation of all we hold dear."
There's a charged silence, and then the questions start, fast and furious.
"What did you see, Red Blade? What weaknesses did you uncover?"
"How did you escape after so long in captivity?"
"What of their warlord, this Grok who so boldly claimed you? Is he as fierce as they say, or just another brute to be put down?"
I flinch at that last, a visceral recoil I can't suppress. The image of Grok flashes through my mind, proud and powerful, magnificent in his strength and savagery...but also strangely vulnerable, yearning, in the moments when he let his guard down.
The moments when he was just...Grok. My Grok, with his quick wit and quiet wisdom, his fierce devotion to his people, his purpose.
The Grok who held me close and called me mate, mine...and made me believe, if only for a scorching instant, that I could belong to him, body and soul.
Fool, I rail at myself, even as I feel the surge of emotion at the back of my throat. He was never yours, never true…it was all a lie o distract you, disarm you, until he could strike at the heart of all you love.
Just like he did with those human children...slaughtered in their beds for the crime of being born on the wrong side of a blood feud.
I close my eyes, feeling nausea roil in my gut. How could I have been so blind, so naive? How could I have let myself believe, even for a moment, that Grok was different, better, than the tales of his kind?
He's a monster. A murderer soaked in the blood of innocents. And I...I slept with him. I let him touch me, take me, fill me, until I was drunk on the bliss of his passion.
I let him make me his...even as he plotted to destroy everything I've ever held dear.
No more, I vow savagely. No more weakness, no more wavering. I will bury this shame, this stain on my soul...by burying him, and all his foul, festering kind.
Drawing a shaky breath, I open my eyes and face the council once more, my resolve hardening to a diamond point in my core.
"Grok is fierce, yes," I say steadily. "Fierce and fearless and ferocious in battle. But he is not invincible. Not invulnerable."
I pause, letting the words sink in. "He has weaknesses. Flaws and fault lines, chinks in his armor. The key is to find them, to exploit them...and to strike hard and fast and first, before he can rally, retaliate."
"What weaknesses do you speak of?" one of the elders presses. "What insights did you glean, in your time as the warlord's...guest?"
There's a suggestive glint in his gaze, and I feel my cheeks heat at the insinuation that I traded more than just words and wits with Grok. That I bartered my body, my dignity, for snatched secrets and intel.
If only you knew, I think bleakly. If only you understood the depth of what I gave him. What I surrendered, in the name of duty and destiny and a doom I never saw coming, until it was far too late.
Dimly, through the red haze of self-recrimination, I hear Thane clear his throat. "Sister," he murmurs. "You don't have to do this. You don't have to share anything you're not ready to. We can find another way, another path to victory..."
I shake my head jerkily, swallowing against the surge of gratitude, of grief, that rises up to choke me. Oh, Thane. My brave, steadfast brother...ever ready to be my shield, my shelter, against the storm and stress of a world, a war, that grows crueler by the day.
But you can't save me from this. You can't spare me the reckoning I've brought down on my own head, my own heart.
The price I must pay, for my folly.
"No," I rasp, my voice raw with the effort of holding myself together. "No, Thane. I have to do this. I have to help, in whatever way I can. It's the only way to make it right. To make it mean something."
