Page 43 of Dark Night of the Soul

But beneath it—beneath the bruises and blood—she was still here. Still herself.

And that was what they were testing.

They hadn’t beaten her to punish her.

They’d beaten her to measure her.

My vision tunneled. The chains pulled tight as I leaned forward anyway, every muscle screaming in protest. The iron cuffs bit into my wrists, skin already split and sticky with blood.

“Don’t give them what they want.” Her voice was a strained whisper.

And I knew what that meant.

Not surrender.

Not information.

Choice.

“And let them take you?” I said. “No.”

“They’re going to do it, anyway. Whether you agree to return or not.”

Heated fury spread through my chest, sharp and precise. The kind that planned.

“They won’t,” I said. It came out like a vow. Like something I could still make true.

She shook her head once.

“They’re not trying to kill me,” she said. “They’re trying to weaponize me. Like my mother.”

My breath stalled.

Not because I didn’t understand.

But because I did.

“The Brotherhood handed me over to the Knights,” she went on. “They’re going to use me like they did her. They’re going to alter me like they did her.”

Alter.

Not break. Not destroy.

Her violet eyes met mine then. Clear. Terrified. Enraged.

For one sickening moment, I imagined her standing here again—unafraid, unbroken—looking at me like a stranger. Like her mother looked at her.

Rage like I had never known filled my chest. Cold. Surgical.

“Then they’ve already signed their own deaths.”

“Not in time,” she said. Her voice was ice. Furious. Final.

“They don’t need to survive you,” I said. “Just me.”

“He asked about you,” she said. “What you’d do.”

Of course he had.