Ryder’s POV
"—then she was willing to let that fall on Ravenna."
The room received this the way rooms received irreversible things — quietly, and with the specific stillness of people who were not surprised but who had needed to hear it said before they could move past it.
I did not look away from Valkor when I finished the sentence. That felt important. Not because I expected anything from him in return — absolution, understanding, the particular warmth of a man who had raised me choosing to receive this confession as evidence of something redeemable. I had stopped expecting those things from Valkor a long time ago, and more recently I had stopped being certain I deserved them. I looked at him because it was the honest thing to do, and honesty was the only currency I had walked into th
