"But you didn't see...the things I did," Ava rasps out in a tremulous whisper, shame and self-loathing twisting her gaunt features into a haunted rictus. "The d-depths of depravity I willingly sank to under their torments, like a broken, craven beast incapable of resistance."
She tries to avert her gaze, to shrink away from my piercing stare, but I refuse to let her withdraw inward. Cupping her sunken cheeks with a tender fierceness, I force Ava to meet my smoldering glare head-on.
"Look at me, little one," I rumble in a cadence that brooks no argument. "Whatever acts you were forced to commit, it changes nothing of who you are at your core - a blazing ember of defiance and unbroken spirit unlike anything I've ever encountered."
A ragged, choked-off sound halfway between a whimper and b
