His gaze slid over her slowly. He looked at her face first. She felt him count each scar, each bruise. His eyes moved down to her arms where the water had made the skin shine. He paused at her knees. His brows lifted a fraction, his jaw clenched when he saw the bleeding wounds. Then his look went back to her face, to her hands, and finally into her eyes.

When his look landed on her eyes, she forgot to breathe. All the other pain seemed to stop. The burning in her knees, the stinging in her hand, for a moment they were only shapes at the edge of her mind. There was a strange, sharp feeling low in her body, from the fight but something else that tightened her chest and heated her skin. She remembered, in a burst of shame and shame that was not shame, the way he had been close to her hours before. She felt that closeness now the moment she saw him again, and it made her tremble.

He stepped closer without a sound but stopped just far enough for her to breathe.

Then that voice came, the one that made her toes curl, that slipped under her skin, that had undone her before more than once. “Who did this?”

She blinked. Her mouth felt dry. “What?” She said, and her voice came too thin.

He did not change his posture. He only watched her, his jaw tight. “Name, angel.” He said it in parts, with a calm patience, that felt like he was only seconds away from blowing the entire palace apart. “I asked for a name. Who. Did. This?”