Sometimes the best distraction is genuine pain."
Keep telling yourself that. Keep pretending this is just another calculation on a ledger sheet.
But even as I rationalized it, I could see Rhys's face from the assembly hall. That hollow expression of someone staring at their own death sentence while pretending to care about team assignments.
Seventeen years old. Fighting desperately to save a sister he might never see again. Sending every coin he earned back to their village. Sacrificing any small comfort he might have claimed for himself.
And the world was preparing to crush him for the crime of being convenient to someone else's story.
Stop. He's a character. A plot device. Nothing more.
The thought rang false even in my own mind.
Lyra was studying me with those unsettling crimson eyes. Reading emotions I thought I'd hidden beneath layers of indifference. Her gaze was too knowing. Too penetrating.
