The Fight I Keep Replaying

The body blow landed before I was ready. I remember thinking that Dain was cleaner than me, faster, and that I had wasted too many years being afraid of what my body could do. Fear came anyway. It did not make me step back, but I hated it for arriving at all.

I keep replaying the first rush. Not the blows themselves, but the instant I noticed where the armed gallery stood. I wanted to get between Dain and everyone else, and that made me wonder whether I was still protecting Bellwether or simply trying to make myself indispensable to it. Dain believes obedience matters more than choice. I offered the opposite without saying a word. I hate being used as an argument, but I would rather my bruised ribs make that argument than a speech.

At the pub, everyone wanted a version that made them the hero, the victim, or the fool who had trusted the wrong man. I watched their faces instead of listening properly. I was looking for shame, and shame looked a lot like anger when people had invested too much in the outcome.

I barely ate. Every swallow felt like work, and my ribs kept reminding me that I had nearly gone down. What unsettles me most is not that I might have lost. It is that some part of me went into that cleared space hoping to be hit hard enough to stop thinking.

Ben, Joonie, and Darcy had already survived enough fear without becoming mine. I cannot undo that. Tonight I will lie still, keep one hand over the bruise, and try not to turn the fight into proof that restraint is useless. Sometimes it is the only thing keeping me from becoming the warning I deserve.