Atrius, standing over my attacker, hacking into him brutally, strike after unforgiving strike, long after flesh was beaten down into formless gore. All around us, there was death. Death everywhere. And yet when Atrius abandoned his very, very dead target and whirled around, he wasn’t looking at any of that—not his own warriors or the people he had lost. Only me. His presence was an anchor. I held onto it tight, like a raft in a stormy sea.
