Stripped of everything I had once unthinkingly relied on, it was not just my courage I had come to doubt. I questioned all my abilities now. Assassin, King’s Man, warrior, man…was I any of them anymore? I tried to recall the brash youngster who had pulled an oar on Verity’s warship Rurisk, who had flung himself unthinkingly into battle wielding an axe. I could not grasp he had been me.
