"So you lied," Gwen said. The words were clipped. Not explosive — Gwen's real anger never exploded, it went cold, like water finding the shape of whatever contained it. "You pretended to be a disgruntled commoner. Fed us information. Made sure we were appropriately scared of the Ktorian knights. Made sure we had nowhere to go." A pause. "And now we're here."
"You're not wrong," Viktor said.
"That's not an apology."
"It's not meant to be."
"Why would you—" Gwen's voice caught for a single moment, something cracking under the ice of it and then sealing over immediately. "Why would you do all of that instead of just saying what you wanted? You could have just — we were starving, we would have listened to a reasonable offer—"
"You had a nocked arrow pointed at my face within thirty seconds of meeting me."
A silence.
