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“What happened?” I asked very carefully.

He grew still as a stone. “You see that he’s silent. I don’t like voices in my head. I’ve been keeping him silent. I’m sure you know what keeps him silent.”

My hand tightened on Warkitten. “Not innocents,” I said, trying real hard not to make it a question.

He shrugged that little shrug, and I wondered how hard it would really be to take his head. “Innocent is such a strange word. Such a strange concept. Who is innocent, really?”

“Most humans are innocent,” I told him, my voice suddenly as cold as the grave. “And all children are innocent.”

“If you take time-travel into account, no one’s innocent on a long enough timeline,” Christian said unhelpfully.

“Very funny,” I said, rolling my eyes.

They looked intensely at each other and then at me.

“He’s joking,” Caleb said which made me think it actually wasn’t a joke now. “And I didn’t kill any children,” Caleb added.

“But you did kill humans. Who and why? And what else?”

“Let’s just say, Torst got to sample a little bit of everything. Even using your flawed logic on the issue, though, none of them could be considered innocent.”

I looked to Christian.

He held up his hands defensively. “We’ve been together almost constantly. Things have been bloody, but he didn’t kill anybody that didn’t need killing, even with Torst in the mix.”

I looked back at Caleb, far from appeased. Was he proving a point, trying to make me see that I needed to take Torst? He’d been riling me, and I wanted to know the reason. And of course, I still didn’t trust him to use what he called my flawed logic correctly. Christian had said that the two of them had been together ‘almost constantly,’ which left some disturbing wiggle room.

“I’ll take the axe, I always planned to, but why are you trying so hard to piss me off?” I asked him tightly.

“I just wanted to make sure that things are clear between us, in case you hear anything…later. Now you can’t say that I lied to you.”

I suddenly felt exhausted, just so impossibly tired that I couldn’t deal with another moment of this pissing contest. “You know that won’t mean shit if I find out you’ve done something that I can’t accept.”

He inclined his head. “I’m well aware. Take the axe.”

With a sigh I ran covetous hands over my axe ‘mistress,’ wishing that I could have even one thing that I wanted in life, even if it was just this pretty axe.

Instead, I always just got a mix of hard choices that were bitter as hell to swallow.

I took Warkitten back to the dresser, pausing at the chest for a long moment, glancing between the two weapons.

Torst was a huge, plain, beast of an axe, not a pretty thing about him, and certainly not a jewel in sight. His handle was cold metal. If you tried to wrap it, or refit it, he just reshaped however he damn well pleased. He looked like he’d be uncomfortable to handle, but that wasn’t really the issue at all. The issue was that when you were wielding him, you’d be so consumed with bloodlust that you wouldn’t give a thought to how the grip felt.

I thought of all of my deranged relatives and how I didn’t have a clue just how they’d gotten that way. I’d always stood by the idea that the family dementia was not a forgone conclusion, but what else could I do? I supposed I could have my BFF dragon slayer kill me, but that seemed like quitting. I was not a quitter, just a runner. There’s a difference. Or at least I liked to think so.

No matter how I tried to spin it, though, I just couldn’t imagine that becoming the warden for that axe again was good for my sanity. I wasn’t exactly short on bloodlust to begin with. That’s why the thing had stayed in a storage container for nearly a decade, but I couldn’t do something like that again. It had been stupid, and irresponsible, and a punishment for the cursed thing. It had also been a miracle that nothing truly heinous had happened as a result. That axe in the hands of even the most harmless human on the planet was bad news.

With ill-grace and a bad attitude, I shut away Warkitten, and reached for Torst. I couldn’t even feel too relieved about the fact that he stayed silent at my touch. That silence had apparently been bought with a lot of gods-only-know what blood.

Caleb emptied out the top two drawers of the dresser, filling two large duffle bags.

“Two goody bags to go for the crazy woman,” Christian said cheerfully.

I punched him in the arm.

Caleb tossed me my axe shoulder harness, and I caught it, but just looked at it.

“We aren’t sleeping here?” I asked.