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“Yes.”

“Because I’m tired of powerful men deciding what’s best for me!”

The words strike harder than any weapon.

“I spent three years with a man who thought loving me meant owning me. I won’t do it again.”

I stare at her.

She looks away, blinking rapidly.

“He always had a reason, you know. For checking my messages. For telling me what to wear. For deciding which friends I could see. He was protecting me. He was worried about me. He knew better.”

Her voice cracks.

“And eventually, I stopped arguing because it was easier to give him what he wanted.”

I look at the damaged telephone.

At my hands.

At the woman standing across from me.

I have demanded the very thing she has been fighting to reclaim.

Her right to choose.

“Wren…”

“No. I need you to understand something.”

I nod.

She takes a shaky breath.

“I know you can protect me. That’s not what scares me.”

“What does?”

“That one day I’ll stop believing I can protect myself.”

The crimson light fades from my hands.

I look at the floor.

For three thousand years, I have believed that refusing vengeance allows evil to flourish.

I have never considered that forcing vengeance upon someone might become another form of cruelty.

“I was wrong.”

Wren blinks.

“What?”

I lift my gaze.

“I was wrong to demand his name.”