Ankyra Sound There are times that walk from you like some passing afternoon

For the very first time in Ephraim's life, someone reacted to a show of aggression in a manner appropriate to his actions... and it made him feel instantly sick to his stomach.

He had never been a stalwart warrior of Drageda. There was a time he'd been proud to be one of them, but with age, he'd come to learn that he never truly was. To those who were born of that bloodline, he never would've amounted to anything no matter what. In the end, he'd been as much a prisoner as Rosalyn, for all that they made him believe he was a comrade. When he realized who the enemies were and succumbed to the trauma of it, they had treated him like less than dirt. Even the wolf he admired most among them had left him behind.

Seeing Raleska fall back and hearing her frightened shout only brought him back to when waking nightmares would drown out reality and make him believe he was back on a battlefield with piss and fear as his only identifiable companions. To when the dogs of war surged all around him in his mind and he could not tell who was friend and who was foe. To when he realized what he'd thrown away to stand with Drageda that day, only to be subsequently tossed aside by them as well. Those mental monsters had haunted Ephraim for ages after that and he wouldn't be surprised if he would be haunted by new ones in the wake of Caiaphas' end.

Watching that emotion play across someone else's face made his gut clench. He blanched and pulled back several steps into the grotto, eyes wide on Raleska and tongue unable to form any words. Regret swam in the pit of his stomach. He had to protect his mother's corpse but he had felt that fear, he had been Raleska not so long ago, cowering from a shadow, so even without recognition, his horrified posture still screamed the words I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sor—