Good. Good, that’s good.

“Are you in pain?” I ask.

The sailor fixes a set of clear blue eyes on me. Blue like the sky, deep like the sea. His skin is weathered from what might have been decades in the sun, manning a ship’s deck. No wonder his wife was irritated with him leaving again. “No pain. More concerned about that, to be honest. No feeling, either. And forget moving my fingers.”

Good. That’s good, too.

I’m a monster for thinking it is.

Hero or villain?

“Fell over the side when we ran aground. Knew the instant my spine hit rock that my days of walking were over.” Again, he chuckles, but his voice is strained, and he begins to sob.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. My fingers twitch, his pulse still tapping against them.

“Eh. You didn’t do it to me.”

Normally, I would have wondered if this was true. Wondered if whoever was writing my story had snapped this man’s spine specifically to transform me into the villain. I would have wondered if this man was my Event.

I don’t wonder anymore.

When I murder this man, it won’t be because anyone forced me to do it.

It’ll be because I searched this beach, hoping to find someone I can kill easier than I can kill Farin.

I was hoping for someone I could kill with a good conscience. I’m not sure I’ve found that in this man, but he’s as close as I’m going to get.

“I think.” The man wheezes. “I think my lungs might be filling up with water.”

My tongue goes dry in my mouth.

“I’ve been laying here for days now,” he continues. “Had a lot of time to think about how I don’t want to die. Been praying to the Fates that it won’t be a savage animal. A couple times, the tide reached my toes, and I thought I might drown. I asked they not let me drown. That it be something quick.” He offers me a sad smile. “I think they might have been listening.”

I freeze, my limbs going rigid. I should be relieved, overjoyed this man wants me to kill him. It should take the burden off my shoulders completely, but still…

“What’s he saying to you?” Farin asks, and his presence makes me jump. He’s barefoot on the sand, so I hadn’t heard him walk up.

My heart races. I shouldn’t have stalled. Should have killed this man before Farin caught up to me, then I could have escaped. Without Farin.

My heart comes to that thought and halts.

That can’t be why I stalled.

No, it’s because taking a life is an irreversible evil. There’s a reason it works. It rips the soul. And since my soul is knitted to the Fabric, it rips the Fabric, too.

“He wants me to put him out of his misery,” I sigh, translating for the man into Farin’s tongue. “He’s paralyzed. Hit a rock on his way into the ocean.”

For a moment, Farin doesn’t move, and I refuse to look at him. Need to think. Need to find a way to get Farin to go away, so I can…

“Zora.” Farin says my name so softly, I can’t help but turn around to face him. “Don’t look.”

It happens so fast.

Farin grabs his dagger and brings it down behind me.

There’s the sickening slicing of flesh, and a gentle thud as the dagger hits the sand.

The man doesn’t have the chance to scream.

The sound makes me sick, and instinct has me craning toward the man, as if my eyes need to confirm what my ears can’t seem to process.

Farin’s arm lands on my shoulder, his other hand still holding the dagger, which now drips with blood. “I said don’t look.”

I don’t.

My throat constricts, and I feel as though I might retch.

I do retch.

It doesn’t take seeing it to imagine the kind sailor’s head severed from his body.

“Why did you do that?” I ask, digging my fingers into the sand to steady myself. I’m still gagging, though nothing’s coming out.

“So you didn’t have to,” he says, as nonchalantly as if he just plucked a coconut from a palm that was too high for me to reach.

“I didn’t. I didn’t.” My throat constricts, and I feel as if I can’t get air. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”

Farin furrows his brow, suspicion heavy on his face as he looks down at me. “You would have rather done it yourself?” Even the question sounds scornful.

I say nothing. The sound of the sailor’s torn flesh still scratches against my skull. Suddenly, I feel as if I have to put an island of distance between myself and the body. I scramble to my feet, but my nausea is dizzying, and I find I stumble.

Strong hands catch me, pulling me into his chest, but I scratch at him until he lets go of me.

“Zora,” Farin says, following behind me as I trudge through the sand.

“You’re a monster,” I say, to no one in particular.

Farin scoffs. “Are you just now figuring this out?”

I want nothing but to whirl on him, but I’m afraid of what I might accidentally see. Now that the man is dead, is he omniscient? Can he hear my thoughts, know what I would have done to him?

But I can’t think about that now.

“Hey,” Farin says, but I don’t want to hear it. “If you were going to do it, you would have done it before I caught up to you.”

“The fact that you think like that proves that you don’t care. That you have no empathy, no awareness for any feelings other than your own.”

Farin stops, and though I can’t turn to face him, I stop too.