A Fabricated Truth

I had been in life-or-death situations more times than I cared to count. Let's see, there were the wolves, the paladins, the chimera, not the wrathborne,—more recently—shadow-wielding cultists who by all accounts should have killed me without Ronan. None of that could have prepared me for the intensity of what lay before me, as I saw Mara standing in the middle of my room, holding Lucian's cloak, looking at me like I was the biggest goddamn liar in the kingdom. In hindsight, I should have stashed the cloak somewhere–or burned it–and it's true that I had an excuse, but this whole identity-swapping thing in sentient culture was still kind of new to me. 

I was too drained to deal with this. Everything about me hurt and I felt like I could sleep for a week straight. Ronan also looked worse for wear, though it was a lot harder to tell when it came to him. Unfortunately, I didn't think Mara particularly cared.