Eldric barely reacted to Irina's accusation. Her words about the children he had murdered seemed to mean nothing to him. He stood before her with the same composed expression, as though they were discussing an ordinary matter rather than the lives he had destroyed.
"You make it sound as if I enjoyed killing them," he said, adjusting the sleeve of his clothing. "Do you think I wanted to spend fifteen years trapped in this miserable village? I lost everything when I entered those ruins. My cultivation, my freedom, my future. Everything I had worked for disappeared in a single moment."
Irina glared at him from the stone table, her wrists and ankles secured by restraints that prevented her from summoning her ice or transforming her hands. "So you decided that everyone else should suffer for your failure?"
