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"I'm not afraid of him," he said, not wholly true, but not untrue either. He didn't fear the death he knew would be coming if anyone but Grayson ever found out he had entertained such thoughts. But what scared him more was how others scrambled to fulfill the Dark Lord's wishes when he himself only felt lukewarm approval of what he was doing.

"Grayson, you don't think." He allowed himself to be pushed off Grayson and stumbled back. "I don't mean you don't plan. You're all meticulous, cunning, carefully laid plans, but you don't think. You don't bother to understand what is going to happen to this family if I die, or you die, or heaven forbid, a sister. Mother. You just say that it can't ever happen, so it won't."

He wiped at the persistent cut on his lip. "You call me a coward all you like, but at least the prospect that something might happen to this family doesn't terrify so much that I can't rationalize what's going to happen when it does."