Ashya looked at Constans for a long long time, mulling things over in her head.
I was...dangerous.
"So you were," she murmured, leaning back in her chair, deciding that he'd either been a blood mage or something just as bad. But what was as bad as a blood mage? She let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding, looking away, afraid of what might be showing in her eyes.
There was a bit of satisfaction there, and triumph, as well as horror and dismay. She flickered through the spectrum of emotions as fast as lightning, unable to settle on any of them, unable to describe what she felt, or even why. Whatever Constans had been, he was no more, and definitely felt no sympathy towards dangerous mages. The way he spoke of how he had himself been made it evident enough.
Constans had been rash. If she looked at the facts objectively, so had she been…but not too rash. She’d rushed headlong into the forbidden arts, but once there had taken a deep breath and paused to think things through. Although Uldred’s revolt proved that blood magic could go undiscovered for a long time, she had been too scared to continue it at the heart of the templars. And yet even now she was still hesitant about continuing to explore, although the urge to do so flickered inside her almost constantly.
“And you’re…fine with what they did to you,” she said, not quite a question, but meant as one. Her eyes focused again on Constans, as blank and unreadable as she could make them, but they were still far too bright. She already had a lot to think about. “What…was the Rite like?” she asked, almost dreading the answer. She really didn’t want to find that out first hand.