A bomb then. A bomb tore this girl's house apart and left her orphaned and alone, so even if she hadn't come to Darrow, her life would have been suddenly different, everything shifted away from what it had once been. It makes his chest seize uncomfortably, thinking of her having to live through that, having to crawl out of the wreckage to discover everyone she loved dead or just gone.

"I'm sorry, Liesel," he says. "I'm glad it was enough to protect you, even if it couldn't protect everyone."

And what an abrupt and scary way to arrive, he imagines. He himself had arrived in the midst of an attack, but he's an adult and a werewolf, a man who had spent a good portion of his life training to fight. She's a child, she shouldn't have been forced through that.

"It must have been frightening, going through that and then finding yourself here."