Kaelen
The summons comes at dawn. Not a polite request, not an invitation. An order. My father’s voice carries through the corridor like a blade scraping stone. He never needs to shout. The weight of his authority is enough.
I leave the training hall reluctantly, sweat still slick on my skin from drills I have been running with the guards. But it isn’t the men I want to be with. It isn’t the weight of battle-ready repetition I crave. It is the quiet defiance of a girl who has been broken a thousand times and still looks me in the eye as though daring me to keep testing her.
Nyx. The thought of her in the infirmary … bandaged, exhausted, but not yielding … makes something in me burn hotter than duty ever has. But my father isn’t interested in fire. He wants control. I push open the heavy
