Lilian’s POV
The walk from the sub-level training hall back to the Alpha suite felt like wading through heavy, cooling mercury.
Every muscle in my body felt dense, vibrating with the residual hum of the shadows I had summoned, and my mind was a fractured mosaic of heightened scent and sound. I could hear the frantic heartbeat of a mouse in the wainscoting three floors up; I could smell the ozone on the guards’ skin as they knelt in my wake, their fear a sharp, metallic tang on the back of my tongue.
I reached the heavy mahogany doors of our room, my hand hesitating on the polished brass handle. I felt fundamentally different. The girl who had been carried into this room after the woods was a fragile thing, a newborn fawn struggling to find its legs.
The woman standing here now was a vo
