Hours later,
Aria
The weight of the day didn’t hit me until the heavy brass-bound doors of my private wing clicked shut, sealing out the world of dirt, blood, and burning parchment.
My muscles, which had been coiled like high-tension wires since the bridge fight, finally began to scream. Every step across the polished obsidian floor felt like wading through chest-deep mercury.
Behind me, Ao Xuan walked with a silent, predatory grace, though his breath was still hitched from the trek back from the pits.
I noticed the way he looked at the tapestries and the golden sconces not with the greed of a slave, but with the cold eye of a scout.
"Master," he whispered, his voice rasping. "The perimeter is thin. The guards in this wing are lazy. They trust the stone to keep you in."
"Let them
