Roxie's POV
Raptor burned the dress himself.
He carried it out to the courtyard fire pit, the torn white ceremony dress I had run to Ironfang in, the dress that had been the last thread connecting me to the girl I used to be. He held it over the flames for one long moment. I thought he might say something. He didn't. He simply let it go, and I watched the white fabric curl and blacken and rise up into the morning sky as gray smoke and falling ash.
I felt something loosen in my chest as it burned. The dress had been a wound I kept wearing. Now it was gone.
He did not stop there. Every shirt, every cloak, every scrap of cloth I had touched since arriving—all of it went into the fire, methodical and grim, while Celeste worked over me with a bowl of water and crushed herbs, washing my han
