Chapter 20
She kept circling back to her training, to the two years spent in secret corners of the camp learning to move, to fight, to defend herself without ever being permitted to use any of it while still trapped inside those walls. She thought of her second mentor's stern, careful voice, drilling the same lessons into her night after night. This is only for the day you walk out. Never before that. If you use this in here, it will get you killed, or worse.
She had never fully understood the weight of that warning until tonight, standing over a grown man twice her size, some cold instinct inside her fully prepared to do lasting damage without a shred of guilt.
Her mind wandered further back, to the three women who had shaped her so completely during those two years, each of them appea
