Morwenna's POV
Ash clung to my lips like a warning.
Each breath tasted of scorched magic and blood-soaked steel. I could still feel Liora’s blade grazing my ribs, not enough to kill but deep enough to remind me that mercy has teeth. She had vanished into the smoke before I could finish her. Or maybe I had let her go again. I didn’t know. My thoughts ran like water over shattered glass.
All around me, bodies lay broken. Some were mine. Some weren’t. The vale was quiet now, but it was the kind of silence that precedes an aftershock.
Sabine staggered toward me, her left arm clutched to her chest, blood leaking between her fingers. "She was supposed to be gone," she rasped. "You spared her."
I wanted to say I knew. I wanted to scream that I hadn’t had a choice. But the words stuck to my t
