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The impact knocked the breath from her.
She lay there for a moment, stunned, gasping, eyes wide with disbelief and pain.
Silence slammed down over the chamber.
The maids looked frozen in time, faces pale, bodies rigid, terror etched into every line of them. Estel’s hands trembled at her sides, her gaze flicking between the fallen mistress and me as if trying to reconcile what she had just witnessed.
I took a step toward the mistress as she struggled to push herself up, her authority shattered, her fear now unmistakable.
“You will never,” I said evenly, my voice carrying through the room without effort, “lay a hand on me again.”
She looked up at me then, truly looked, and for the first time there was no superiority in her eyes.
Only shock.
And something dangerously close to f
