The scent of pine needles always changed right before a storm. It grew sharp, metallic, and heavy with the weight of unshed rain.
Selene stood by the small wooden table in the center of the abandoned trapper's cabin, her fingers methodically peeling the bark off a thick branch of seasoned ash. Her hands, once soft and smelling of expensive rosewater lotions, were now mapped with small, jagged cuts and dried blisters.
The skin beneath her fingernails was stained with dirt that no amount of scrubbing could entirely remove.
For three weeks, this rotting timber shack had been her fortress. It was an insult to a daughter of Chief Elder Marcus, a girl who had spent her entire life sleeping under silk sheets within the pristine walls of the Crescent Stone estate. But out here, on the forgotte
