Arthur’s POV
The locket was small.
Delicate.
Polished silver with an old-world clasp, the kind you had to coax open with care. Inside: a hand-trimmed photo, faded at the corners. Brielle.
I’d stolen it weeks ago,from an old scouting report where her image had been hastily attached to a background file.
I told myself it was practical at first.
But I hadn’t let it go.
Now it sat in the palm of my hand as I stood alone in my quarters, firelight dancing along the metal like it had a pulse of its own.
“If I can’t break Jake with strength,” I whispered, brushing my thumb over her face, “I’ll break him with her.”
Her eyes: sharp, defiant,seemed to look right through me even in stillness.
She had power.
Not just the kind she bled for on the field. The kind that stirred loyalty, made peo
