The betrayal felt like a second rejection, sharper and more clinical than the first. Silas, the man who had pulled me from the mud of the Forbidden Forest, stood before me with the cold, detached gaze of a scientist looking at a successful experiment. The violet light in his eyes, which I had once found comforting, now looked like the glow of a dying star—beautiful, but utterly void of life.
“Why?” The word was a raspy plea, barely audible over the whistling wind of the Grey Peaks. I stood protectively in front of Leo, my silver hair whipped into a frenzy around my face. “You saved me, Silas. You taught me how to hunt. You helped me raise them.”
“I saved a biological specimen with high-yield potential,” Silas corrected, his voice as smooth as silk. He signaled his Northern warriors, who
