[Ava's POV]
The psychic detonation of her command to Rhett had left a strange, hollow silence in its wake. It was not peace, but the stunned quiet after a thunderclap so close it leaves the ears ringing.
The immediate threat of the elders had been neutralized, not by force of argument, but by the raw, unsettling demonstration of a power they couldn't categorize. They had withdrawn, their grim faces etched with a new kind of fear. But the cost of that victory was internal.
Ava felt like a vessel that had been used to channel a lightning bolt. Scorched, fragile, and resonating with a dangerous charge. For a few hours, she managed a semblance of calm, sitting alone in the Den’s gloom, trying to anchor herself to mundane details: the specific pattern of rust on a support beam, the distant,
