For one terrible second, I hesitated.
Fifteen years of clawing my way toward this title flashed behind my eyes. The ribs my father broke to prepare me for it. The men I killed to keep it. The walls I built so nothing could ever take it away from me again.
Elder Mira watched me carefully, her grip still firm on my arm. "Morgan . She does not have long. Whatever is guiding her now is burning through her strength with every strike she throws."
Inside the circle, Elara moved again, faster and more violent than before, forcing Bren backward with a series of strikes that no untrained girl should have been capable of landing. Bren's confidence had fully drained from his face now, replaced by something close to genuine fear.
I looked at her. Really looked.
Not the girl bleeding in a forest th
