Damien's POV
Father’s words have not left me in two days. I have been checking myself against them like a man checking a wound. The resemblance is there, I loathe it. I intend to cut it out before she gets the chance to see it too. It is uncomfortable, familiar, and hard to shrug off.
Voss paces in the back of my mind the whole time and is everywhere.
’He saw straight through you,’ Voss says on the morning of the third day. ’You are arguing about rules.’
I do not answer him. I stand on the training field and watch the younger warriors run drills. Their movements are clean enough but my own thoughts are not.
A rider arrives at midday and the gate guards call out to me. Dust rises on the road as three more riders follow and banners snap in the wind, deep green with a black thorn pattern
