Eliana POV
Its mist cleared and Selana stood in the clearing where her silver cloak was murmuring with the beat of the woods. She had a timeless face, and something beyond time of voice.
“You feel fractured,” she said, her luminous eyes settling on me. “But you are not.”
I gulped, as yet irregularly pounding, at all I had seen yet, though striving to believe it. “But why does everything within me feel like it is breaking apart? Scarlet barely manifests anymore. I can’t control what’s inside. I feel like… like I’m failing.”
Selana softened her look. She put one hand out, reached toward me, one hand in the air just above my breast--not touching, just in the air, as if she read the pain off my ribs.
“Because you were taught to fear the fire that forged you.”
I flinched. “You know about
