Eliana POV
The air was still in the shielded yard. There was not a sound of a leaf, not a call of a bird. The guard rooms glimmered dimly round the boundary, and hushed the scene over with silence and mystery. Here was a room Alexander had made for me sheltered ground where there were no eyes to spy one, no muttering elders, no eyes of anticipation.
In the middle of the soft dirt ring I stood. My feet were bare on the ground, my knees bent a little, my hands hanging open. The sky was cloudy, gray, but it felt like the universe was waiting at a moments breath.
Scarlet moved on the inside of me, and she would be there now always, like fire in my bones.
“Don’t focus on the fear,” I whispered to myself. “Just... call her from the part of you that loves her.”
The words felt clumsy on my to
