Alexander POV
It started the way it always did—with the air too still, the silence too heavy.
When I went out, the training field was clear,except the heat haze of the rock. The early morning mist was not yet scorched,and the air odorous with dew and burned ash. The bald grounds rang once, harshly audibly, with my boots before I could find her.
Eliana.
She was as a statue of tension in the middle of the ring. Clenching her hands into knots, drawing in her shoulders and with sweat glistening on her skin though it was all that time of night. She was breathing unevenly, haltingly, gasping half-breaths which scarcely reached her cell. All her muscles were crying to her to hold back or to struggle or suffer.
She was surrounded by a crimson flash that circled lazily about her spine, Scarlet
