Sasha’s Pov
The flame whispered beneath my skin.
Not wild. Not reckless. Not like it used to be.
Now it waited, coiled and patient, like a breath held too long. It curled through my blood like a question already answered, watching me with heat I didn’t summon, but could feel pressing behind my ribs.
I stood before the witch, hands clenched at my sides, breath tight and shallow.
“There has to be a way,” I said. “Tell me how to destroy him. Tell me how to kill the Hollow King.”
She looked up from her circle of bone-dust and scorched salt, her body still but her eyes burning, pale and reflective like twin moons in a night sky of wrinkles. The firelight made her skin look almost translucent, thin as parchment.
“You don’t kill what is already dead,” she said, her voice brittle as crumbli
