By the third day after the forest trap, Aria stopped pretending she could ease into her training.
She threw herself into it.
Dawn had barely broken when she met Lyr at the far clearing beyond Silvercrest’s main grounds—a place the pack rarely used because the trees grew thick and the air felt older there, heavier, like the forest remembered things the wolves preferred to forget.
Mist clung low to the grass. Dew soaked the hems of her trousers as she stepped into the circle Lyr had marked with stones.
“You didn’t sleep,” he observed.
“Neither did you,” she replied.
Lyr’s mouth twitched. “Fair.”
He gestured to the circle. “Today we stop treating Moonfire like a weapon. We treat it like a sense.”
Aria frowned. “A sense?”
“Yes. You think of it as something you do.” He tapped her templ
