The heavy oak doors had barely swung shut behind me when voices erupted inside the hall. Not the unified outrage Selene had surely expected. Instead, confusion, murmurs, and sharp questions rose, bouncing off stone walls. I paused only a moment in the corridor, breathing in the cool, pine-scented night air seeping through open archways. My legs felt steady, my heart no longer racing—hollow, perhaps, but unbroken.
I had not expected Kaelen to defend me instantly. I had certainly not expected him to beg forgiveness. But he had listened. He had not ordered me seized. That single fact meant more than all the words I had spoken combined. Doubt, once planted, was a seed no power on earth could fully root out.
"She speaks with fire," a low voice came from the shadows beside the colonnade.
I tu
