{"Love is for the soft-hearted and the already broken. I buried mine the day power became my only salvation."}
The fire in the Emerald Gulf Hall had long since gone out, yet the shadows it left behind still danced across the walls echoes of my power, restless and waiting. I stood alone now, draped in dark green silk and silence, the hem of my cloak soaked with sea mist. The storm had finally calmed beyond the cliffs, but inside me, the tide was only rising.
"Ellowen," I whispered, tasting her name like something broken. "You never should've returned."
The scholar had always been clever. Always too curious. I should have destroyed her when she was just another girl hiding behind scrolls. But Ysara… Ysara had protected her. Hidden her. Loved her.
That was the mistake I would now make them pay for. The chamber doors opened with the familiar scrape of stone, and General Kalion entered, tall and cloaked in dusk-blue steel. Loyal. Dangerous. Mine.
"You called, my lady?"
