POV: Soraya
By morning, the fortress has grown another mouth.
It whispers.
The sandstone corridors carry sound too well; every word turns into a ghost that travels ahead of you, slipping under doorways and around corners long before you arrive. As I walk from my chamber toward the inner courtyard, my name drifts toward me in pieces—Soraya, Zehrael, stairs, cursed, Azhara, dress—like shards of broken glass.
I keep my eyes forward.
Vienne walks at my side, shoulders squared, daring anyone to meet her stare. Most don’t. They bow to her, then pretend not to see me.
“Ignore them,” she says.
“I am,” I lie.
She snorts. “You’re wound so tight I can hear your teeth grinding. That’s not ignoring.”
We step into the courtyard. Morning drills usually fill this space with shouts and the clash of wooden blades. Today the sound is thinner, brittle. Wolves stretch and spar, but every few seconds their gazes flick our way. Conversations dip, then rise again, patched clumsily with forced laughter.
I can smell what hangs under the sweat and dust.
Curiosity. Fear. Judgment. A familiar combination.
Tazir jogs past yelling at a group of young warriors, then shoots me a quick grin—there and gone, like a secret handshake. I cling to that tiny scrap of normal.
On the far side of the yard, Kaide stands with two captains, discussing patrol routes. He looks harder than yesterday, edges sharpened. When he spots us, he dismisses the captains with a flick of his hand.
“How many whispers so far?” he asks Vienne.
“Enough that if I punched every mouth, I’d dislocate both shoulders,” she says.
He nods once, then looks at me. “You eaten?”
I shake my head. “Not hungry.”
“Don’t care,” he says. “You don’t get to faint in front of this lot. Come on.”
We head toward the kitchens. As we cross the arcade, a familiar scent cuts through the others—desert cedar, ash, storm.
Raevan.
He steps out from a side passage in training leathers, hair damp, breathing a little too fast like he’s been pacing for an hour. His gaze finds me immediately, as if he’s been waiting for this exact corner.
“Soraya,” he says quietly.
Every nerve in me jumps. I keep walking.
“Stop a moment,” he adds, coming closer. “We need to talk.”
“We don’t,” I answer, eyes fixed on the doorway ahead. “Not anymore.”
He flinches. “Last night—”
“Was a mistake,” I cut in. “Standing in the same room, I mean. Nothing else happened.”
A shadow of hurt crosses his face. “I defended you,” he says. “I dragged you out of that hall when they wanted your blood.”
“And I’m supposed to be grateful you didn’t let them kill me for something I didn’t do?” I ask softly. “The bar is low, Raevan.”
Kaide steps half in front of me, not rude, but unmistakably shielding. “Alpha, the elders are waiting in the war room.”
Raevan’s jaw tightens. “I gave no summons.”
“They sent one,” Kaide replies, voice flat. “Something about Saren patrols on the eastern ridge. I can pass your apologies if you’re too busy cornering the girl you’ve already broken.”
The air between them crackles.
Once, Kaide would have softened that with a joke. Not today.
Raevan’s gaze flicks from his beta to me. “You think I don’t know I’ve broken her?” he murmurs.
“I think you like pretending you can fix it without choosing,” Kaide says. “You can’t.”
“Kaide,” I whisper, shocked.
He doesn’t look away from his king. “The kitchens are this way, Soraya.”
For a heartbeat, I expect Raevan to pull rank, to snap, to order. Instead, he steps aside, letting us pass. The hurt in his eyes is a raw, open wound, but I don’t stop.
If I look at him for longer than a heartbeat, my resolve will crumble.
In the kitchens, heat and the smell of bread wrap around us. Staff fall silent when we enter, then pretend to work twice as hard. A woman shoves a bowl of porridge into my hands with brisk kindness and mutters that magic burns fuel and I’m “all bone and trouble.”
I eat because Kaide watches until I do.
“Raevan’s been hunting you since dawn,” Vienne says quietly. “Courtyard, council hall, healer’s wing. You’re giving him the slip like a seasoned thief.”
“I’m tired of being his favorite mistake,” I answer. “He can spend one day not using me to feel worse about his own decisions.”
Kaide exhales, rubbing a hand over his face. “For the record, I’m angry with him too.”
“You?” I blink. “You’d follow him into a sandstorm full of knives.”
“I have,” he says. “I will again. But I won’t clap while he drags you through it. That’s where I draw the line.”
His words settle somewhere fragile inside my chest.
The fortress whispers louder now—Soraya, cursed, Zehrael, the Alpha, the Beta—but beneath the noise, something shifts. I am still the outcast, the girl they’d rather not choose.
But as I set the empty bowl down and stand to follow Kaide back into the glaring desert light, one quiet, stubborn truth anchors me.
I may be unwelcome. I am not alone.