POV: Soraya
The healing chamber smells like crushed mint and cool clay, like someone tried to scrub fear out of the air and couldn’t quite finish the job. Vienne guides me inside with a hand pressed to my back, firm and steady, as if I might blow away if she lets go. Maybe she’s right. Every step feels wrong, like my bones are packed with sand and my blood has turned to smoke.
“Sit,” she orders, steering me toward the low cot. “Now, Soraya. No arguments.”
“I’m fine,” I say, because that’s what I always say.
My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. I lower myself onto the cot anyway. The linen is sun-bleached soft, rough at the edges where it’s been washed a hundred times. I curl my fingers into it just to feel something solid.
“You’re not fine,” Vienne mutters, moving around the room. “You freed scouts from Zarek’s dungeon, shattered iron with bare hands, almost shifted in the dunes, and then stuffed a storm back into your own ribcage. Sit there and be not fine for a moment.”
A thin, tired laugh slips out of me. “When you list it like that, it sounds dramatic.”
“It was,” she says, pouring water into a bowl. “Dramatic, reckless, terrifying. Hold out your hands.”
I do. They’re still shaking. Vienne takes a damp cloth and wipes dried blood and dust from my skin. Under the grime, faint silver lines shimmer along my palms, curling around my fingers like tiny rivers of light.
I stare. “That… wasn’t there before.”
“Your magic’s leaking,” she says quietly. “It leaves marks when it burns this bright.”
Magic. Power. Whatever we call it, it feels like something too big has been shoved into a body too small. I squeezed that force open to break chains and blast guards, then slammed it shut so I wouldn’t rip Zarek and Raevan and everyone else apart. Now it pulses inside me, hot and unsettled.
“I didn’t mean to do any of it,” I whisper. “I just wanted the scouts free. I just wanted everyone alive.”
Vienne slows, her thumb brushing the back of my knuckles. “No one sane blames you for that.”
“People were calling me a witch in the courtyard.”
“People are scared,” she says. “Scared people grab the ugliest words they know and throw them at whatever they don’t understand. They’ll learn or they’ll be silent. Raevan made that very clear.”
My chest tightens at his name. I look away. “Zarek wants my power. Ashra wants my power under control. My father wanted me gone. Maybe everyone would be happier if I’d never been born Zehrael at all.”
“Your mother wouldn’t,” Vienne says softly.
That hits harder than any insult. I swallow, throat burning. The memory of the crystal, of my mother’s voice, presses in like a bruise I can’t stop touching.
Vienne finishes cleaning my hands and lifts my chin so I have to meet her eyes. “Listen to me. Zarek chose cruelty long before you. Your father chose cowardice long before you. Raevan chose you knowing exactly what you are. Their choices are theirs. You are not responsible for the monsters who want to use you.”
I want to believe her. My heart doesn’t know how.
The room tilts slightly when I blink. “I’m just… tired.”
“Tired,” she repeats, unconvinced. She pours water into a cup and presses it into my hands. “Drink.”
The cup rattles against my fingers. I gulp the water anyway. It tastes vaguely of metal and stone, but it anchors me to my own tongue. For a moment, the walls steady.
“Lie back,” Vienne says. “Flat. Head on the pillow, not pretending you’re about to leap into battle.”
“I’m not that fragile,” I protest.
“You look like you’re arguing with gravity and losing. Down.”
I obey, mostly because my muscles are already giving up. The pillow supports my skull, but it feels too far away, like I’m floating just above it. The ceiling is painted with faded moons and desert flowers; they blur and sharpen each time my eyes move.
“In,” Vienne murmurs. “Slow. Out. Slower.”
I match her.
In: crushed mint, warm clay, the faint copper of old blood.
Out: dungeon stone, Zarek’s hand on my wrist, the memory of chains.
In: the rustle of linen.
Out: the blinding flare of silver between Raevan and Zarek.
The magic inside me doesn’t like this. It presses against my ribs, restless, snarling. My wolf paces just under my skin, claws scraping, furious that we’re lying still instead of running, fighting, destroying. The power wants out again. The body wants nothing except sleep.
“You’re safe,” Vienne says, as if she can hear all of it. “You’re in Ashra, not Saren. Raevan and Kaide are back. The scouts are back. Zarek is furious somewhere far away, but he is not in this room. Breathe like he doesn’t exist.”
I let out a shaky breath. “Half the fortress hates me.”
“Half the fortress doesn’t know what to do with you yet,” she corrects. “That’s different.”
“Feels the same.”
She huffs. “You walked back through those gates with six men who were already being mourned. You blasted a king’s guards off their feet. You stared down Zarek himself. You think anyone is going to forget that?”
“I don’t want to be their miracle,” I murmur. “I just wanted them home.”
“Then you got what you wanted,” she says. “And now your body is sending the bill.”
The edges of my vision darken. A soft buzzing fills my ears, like distant bees or a storm far out over the dunes. My limbs feel heavy and numb all at once. I try to lift my hand; it twitches and drops.
“Vienne,” I whisper. “Something’s wrong.”
Her face leans over mine, slightly blurred. “Tell me.”
“Everything’s… far. My hands, my voice, you. And…”
I can’t hold the magic anymore.
Darkness rushes in and I finally let myself fall into it at last.