Kael reached up and slowly untied the silk cloth.

As the fabric fell away, she didn't blink. She didn't move. She just stared.

She was standing on the outskirts of her childhood home. Her pack lands.

The sight was devastating. The ground was a bruised, ash-grey color, stripped of every blade of grass, every shrub, every flower. Nothing grew here. The massacre had been so violent, the hatred so deep, that the earth itself had died in sympathy with the people who had been slaughtered upon it.

Morvienne remembered the day she left. It was as if the memories of the killing all came rushing back. For years, she had...