Hours later,

Aria

The weight of the day didn’t hit me until the heavy brass-bound doors of my private wing clicked shut, sealing out the world of dirt, blood, and burning parchment.

My muscles, which had been coiled like high-tension wires since the bridge fight, finally began to scream. Every step across the polished obsidian floor felt like wading through chest-deep mercury.

Behind me, Ao Xuan walked with a silent, predatory grace, though his breath was still hitched from the trek back from the pits.

I noticed the way he looked at the tapestries and the golden sconces not with the greed of a slave, but with the cold eye...