As I stepped out of the shower, I wrapped myself in a towel so soft it felt like it had never known dirt. The warm fabric cocooned me, almost startling in its comfort. I moved toward the small mirror above the sink, wiping away the steam with the edge of my hand.
I look like shit.
The thought came automatically, familiar and dry. But the image staring back at me didn’t quite match the words.
Gone was the grime, the streaks of dried blood and soot. My skin—pale, almost luminous in the artificial light—looked impossibly clean and unmarked. My long black hair hung in loose waves down my back instead of the usual matted tangles. And my eyes… they were too bright. Too blue. Too haunted.
I looked fragile. Ghost-like. And still—there was something sharp beneath the surface, something I didn’t recognize.
I lifted a hand to my face. My fingers, scarred and rough, traced the clean curve of my cheek. I turned slightly, and the light caught the long, deep scars along my back—some of them carved into my flesh by a history I couldn’t quite remember.
No shower in the world could wash those away.
They were part of me now, as much as the blood in my veins.
Fresh clothes had been left folded neatly at the foot of the bed—a plain white shift and matching loose pants. Stark, sterile, but clean. I slipped them on over the generic underwear that had been tucked beneath them, the fabric soft against my skin in a way that felt almost alien.
Then I crawled beneath the thin blanket, curling up on the stiff mattress like I was trying to disappear into it.
And finally—finally—I let myself break.
The tears came silently at first, slipping down my cheeks without warning. I pressed my face into the blanket to muffle the sound, but it didn’t matter. No one was coming. No one cared.
It wasn’t just exhaustion. It wasn’t just fear.
It was everything. It was being caught. Of losing. Of being ripped from the only person who mattered. Of being alone in a place that felt too clean, too quiet, too strange.
So, I cried. For the first time in years, I cried like the girl I used to be—before the shadows. Before the streets. Before all of this.
Chapter9
Phoenix
I had never seen Thorne like this before.
He sat rigid in the narrow surveillance room, eyes locked on the flickering panel of enchanted glass. On the other side, the girl curled on the cot, her shoulders trembling as she sobbed into a threadbare pillow. Thorne watched her with a stillness that unnerved me—an intensity that felt out of place for someone usually so composed, so controlled. There was something in his eyes I couldn’t name. Something raw.
She looked small beneath the scratchy blanket. Fragile.
But she wasn’t a child. Not really.
Once she’d been cleaned up, the grime washed from her skin and the shadows from her face, it became clear—she wasn’t the street urchin we’d assumed. The clothes we gave her hung loose over her frame, revealing the gentle curves of someone far older than we’d first believed. She was still too thin, her body all sharp lines and hollows, but there was a quiet resilience in the way she carried herself. Like the world had broken her a hundred times, and still she had the nerve to keep breathing.
To have lived undetected in Varrowmere for this long… it was impossible.
Unprecedented.
And yet, there she was—grieving into her pillow, unaware that the man watching her had been hunting the magicborn for years, and never once missed a soul.
Until now.
“The king will want to meet her, you know,” I said quietly, standing behind Thorne’s shoulder.
“I am aware,” he replied, his voice low, even. “All in due time.”
He didn’t look at me. His eyes stayed fixed on the girl, still trembling in the narrow cot, her sobs now silent but relentless.
“What exactly are you waiting for?” I asked, though the words were a formality. I already knew the answer.
