He lunges.
His hand closes around her throat, slamming her back into the wood of the wagon hard enough to knock the air from her lungs. Pain bursts through her ribs, her vision flashing white as she gasps, trying and failing to drag breath back into her body.
“Thought you’d be fun,” he mutters, his breath hot and foul against her skin.
Her magic flickers.
Breaks.
For a heartbeat, Seren is not a witch, not a weapon, not a woman who has survived and risen and chosen—she is a girl in a cage.
And for another heartbeat, she almost lets herself stay there.
Her panic is severed when a blade drives clean through his throat.
The force of it jerks him backward, his grip loosening as blood spills hot and sudden over Seren’s hands pressing into his chest. He makes a choking sound that never quite becomes a word, his body shuddering once before the blade is wrenched free.
He drops.
Screams tear from the wagon.
Seren staggers forward, coughing, dragging in air like she has been pulled from deep water. Her hand presses to her throat, her pulse hammering violently beneath her skin as the world rushes back in around her.
She looks around, desperately trying to understand what happened.
Her eyes snag on a figure.
She knows that stance.
Knows the weight of that presence.
“Little Star,” a man mutters.
Nobody has called her that in months. The nickname cuts through the chaos cleaner than any blade.
Her eyes narrow.
Revryn.
He stands there as if nothing has changed—blade already wiped clean against the man’s tunic, shoulders squared, eyes sharp and alert as they take in everything at once.
Alive.
Relief crashes through her so hard it almost brings her to her knees.
“Revryn—”
The name breaks from her, rough and unsteady.
“I have a lot of questions,” he murmurs, taking her in as if cataloging the changes. The fighting leathers, the braid, the leather strap secured around her forehead, the women in her company. And perhaps, not just what she’s become, but what she no longer is: afraid.
His eyes dart around, assessing the situation.
“But we don’t have time. I’ve got the girls from the wagon,” he says, already moving past her, already climbing onto the wagon with the same quiet authority he always carried. “You’ve got incoming.”
Seren hears the thud of bootfalls closing in.
She spins back to Revryn. “So much has changed,” she says, at a loss for words. She grips her blade firmer, preparing for the soldiers.
