Soraya's POV
They released me without ceremony.
No apology. No explanation. No acknowledgment of the injustice that had sealed iron around my wrists and stone around my spirit. One moment the dungeon door stood shut, its shadow swallowing me whole; the next, it groaned open, light spilling across the floor as though nothing terrible had happened there at all.
I stepped out on my own.
My legs were steady. My spine straight. My face calm.
Inside, I was burning.
But beneath the fire, something else lived now—heavier than rage.
Grief had settled into me after Ronan left. It hadn't screamed or torn. It had simply stayed. Quiet. Crushing. The kind that hollowed you out from the inside and left you walking through the world like a ghost wearing your skin.
Maya is dead.
The words followed me up the steps from the dungeon like a second shadow.
