After the blood-soaked chaos of the mountain pass, everything was back like how it used to be.
Verona watched Elric from the shadows of the upper gallery. She leaned her chin against the cold pillar, her eyes tracking Elric as he crossed the training grounds below. She let out a breath she felt she'd been holding since Ardine's final checkup.
The world then turned to silk, polished mahogany, and the rhythmic clack-slide of her own dancing shoes. Her instructor, a man named Sir Valerius, whose patience was roughly the thickness of a gold leaf, hummed a tune that was supposed to be a waltz but felt more like a march.
One, two, three. Pivot. One, two, three. Hold.
Verona moved, but her mind wasn't on her foot or the angle of her chin.
She was thinking about the assassins. Did they exist before? she wondered. In that first life, the one where she had been a hollowed-out version of herself, had there been a bloodbath in the mountains?
