"This family will no longer give need to someone who cannot contribute. Sonna, leave and never return."
She was eighty, still considered young among warriors, and she knelt on the cold floor.
The throne room of the old Voss Palace felt icy that day, frost clinging to the tall windows despite the arrival of spring. Her father's voice held no anger, just a sense of finality, while her mother wouldn't even meet her eyes.
For eighty years, she'd filled every hallway with laughter, weaving flowers into guards' spears just to make them grin, singing lullabies to the palace cats long after the world had gone to sleep.
But that girl broke apart like crystal hitting stone.
Sonna stood, legs trembling, though she refused to show it. She offered the flawless bow they'd drilled into her since she was a child, then turned and walked out without a sound.
At the gates, Yonna was waiting.
