Combat wasn't the only lesson.
Tay Eming began teaching her the healing arts more deeply: identifying herbs, mixing poultices, suturing small wounds, treating infections.
"Your hands are precise," he noted one afternoon. "Delicate enough for medicine, strong enough for defense. A rare combination."
Mau experimented, guided by instinct. She crushed bark into powder, mashed leaves into paste, wrapped small cuts on practice dummies, and applied pressure with perfect accuracy.
"You're too careful," Tay Eming teased. "This is life and death. Sometimes, hesitation kills."
Mau smirked faintly. "I'm careful because I like people alive. Even if they annoy me."
He chuckled. "Good. You'll need that when you meet people who want you dead."
As she trained, subtle flashes of her past leaked through:
A fleeting memory of silk against her fingers. A whisper of a melody on piano keys. A curve of lines that seemed too precise for someone who had grown only in the Sierra.
Each fragment confused her—but also fueled her.
"Someday," Tay Eming said quietly one evening as they watched the sun dip behind the peaks, "you'll understand why the forest kept you. And why the world outside wanted you gone."
Mau pressed her fingers to the red mark beneath her ear. She didn't understand yet. But it hummed with significance.
"And one day," Tay Eming added, "you'll save someone. Not because you choose to. Because it's what you were always meant to do."
Her lips parted, as if to question. But no words came. The forest, the wind, the trees—they all seemed to hold the answer until it was time.
Far away, the city thrummed with life.
Dave White reviewed reports of M Designs' anonymous rise, tracking movements, shipments, sketches. Every success of Aida's carried the subtle fingerprints of Mau—an inconvenient truth he could not ignore.
"Soon," he whispered, leaning back, fingers steepled. "Soon, I will see if the girl the forest nurtures can match the one I removed from the world."
In the Sierra, Mau stood in a clearing, dagger in one hand, herbal poultice in the other, body and mind trained, instincts alive.
The forest had tested her.
And she had passed.
But somewhere far beyond the trees, a mastermind was preparing for the day she would step out of the shadows.
And Mau, still unaware of the full scope of her destiny, had already begun to become someone unstoppable.
These chapters set up: