[POV: Arin]
The hope was a fool's fire, and it had been extinguished as quickly as it had been lit.
Arin was thrown back into the cold, familiar dark of the Wolf's Chamber, the sound of the magical ward sealing the door a final, definitive hiss. The brief, chaotic spectacle in the courtyard was over. Caldan was alive. And he hated her.
The joy of his survival and the agony of his rejection were two warring tides within her, a storm that left her feeling raw, hollowed out, and utterly, terrifyingly alone.
You'll burn, he had said, his voice a stranger's, his eyes the cold, dead eyes of a man she had never met. But not tonight.
A reprieve. Not a rescue. A stay of execution. He hadn't saved her. He had merely postponed her death, leaving her here to rot in his grandmother's cage, a loose end he would deal with later.
